Guernica Re-Visited

Andre Bazin's statements about the reality in painting and photography are based on the "need for the reality and the illusion". In his example of Picasso, he states that Picasso abandoned the need for the reality and takes his place in the realm of modernity. For Bazin, Picasso kept himself away from the "sin" of photography, and also the illusion of the attempt to "reach the reality" performed by Baroque artists. In photography ,the viewer acts like the image that she/he watches is "real", even the frame is chosen by the photographer.

Guernica, by Picasso

Bazin's ideas about this "need for reality" can be discussed with Peter Witkin's sense of art photography. Peter Witkin is an American photographer, famed by his " grotesque" visual language. In his photographs, he focuses on dead bodies, symbolic approaches towards gender, politics and religion. He switches the perception of "normal" knowledge, and he creates stunning an "unacceptable" scenes. The corrupted and twisted human bodies, and their unnatural placements in the compositions create a chaotic visionary. In his photographs, he creates a new form of reality.

While defining Peter Witkin's understanding of concept, Bazin's example of Picasso will be the subject of discussion. One of Witkin's famous works, named "Guernica Variations" is a re-production of Picasso's Guernica. In Picasso's painting, the abstracted cubic forms of object can be seen and considered as a new perception to the reality, as an artistic and modernist approach. In this case, Witkin's Guernica has the same tendency: a "real" animal head is on the middle of the screen. However, the viewer cannot perceive this animal head as he/she "knows" it in the real manner: the animal head is converted in a cubic way, just like Picasso's perception. The animal head is projected in the side view. The left side of the animal head has two eyes, the other part is not shown. No one will be able to recognize the other part, their perception is mis-leaded by the twisted vision of the left side. In this manner, one can argue that even it is photograph or not, the approaches of Picasso and Witkin is deforming the sense of reality.

Guernica Variations, by Peter Witkin

In this case, fundamentally, it can be said that the reality is a system of manners for knowing things, and the decisions to perceive.

A Nonfictional New York and a Man with a Movie Camera

"Lost Book Found."

Jem Cohen takes his 8 mm and 16 mm cameras and gets out of his home . He starts to shoot the streets of New York for several days. While he was recording, he turns his camera towards the inhabitants of the street: homeless people, stores, cars, buildings, metro stations, pouches levitating with the wind, shops and street vendors. The world in "Lost Book Found" is silent, autonomous, almost hidden. The only sound is the narrator, he tells the stories of the inhabitants. Repetitions, coincidences, irrelevances and changes of the streets are told by him.

The camera is on the first person's point of view, so the movie is a story of the streets, told by a "friend who saw them". The viewer and the narrator are in the same room, sitting on the same couch and watching the records on a TV, and the narrator directly tells his memories of the images on the TV. It is his stories, it is just the memories which are shared.

This documentary subtly asks the question "What are you watching? A documentary, a fiction, or a home video?" The streets are signified by all the citizens of New York. The inhabitants of the streets are partially known by common sense. So, what are the viewer watching? What do the viewer focuses on, on their own memories, or the narrator's selections? What is projected on the screen is the reality without any interruption; the ordinary daily life of the streets, however, the narrator's stories are voice-over. So, it can be said that the stories of him is his own home video, the narrator can focus only the sense of the images. The viewer is not directly linked to the perception of the camera. The engagement of the viewer with the image is on the outside of the frame, is on his/her general knowledge. This statement leads the one to consider this movie as a fictional narration, even if the images on the screen tells their own story.

In fact, the narrator is not the man with the movie camera. Jem Cohen recorded the scenes and Monroe Cohen creates a narration from the voice of the camera. In this aspect, the genre of this movie -as a documentary- can be discussed.

PS: While watching the movie, you will see a surprise about The American Beauty. Remember the boy with the camera.

Mieke Bal and "Dead Man"

Even though Jim Jarsmusch was always known with his criticism on America and American culture, when he released “Dead-Man” in 1995, The highly influential American film reviewer, Roger Ebert, said that "Jim Jarmusch is trying to get at something here, and I don't have a clue what it is". It was a shock that Jim Jarsmusch has changed his style of film making. The story wasn’t done in a manner of “true hipster fashion, in a minimalist style and with a cool sense of detachment” , it was rather done as a classical western film with a touch of Jarmusch.

Even though the style was changed the concept of the American culture continued. When the film is analyzed through Roland Barthes and Mieke Bal’s understanding of semiotics it can be seen that there is an old myth which says that “American people are uncultured” and another newly created myth “ Native American’s are far more superior than the wihte men” which is shown to us through the character of Exaybachay, which means “Nobody”. When narration in Mieke Bal’s understanding is considered it is an important fact that the Indian character is called “Nobody”. It is as if he is just a symbol that is left of America. As we watch further it is also seen that the only person who has intellectual culture is also “Nobody” since he is the only person in the film who knows about William Blake the poet. This action also defends both of the myths.

Also this is the first film that Jim Jarmusch uses “traditional iconography of the Western and the radical poetry of William Blake”. It would have been impossible to analyze this film with Mieke Bal’s semiology without the use of iconography. All of the western clichés; with the cowboys, Indians, bounty hunters, sheriffs and pretty dancers girls it has a typical western look. However, its concept is much more wider. Its concept is about William Blake’s revival from the past to create new poetry and go back where he belongs.

La Société du spectacle, et Histoire(s) du Cinema

"In the world - which is in reality turned upside down - the true is a moment of false."

Guy Debord

The images of the cinema are manipulative. The audience is in pa passive position while watching the screen; the eyes are waiting to follow the imagess passing by frame by frame. In "Psychoanalysis, Film, and Television" text, Sandy Flitterman-Levis questions the position of the spectator as the main difference between cinema and television, the subject of the projection, and by whom the definitions-significations are made. With the help of psychoanalysis, she assumes that the spectators are exposed to watch the cinema in a womb-like ambient, therefore their unconscious minds become the "author" of the fiction in an adversely schema. So, the images which are projected on the screen are the stories told by the moviemaker, by re-written by unconscious mind. With a Lacanian approach, it can be mentioned that unconscious mind is a singular construction of the Big Other. Therefore, cinema has an enormous power to shape the one's mind.

Godard's statements in the Histoire(s) du Cinema has the same approach, in addition he has a criticism on the real history of cinema: he states that cinema did not use its very own strength to give messages to society, rather, it always created a virtual series of realities. The real history of 20th century is not projected on the cinema screens. In Histoire(s) du Cinema, Godard selected several sequences from the movies of 20th century and combined them together in order to write another discourse, another narration. He states that images are more powerful than the arguments, so he separates the images from the past movies and link them with each other to express his ideas about the failure of the real history of cinema.

Guy Debord had almost the same argument with Godard, but he focused on the reception part of the screenings. In his project named "The Society of the Spectacle"(1973), a movie and a book with the same name) he states that the human eye is corrupted by the floods of images. Media shapes the human reception by projecting tons of irrelevant images in sequences, so the viewers start to lose the meanings and significations of the singular images. The link between the argument and the image is broken and the real aspects of the politics, economics, and social problems cannot be received by the society. The society is alienated from the reality, from the meaning and from the real connections of aspects. They are trapped, encapsulated by the power of images. They become a society of the spectacle. In order to explain these arguments, Debord imitates the method of media which he criticizes; in the movie "Society of the Spectacle". In the movie, the viewer encounters a brutal war imagery, just after that scene, an advertising with an erotic pose of a woman, and afterwards, employees working in a factory is projected on the screen. On the back, the voice of Guy Debord continuously explains his arguments and some readings from Karl Marx.

As it can be seen, while Godard tries to use the power of the images in order to create more beneficial discourses to inform the society, Guy Debord states that the society has already lost its ability to recognize the reality.

Soliloquy of Welles in F for Fake

F for Fake (Vérités et mensonges) (1973) is a film-essay or documentary film mostly famous for its film editing, directed and written by Orson Welles, who claims in the beginning of the film that this is a movie about trickery, fraud and lies. Welles is the storyteller, narrator figure in the story, which primarily deals with the art forger Elmyr de Hory and his fake autobiography written by hoax-biographer Clifford Irving.

The film problematizes the art’s value in a humorous and in the specific way of Orson Welles. Welles claims that stories of all movies are some kind of lies and he promises that there will not be a lie for sixty minutes. However the film is not sixty minutes apart from the introduction part, it is eighty-nine minutes; in the end, Welles plays his tricks too by telling a fraud story about Picasso to question the value of art.

Playfulness is adapted into the film in a strict tone as Welles plays with the ideas and awkward situations about the funny businesses. It can be seen that in the introduction part, while he makes some tricks to children like turning coins to keys, he calls himself as a charlatan, nothing more and there are also hoaxes in the film deliberately used by Welles in order to contribute to this playful attitude. Filming process and Orson Welles narrating in his film editing room can be seen throughout the film. Therefore there is a self-conscious film making process which makes the film self-reflexive and postmodern in its all senses.

Through the end of the film, Welles maybe gives his ideas about the art issue through an artistic performative soliloquy giving the example of Chartres Cathedral. He suggests that the even if it is one of the most beautiful and complex structures of western civilizations, cathedral does not have a signature on it and as it was built a millennium ago, now it is unknown that who was its architect or engineer. Welles claims that it was built to left a trace about themselves, something to the following generations, even if it is a little thing. As he concludes, he finishes by saying that, fakes and treasures, frauds and masterpieces, everything will be demolished and everything will turn to dust. “Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much” he says.

There is a strict parallel with Welles’s ideas and the poem Ozymandias of English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the poem, Shelley met a traveler from an antique land, Egypt, who tells him the inevitable fate of the great sculpture of the Pharaoh, as there are only its legs left. Sculpture’s head is in the sands and on the pedestal it says: My name is Ozymandias, Kings of Kings, look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. It is ironic that nothing left of him and it is mentioned that, even if time destroyed Ozymandias’s works, only its sculpture’s feet stays and its sculptor is unknown, even if the things of the king stays only because of him.