FILM 5230 W

12 Responses to “Reading Comments on Nacify/Chow Exile and Diaspora”

1. Jarett Says:
   March 23rd, 2008 at 11:37 am

   In Chow’s “Media, Matter, and Migrants”, Benjamin is quoted as saying that film potentially offers a politics “open to the participation of the masses” that could “revolutionize the premises of aesthetic production and reproduction” (170). In Chow’s article, and in relation to Naficy’s “Situating Accented Cinema”, I am assuming we are to read this quotation in relation to the potential of Third Cinema.

   A question I have, and similar to one we’ve been discussing in Marxism lately, is that Third Cinema or Accented Cinema at its roots still relies on style or aesthetics, and since it seems to often define itself as distinct from First Cinema, does anyone find this contradictory since (from my point of view) all cinema employs style and aesthetics? For instance, Naficy uses such words as “embedded criticism”, “third cinema aesthetics”—a little brief don’t you think?—, and “themes”, for example, to describe ‘Accented Cinema.’ When looking at Katharine’s list of ‘Accented Cinema’ identifiers, couldn’t they all be applied to First Cinema (to most, if not all, cinema)? And isn’t labelling aesthetics as ‘Third Cinema’ just trying to place Third Cinema at the polar opposite of First Cinema aesthetically?

   As Chow discusses the hypertext and its relation to literature: “As in a dream, nothing will be lost, anything can be found, and more is to be generated” (171). I feel that this is the way that Benjamin saw Cinema in relation to other arts, and I think people have/had high hopes for hypertext and Cinema (in the 20s and 30s) because of their novelty. By looking at Third Cinema as an offering of something in opposition to First and something that can potentially be more significant (To whom? To anyone potentially) than First, is this the same utopic view that was/is placed on hypertext and cinema in general? I am clearly not saying that cinema in all its divisions is not important, but I feel that sometimes it is heavily burdened or (if it is possible) stressed out by political views being put into the production and political interpretations after viewing.

2. Elijah Says:
   March 23rd, 2008 at 6:30 pm

   There were several points made in “Media, Matter, Migrants” in reference to the archive (which has dominated my mind as of late) that I found interesting, namely his invocation of Baudrillard’s belief in the “immateriality of resistance against the media, whose power resides in the way they permeate every aspect of life, including resistance itself, which now shares with capital a reversible relation.” This concept from Baudrillard is especially relevant to me because it encompasses many of my own anxieties about the possibility of an internet based film movement which uses the images of mass media against itself. For one, Baudrillard spookily prophecies the now “immateriality” of media itself—having become data and no longer tangible (ie photographs), though he is surely referring to a kind of impossibility of resistance in the face of a media machine that “permeates every aspect of life.” I am disturbed by his pessimism towards media resistance—though many of us in Marxism class have discussed the ways in which resistance itself is co-opted and transformed into a more acceptable format. This futility of resistance leads Baudrillard to suggest that “the only way ‘out’ is staying put.” His concept of “disappearance” (which I am unable to adequately comprehend effectively enacting) seems correctly critiqued by Virilio who thinks our admittance into the “non-sense” of media is a symptom of “repression resulting from overexposure.” Forgive me for now launching into my own research at the moment, but wouldn’t unearthing the repression of archival images—putting them on display and pulling back the skin of the repressive or “traumatic image” of the past be a more responsible way of resistance?

   Chow’s invocation of “Proust’s involuntary memory, Kafka’s short stories…Benjamin’s aphorisms, Brecht’s epic theater” as examples of “prevent[ing] the continuity between character and actor, actor and audience” is startlingly close to some of the various ideas I’ve been reading about the “dialectical image” as a point of disjunction that is the ‘starting point of thought.’ Chow also points to one very deliberate characteristic of avant-garde arts—the “slowness or artful retardation against speed technology” that forces the viewer to become more self-reflexive. I remember when I first started watching art films the initial challenge wasn’t themes and subject—but that wholly new conception of time. I was forced to experience time in ways Hollywood cinema would never let me—without some narrator/narrative telling me how to feel. Sometimes, sadly, I feel that it is this characteristic alone which has made avant-garde films so difficult for people to enjoy.

   Finally, I think Chow’s invocation of the Tiananmen square massacre echoes some of the issues we discussed around Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y; specifically that media becomes a corollary of terror and therefore perpetuates the worst symptom of terrorism—fear. Chow’s framing of the massacre as “political exhibitionism” is such a razor sharp spot on analogy to the “shock and awe” campaign in 2003.

3. Christina Kubacki Says:
   March 23rd, 2008 at 10:46 pm

   Chow’s insistence that today’s emphasis on speed means that Realism is elevated over other literary modes really stuck with me. On page 176: “In cultural production, speed leads to the ascendancy of realism as the literary ‘mode’ in which reality can be fixed. The point about realism is not simply that of finding a medium in which to reflect reality properly. Rather, it is the pro-motion of the linguistic medium to the point of transparency so that it will no longer be in the way.” If the medium becomes transparent, has it achieved a new, transcendent form, or has it lost its title as art altogether? Where does this put literature, philosophy, etc? Chow says there is no longer a place for them – what a travesty! I’ve been thinking of Ranciere’s parataxis for my final paper – this is his idea that there has been a move to collapse the boundaries and measurements of art forms in favour of a great, chaotic juxtaposition. In one sense, the collapsing of those boundaries and measurements eliminates evidence of the individual art forms – transparency. But evidence of a greater, all-encompassing art form of some type is still present in either the schizophrenic explosion or the consensus that comes out of the parataxis. So while transparency is one sense may be part of the parataxis, it is for a much different end than the promotion of transparency for the sake of realism.

   But back to Chow. Chow sticks to the realm of language in her analysis of the promotion of realism, however, I think it’s interesting and instructive to apply it to the image as well. Earlier in the article she talks about how visuality has come to be equated with truth, and that the technologized gaze of the camera has come to be understood as akin to the gaze of God. She also shows how this can be faulty thinking, with the Western gaze over China leading to a fatal game of truth or dare in Tiananmen Square; or the immediacy of the Gulf War mode of fighting actually taking us past realism into a new, hyperreal realm. In a society where speed, and therefore realism, is everything, is the image elevated in importance, thought of as the medium whose purest incarnation best embodies realism and instantaneity? More importantly, is this a faulty elevation, since the image is in truth so very vulnerable to manipulation, or, as in the case of the Chinese game of truth or dare, to other interpretations? In today’s society the truth of the image is taken for granted – what is shown on the news and in newspapers is usually accepted as objective truth, when it can be far from it. Maybe it is the duty of visual artists and scholars to remind the world that the image, or visuality, is a much more complex nut to crack, and that by simplifying it and raising it to a reified, objective concept is to risk misreading and misunderstanding much of what is going on around us, which in today’s world more than ever, is a very dangerous thing indeed..

4. Sharanpal Ruprai Says:
   March 24th, 2008 at 5:11 pm

   Sharanpal Ruprai
   Contemporary Film Theory: The Image Now
   GS/FILM 5230
   Dr. Hayashi
   Presentation

   Summary:

   Chow begins the chapter, “Media, Matter, Migrant” by explaining the relationship between speed and media, between speed and matter and speed and the body. Chow employs, Paul Virilio, theory of speed and politics in which she states that western political power and media is “invested in acceleration” (Chow 165). Chow restates Virilio’s question: “What if the aim of movement has become like that of military invasions or sports records: to go faster while going nowhere, in order words to disappear?” (Chow 166) Chow argues that it is not the question of speed but rather the medium in which speed is located “that is, the nature and texture of the instruments and apparatuses of transmission and dissemination”(Chow 166). Chow insists that Western media (CNN) employed this notion of speed and politics during the China crisis and the result was the “representation of the news towards one seemingly instant sense perception – sight.”(Chow 166) Further, this sight or visuality stands in for a type of “truth” of a particular “event.” Chow asserts that the Western gaze or western media is equal to “the gaze of God” (Chow 166) and how the Chinese culture was being “observed” through (Western) electronic windows, which was taken to be transparent and impartial (Chow166). Therefore, the Chinese government saw the visuality as “an opponent” and therefore had to “demonstrate their physical potency” (Chow 167) by taking action. This action or act then became the space of violence. Chow ends this sections with one powerful sentence, “if the West’s gaze can be paraphrased as “let’s keep a watch over you so that you don’t act foolishly,” the Chinese government’s response was, “since you are watching me so closely, let me show you how I can act.” (Chow 167)

   Main Points:
   Chow divides this chapter into four parts and I will be address each of these sections and highlighting the main points.

   In “The progress towards Non-Sense” she focuses on the digitization of the medium and how it promotes the loss of sense perception. Chow explains that through the storage of time though digitization the “time itself has turned hyperreal” (169) and the past will always be “new and clear” (169). Therefore, the relationship between time and space becomes problematic and “the speediness (decreased time) that is now part of any medium of transmission alters the substance (occupied space) that is being transmitted as well as the traditional notions of storage and recording” (170). Chow relates this to the hypertext reader who becomes “a distracted person who can switch from any part of one text to another text across space and time” (171). When I first read this passage I was struck by the truth of Chow’s statement. Let me explain, I am teaching first year university students who are these types of hypertext readers. Their skills in analyzing or evaluating are very weak. They are doing what I like to call “surface reading” and the consequence of this type of reading is what Chow defines as “non-sense.” They skim over texts like they skim the Internet moving from one text to another and therefore have a limited understanding of the text.

   Chow links this type of reader to the argument that through digitization the disappearance of politics occurs because no one is “making sense.” Chow links this idea with Virilio argument that the through overexposure and digitization disappearance of politics occurs.
   We can see how disappearance of politics is possible, this essay was first published in 1993 and we are in the electronic age where we have all becomes hypertext readers of some sort.

   In the second part of the essay, “Language against Speed, Language as Speed” Chow addresses language and its relationship to speed. She declares that language “is mediatized to the utmost – to the point where it destroys its own existences as medium and as message” (174) therefore language becomes empty. As an example of this emptying of language is in Christian Bok’s Eunoia in which he stripped away any meaning and uses the sounds of letters the result is a speeding up of language. For example take a listen at to Bok reading “And Sometimes”

   http://www.ubu.com/sound/bok.html

   There are many points in Bok’s text where language destroys it meaning and message and the listener or reader is left with “non-sense.” I think Bok’s work is a perfect example of “speed and transparency superseding communication” (173)

   In the third part of the essay, “Backward Countries” she clarifies how modernization of language is directly linked to nationalism. She uses the Chinese language as an example of how nationalism and nation-building in China has lead to the Cleansing of the Chinese language. In other words, the meaning the language has been stripped of traditional residue and therefore stripped of memory. Chow sees this nation-building as a form of speed towards the West’s “Romanized” idea of the Chinese language. Of course this is hugely problematic.

   The link to language resonates with me because I have seen how the Punjabi language has gone through many formations. In fact there are still debates about how texts (words, sentences) are being translated into English. For example, poet rajinderpal s pal’s first book attempts to translate the Punjabi language into phonetic English spelling and I do believe in Canada he was the first to write poetry in this form. What has happened over, since 1998 the publishing date of this text is an Anglicization of written Punjabi in Canada and I suspect in U.S and the U.K.

   In the last section of the essay, “Migrants” Chow explores the effect of speed on human bodies and how speed has put the “first” and “third” world in greater opposition. The “first” world is producing distance and between the body and politics which in turn into a disappearance of politics and bodies. Chow emphasizes that even if people or bodies begin to protest in antiwar demonstrators they still are participate in the process of speed; these demonstrators cannot intervene quickly enough to catch up to the opposing forces.

   I think her most powerful point in this chapter is connection she makes between oil and human bodies, “humans are now on a par with the oil and speed that sustain the machines of global relations” (179). She continues to address the issues of migrants who find themselves living between cultures and now the question becomes how to deal with these migrants who are without a “home.” However, she points out how migranthood has also become part of the electronic age in that these “immigrants” are now used as human labour and this human labour is then “fed into the global media machine” (Chow 180). I think Chow is able to offer various approaches to questions of “otherness” and of “home”

5. Sharanpal Ruprai Says:
   March 24th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

   Sharanpal Ruprai - Presentation
   Contemporary Film Theory: The Image Now
   GS/FILM 5230
   Dr. Hayashi
   March 24 2008

   Questions for Discussion:

   1. In Divine Intervention the politics of the film are visible, for example, when the balloon floats towards the checkpoint. This scene addresses border politics, national identities and power relations within the film and its characters. Therefore the film resists the “disappearance of politics” (Chow 172) as outlined by Chow. With this in mind, to what extend are the characters in the film “shifters” as defined by Naficy?
   “. . . a shifter is an “operator” in the sense of being dishonest, evasive, and expedient, or even being a “mimic,” in the sense that Homi Bhabha formulated, as producer of critical excess, irony, and sly civility (1994). In the context of border filmmaking, are shifters characters who exhibit some or all of these registers of understanding and performativity” (Naficy 589-90)

   2. The film takes on a comic mode just before the tension of a scene. For example, the opening scene with Santa Claus running away from the children – it is funny until you see the knife in his chest. Is the comic mode another way to make the politics visible?

   3. In terms of language, Elias Suleiman’s film has limited spoken language in the film. In an interview, Suleiman explains that he wanted the background sound to fill in for the words. He gives the example of the scene where the man is opening his mail and the only sound you hear is the bird in the background that is “teasing” the man. What do we make of the soundtrack of Divine Intervention? How does it compare with the soundtrack of Perfumed Nightmare?

   4. In the last section of Chow’s articles, she concludes that the migrant emerges because of the need for speed across the globe. As a result, humans become “waste” and therefore become “forgotten products of speed culture” (Chow 179). Rahul Gairola suggests that “…we learn identities by watching films and imbibing the social and political statements imbedded in their visual narratives; the films themselves act as metaphorical mirror after which we pattern ourselves.” How then can we create new alternative identities within film, knowing the trap of speed culture?

   5. Chow’s outlines how video games have made bodies disappear however, this example is now dated because video games (in 2008) depict the violence that includes body counts, blood and guts. Does this change Chow’s argument of “aesthetics” of disappearance?

6. Samuel Lopka Says:
   March 25th, 2008 at 10:54 am

   I just had some thoughts on an issue Sharanpal brought up in class in regards to Chow’s idea of things being too fast in a capitalist consumer society. Taking the Marxism class caused me to think that the dominating ideologies in any society can always be found to exist right down to the core formalisms behind their most popular cultural art and memes. Looking at “Divine Intervention” one can see a direct resistance or at least a re-negotiation of movement and action becoming a film between movement and an almost anti-movement that reminds the spectator of both their immobility in relation to the medium but also that respects possibilities of pure cinema through using images to say more than the words.

   I was thinking about Sharanpal’s comment of having to pay close attention to the film because it was so reliant on movement, duration, and body movement (non verbal) that to look away is to miss the entire meaning behind one certain vignette. I thought of how in the past, people have told me that they study while watching most television or popular movies. It seems entirely possible, although not very desirable, to do so because those mediums rely so heavily on narrative information that even though the person may not be looking at the screen they can still form a mental fabula in their minds through the audio due most likely to the predictability of those film and shows anyway that serves as a mental syuzhet for the person studying. Theodor Adorno would say they already know the plot as it is just one in another cycle of copies of an already established story.

   Except in the films of Jacques Tati, Tsai Ming-liang, among many others, there is no possibility of “not looking” or one is just left with ambient sounds and most often dialogues that do not connect from scene to scene. Instead the whole frame becomes as Jonathan Rosenbaum says a “democratic” field where the viewer can pick any point to focus their attention and survey the scene. I’m thinking of the scene in Divine intervention where the men where in a long room and they kept moving around almost mechanically while the one man stood very still watching TV. Nothing really happened but it was somehow funny and almost fluid in a way. There is a very interesting feeling when nothing is really happening to influence the narrative as a whole but each scene still retains an independent focus founded on duration, patience and the movement of the body.

   I argue that curiosity becomes the spectators drive for the outcome of the scenario. It is a curiosity that requires one to invest themselves in the whole project rather than only looking up once in awhile. One cannot really predict the outcome of every scenario but rather finds delight in the processes of human behaviour which can also allow for resistance to large political and cultural problems. The body vs. technology in Tati’s films, the body vs. cultural difference and industrialization in Kidlat’s film, and the body vs. terrorism and territorial separations in “Divine intervention.”

   Through personal investment and the drive of curiosity, “Divine Intervention” seems to be addressing the problem Chow raises where a total understanding of things is now being skimmed over into a type of nonsense. I think Chow’s statement is a bit negative although Sharanpal demonstrated, and I agree, how it happened to her or anyone but I argue that it is only one side of the coin. For I agree with Tori and how one can be a visitor or a Native and that visitor’s should not assume that natives do not understand what they are doing nor that natives do not have the capacity to process the massive amounts of information that they consume on a daily basis.

   Yet there is a limit for everyone’s ability to process information as Jonathan Rosenbaum also argues that the “democratic” style of artists like Tati requires multiple viewings as there is simply too much going on in one frame to get the full picture. So it seems that even in one book or one film, one can still get only part of something or a fraction of what is there to offer.

7. Sharanpal Ruprai Says:
   March 25th, 2008 at 10:28 pm

   I have been thinking a lot about the possibly of being able to watch a movie like “Divine Intervention” while at the same time, writing a paper and listening to music (mostly because I don’t ever want to short change or underestimate my students). And on the surface, I like what Samuel has to say – but for me there is still a hesitation. And this hesitation stems from trying to figure out the “partial” or the possibly of a partial politics. Who has the power in a partial politics? If we are going to engage with texts by stepping in and out – then how are we going to understand the politics within the text? In addition how then are we going form the political?

8. Samuel Lopka Says:
   March 26th, 2008 at 10:03 am

   I agree with Sharanpaul as well in that there will always be a danger in what we are losing in the process of speeding things up. When we were having this discussion in class, I kept thinking about other historical shifts in cultural mediums that would have brought about the same anxieties. Perhaps people had the same issues when society moved from an oral to a written culture and then again with radio and television. But perhaps that is why academic groups and general communication among friends and all other such forums are so important. Everyone brings something different to the table through their unique experience. I have always learned the most through sharing with others as there is always something I wouldn’t have thought about. Through questioning knowledge together, society has always tried to fill in the holes of knowledge through specialization in order to salvage and interpret the vast amounts of knowledge that are available for everyone to access—libraries and archives. It is true that not everyone will take advantage of these options but historically this has always been true what is important is that they are available. (I hesitate to say this but even on the most basic level think of the popularity of the “for dummies” or “Cole’s notes” series. People do want to get the just of things in all their complexities but perhaps don’t have the time to invest wholly in every text or need a helping hand in order to form an understanding).

9. Sharanpal Ruprai Says:
   March 29th, 2008 at 8:20 am

   I thought this might be of interests. A few people that I have worked with will be giving Keynotes around issues of Pluralism and multiculturalism in Canadian art scene.

   Complicated Entanglements:Rethinking Pluralism in the 21st Century 2008:

   April 4-6, 2008

   Carleton University

   http://www.complicatedentanglements.com/

10. Ananya Ohri Says:
    March 30th, 2008 at 10:07 am

    I wanted to write about the ‘non-sense’ making and “disappearance” as conceptualized differently by Virilio and Baudrillard, but after reading through the blogs, I realized that I have read into these ideas very differently than others in the class. And now I find myself more confused than I already was. I did find the presenters notes extremely helpful, especially since I missed class this week, to make sense of the readings a little more, and identify places where my understanding is different.

    I understood ‘non-sense perception’ as the result of the digitization of the essential qualities of other art forms – like paintings, images, music and even words. Here what could be sensed directly is mediated, but not so one can ‘sense’ it in the same way they could, but perceive them as they are mediated through the digital binary system. The media is being mediated.

    This line seems to support my understanding the best:
    “When everything is computed in the form of numbers and figures, and when sense perceptions such as sight and sound are increasingly mixed up in electronic reproductions so that their traditional differentiation no longer ‘makes sense’ to us, the notion of the medium, together with the memory and sensuality that it signifies, gradually disappears” (168)

    This ‘non-sense’ then connects to the concept of ‘distraction’ through the increase in digitization which further allows a medium to not only be a place of storage and recording, but also of transmission.
    (Of course, a medium’s ability to store, record and transmit doesn’t begin with digital mediums – as Chow mentions vinyl records and phonographs –but Chow seems to speak of these differently than digital media, and I’m not sure what to make of that…)

    I read ‘distraction’ as a concept that refers to a process of consuming information from many places, but at once; a process that is made possible through digitization (and is exemplified through hypertext). ‘Distraction,’ as I understood it, doesn’t necessarily mean skimming, or gaining a partial understanding, but the process of going back and forth, from one reference to the next, in order to gain a more complex understanding. Of course this does have the possibility of leading to skimming, and partial readings -but I read that more as a possible by product of a particular type of reading process.

    So…since we are ‘distracted’ readers, taking in (sensory) information that has been digitally replicated and proliferated, we are no longer understanding things as themselves, but as they stand in reference to other things …our understanding is not derived from our senses that would be associated with sensing an object, but our perception as facilitated by a set of digital binaries (derived indirectly through a non-sense).

    And this is where ‘disappearance’ comes in: where politics derived from something is lost, repressed, confused, diluted, made invisible because this “something” has been robbed of its “essential qualities” – and only exists as a referent (which can be multiple and ever changing). Chow provides a good example of this when mentioning “electronic immigrants” : “human labor is communicated through long distance phone lines…these “immigrants” require neither resident permits nor health care insurance.” (180). In this case, the laborers exist only in reference to capitalism: “In its bodiless form, electronic labor is the summation of what Virilio calls ‘the extermination of tangible culture in the West’” (180) Thus the politics of labor, for these far away “electronic immigrants” is in danger of/ or already has disappeared.

    At this point I’m no longer sure if I’m speaking about Virilio’s version of “disappearance” or Baudriallard?

11. Geoff Macnaughton Says:
    March 30th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

    Since cinema is a time based and transmittable medium it is very much responsible for the ‘speed culture’ which Chow discusses in Media, Matter and Migrants. Chow states, “The speediness [decreased time] that is now part of any medium of transmission alters the substance [occupied space] that is being transmitted as well as the traditional notions of storage and recording.” (170) Other, more traditional art forms, like, painting, sculpture and architecture, can only be transmitted if they are reproduced into an image or moving image, thus transforming the medium of the original. The visceral impact and importance of the original is lost in film and other transmittable mediums because they are quickly produced, reproduced and stored. Now, images and moving images become either a representative icon or a form of ‘hypertext’ and can be viewed at any time of the day, as many times as one wishes, and the duration can be altered at the touch of a button (i.e. fast forward and rewind). So, what is wrong with this lack of the ‘original’ anyway?

    Transmittable mediums and ‘hypertexts’ allow people to view almost any reproduction they please, bringing libraries, galleries and museums to their office, home or even cell phone. Yet, I see Chow’s concern, which Sharanpal raises in her fourth question posted in her blog.

    “In the last section of Chow’s articles, she concludes that the migrant emerges because of the need for speed across the globe. As a result, humans become “waste” and therefore become “forgotten products of speed culture” (Chow 179). Rahul Gairola suggests that “…we learn identities by watching films and imbibing the social and political statements imbedded in their visual narratives; the films themselves act as metaphorical mirror after which we pattern ourselves.” How then can we create new alternative identities within film, knowing the trap of speed culture?”

    A possible, yet fairly utopian solution to this concern would be to make sure that the image is taken as merely an illusion of identity, imbedded in the visual narratives of films and the mass media. This puts the responsibility on the spectator. Chow suggests another way to resist this “trap of speed culture”, which is though the formation of “an avant-garde consciousness” (174). How does avant-garde film slow down ‘speed culture’? Is it because it is naturally subversive? Chow later suggests that forms of resistance and artistic revolts try to slow down and fragment the image, but in the end merely highlight “the success of speed”. As I mentioned above, since film relies on movement and time both mainstream and experimental film are partially responsible for this current ‘speed culture’, whether it be progressive or regressive. Just because some avant-garde films resist the rapid editing and quick flowing narratives, associated with Hollywood cinema, does not mean they are not involved in this trap that speed culture can set.

12. Evangelos Tziallas Says:
    April 5th, 2008 at 12:57 am

    In media, matter, migrants, chow states, “It was believed that by watching-that is, by concentrating all media into the of sight-we would be able to prevent disasters from happening.” Indeed this seems to be the general theme of the course. It’s not so much the issue of seeing, but most importantly seeing disaster. Surveillance was based off of the belief that watching all the time would stop that which was undesirable, and yet what we’ve seen is how prevention of disaster has actually spurred on more disaster. What the culture of seeing has done has not prevented anything, but in fact allowed that which was deemed “inappropriate” to gain a place within cultural discourse.

    Chow continues by discussing how our desire to see more and more, and therefore store what we see as a sort of “universal memory” has created non sense. “When there is infinite capacity to store, time cannot be “lost” and thus need not be redeemed.” I think this was an issue that I raised in class a bit, the idea of over communication. There is a way in which this desire to digitally archive everything possible leads to loss, in that, that which is stored need not be inspected or even remembered because it will always be there to retrieve. However, by constantly focusing on attaining more information, we lose in which we are in the process of attaining. I think Nacify and the idea of diaspora and her discussion of memory through film plays off of this idea as well.

    When discussing diaspora film makers, Nacify writes, “As partial, fragmented, and multiple subjects these filmmakers are capable of producing ambiguity and doubt about the taken-for-granted values of their home and host societies.” What I found interesting about her article was her idea could also apply to queer cinema and queer filmmakers. The idea of a diaspora can’t really apply as gays have no “homeland” so to speak, but in a way, we can think of gay identity existing in a “world” that is foreign and the return to home comes only after the “gay awakening”. Indeed one need only look at the films of Derek Jarman, Todd Haynes and Greg Araki to see this idea of memory, and an existence in mediated state between two “worlds” is being actively communicated.

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