Saturday, July 16, 2011

But, Is it Truth, or Art?- pt. 2

...When I last left off, I was discussing how media technologies designed to record and distribute performances evolved to be media that could create an event unto itself. And how that was often driven by the desire to make the imaginary appear real. One could say that was when these recording technologies transcended into Art.
But, let's step back a bit, and talk about Art.

During the time that Hollywood lavished a great deal of money to recreate history, or create imaginary places, there were also the Saturday Matinee serials. These were inexpensively made films, a half hour segment of which was released each week. Mostly adventures, aimed at children and young adults, with obviously cheap production values. It was believed that children have a greater capacity for suspension of disbelief than adults. After all, children also watch puppet shows, and read fairy tales, right?

 Well, maybe... And perhaps it's something else, something older, about Art that we overlook.

 We move ahead to the Post World War 2 films, and we see a few changes in the nature of the Cinema. Melodramas give way to the more realistic Drama, fewer Big Budget spectacles are made, and the Horror and Scifi genres are orphaned by the Major studios. Soon, small producers and distributors are using these genres to break into the movie business, as the genres are guaranteed to appeal to teenagers with funds for impulse spending, and the desire to have something to do with themselves. These films tend to also have poorer production values, though some major studios did occasionally put out a Forbidden Planet, or The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms . And there's a lot of special effects and costumes that would strain suspension of disbelief involved. Paper Mache and rubber suits, Matte lines, and improperly matched Rear projected imagery or Front projection effects often made it obvious that it was all merely film effects. Yet, the films were popular enough to show it didn't matter all that much.

In Japan, 1954, Toho studios had to halt production on a WWII film, due to some reservations about the script. Yet the film had already gone into pre-production, and had military costumes and equipment ready. It was decided that a film duplicating The Beast from 20,00 Fathoms. Thus, they created Gojira. This film was a well written thriller, but had to use obvious special effects such as puppets, men in rubber suits, etc. It proved so popular, though, that Toho studios decided to make a sequel, as well as other Daikaiju films.

 One thing that genre films, as opposed to realistic drama, have in common is that they tend to adhere to greater fidelity to Formalism . There's a certain repeated structure to plots, a repetition of themes and symbolism. Indeed, some fans of Daikaiju cinema liken them to Noh theater and Japanese puppetry, both of which rely on formalism to communicate ideas. Even Western culture, though it has overtly moved towards Realism, has it's roots in formal representationalism. Greek theater originally involved masks and puppetry, too, as well as the Chorus and Deus Ex Machina. So, the concept of a symbolic stand in for an object of the imagination, though distant in time, was not entirely implausible for audiences. Perhaps it was this ability of the mind and imagination, and not suspension of disbelief, that allowed audiences to enjoy these films?

Let us go back again, to the advent of photography in Western culture. While the art of painting has fluctuated between symbolism and realism since it's inception, the evolution of Realism flourished between the Renaissance and the time of Vermeer and Rembrandt (when the technology of Camera Obscura became such an aid to artists, they could literally trace their subject's image onto canvas). Then came the landscape artists, trying for verisimilitude in capturing wide vistas.

With the advent of the early photographic camera, and it's ability to literally capture the image of it's subject, the value of realism in painting was brought into question. Soon, photographers were discussing composition of image, shading... But, they could only capture sepia toned images.

Painters responded with the Impressionist school, built around speed of capturing the colors of an image, at the expense of sharp focus. Detail was being subtracted by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec in favor of the Caricature of image. Formalism was being reintroduced into the definition of Art.

By the beginning of the 20th century, an art movement tried to move so far away from realism, that it attempted to communicate emotive symbols in new contexts. Thus, we have the birth of Dadaism & Surrealism . And the Modern school of Art is it's result.

Of course, artisans of the recording media were not far behind, trying to imitate the spirit of this movement by testing the bounds of their technologies.
In the next segment, I will discuss how this ability to shape recordings of events influences reporting. Clifford Irving, Stephen Glass, Orson Welles and F is for Fake , Michael Moore, Errol Morriss, Ken Burns and the entertainment value of documentaries..

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