We have not yet talked about the ways that documentary appeals to our genuine desire for 'truth'. That is, although truth may be always already gone when we think we 'have it', our want/need to go after that truth is real and genuine. We want stability, something to fall back on; Higgins' article works from that side of the truth discussion. If Mihn-ha highlights the fissure between sign and reality, Higgins points to our human desire to bridge the gap between sign and reality. For her, documentary serves a particular purpose here, based no small part on our tradition of putting faith in images.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Age of Terror and Docs
We have discussed many facets of documentary truth and the creation of meaning (which, of course, alters our conception of what truth is). We may have even come to recognize the ultimate impossibility of a totalizing understanding of such a thing as truth. I use "thing" here intentionally as a vague, nebulous, amorphous word since truth is too. Specifically, we noticed how Trihn Mihn-ha points to the complications and slipperiness at the intersection of reality and moving image. To quote Reassemblage regarding the way that film (specifically ethnography) seeks to establish 'meaning' to every sign: "what about the internal commentary that escorts images?" In other words, do images "mean" something from the outside (the critic, theorist, observer), or do images manifest their own logic independent from this outside?
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I think images definitely mean something from the outside. While a filmmaker manifests his own meanings from the images he chooses, its the critics, theorists, or observers' eyes that these images are created for. Therefore whatever interpretation or meaning that the observer sees from the images is "truth." The Kuleshov effect and Un Chien Andalou are perfect examples of this.
ReplyDeleteBy editing to separate images of a bowl of soup and a face, the images alone have no meaning outside of being a bowl of soup and a face. Its the observer who interprets that the man must be thinking of food. Or with Un Chien Andalou, Dali and Bunel decided to create something that has no meaning, however just because they say it has none doesn't mean its true. One can watch that film and come up with all types of profound meanings and interpretations thus showing that images mean something from the outside and not just by themselves.
As human beings it is biologically impossible for as to look at an image and not be stirred to create meaning. I believe that images mean something from the outside. Even if an image does not have a viewer it has a creator and both viewer and creator assign meaning. Artists create to provoke thought, share an idea, or express a feeling.
ReplyDeleteI believe despite Trinh Minh-ha's distaste of the ethnographic need to assign meaning to images, she does the same thing. I do not think that Reassemblage was created randomly meaning she did not film random things and then randomly edit which images go next to each other and then randomly choose words to voice-over the film (and even the act of doing so creates meaning. "i do not like that humans seek to create meaning in everything therefore i'm going to challenge that and make something that has no meaning")<----That still has meaning!!!
I think that Trinh Minh-ha had gone to Africa wanting to do one thing and when she didn't like it she decided to make a film about her beliefs using these images, therefore assigning meaning to them. For example the many breast shots, why did she zoom into them? Why the commentary on women and fire? Obviously this film reflects her feminist views.
Like Toyiah said whatever interpretation one places on an image is their personal truth, whether it is the artist or viewer.
On a side note...I have indeed come to recognize the ultimate impossibility of a total understanding of what truth is and what a documentary is.
Evaluating futher on the "faith" that documentary viewers place in images, it is an interesting fixation that viewers of images in general have invested in the reality of what is visually presented. Even taking away the manipulation through compounded images that the Kuleshov experiment demonstrated, the captured image, in essence, reflects only a fragment of the situation that actually occured. Viewing an image on screen or even a simple photograph, the viewer invests a sort of faith that the presented image is an accurate representative of the situation as a whole. This investment is guided by the viewer's trust in the documentarist to accurately define the entirety of a situation, an event, a people, etc., through the use of an images or series of images that basically sum up the story.
ReplyDeleteThis is a dangerous trust-complex that can be identified in passive viewers who are not aware of the falibility and personal bias of the god-like, usually unseen documentarist. The unaware viewer is then caught in a position of being spoon-fed information by a being(the documentarist), who is assumed to be the unbiased eyes, the lens of the camera, capturing the facts.
No matter what Trinh Minh-ha believes it is impossible for a filmmaker to create a documentary without conveying/creating some kind of meaning. Whether or not the filmmaker wants to create meaning the audience will create meaning from the film despite the filmmaker's beliefs.
ReplyDeleteTrinh Minh-ha's Reassemblage is full of feminist symbolism. The constant repetitive close-ups of breasts or the constant reminder of women and the fire and the the sluggish fast pace cutting. THIS CONVEYS MEANING BECAUSE IT IS A FILMMAKER'S STYLISTIC CHOICE and all choices create meaning in one way or another. Either by the audience or by the filmmaker. It is impossible to create something that has NO MEANING!!!
Images can manifest their own reality because know matter what the filmmaker that shot the image intended by shooting that image, there are other realities that come from that image. For instance, Trinh Minh-ha was attempting to not create meaning by just observing and telling what was gong on in the shots, but she did not know or intend to show how if there is a shortage of corn people die, society's crumble. That may not have been fully realized at the time of the shooting, but fast forward 20 years and that image manifested itself to show something different.
ReplyDeleteImages for the most part have meaning from the outside. It is a culmination of meanings associated by the society a viewer lives and and individual experience from each viewer. Just by picking up a camera and shooting a shot creates meaning. Any viewer that views the image can come up with different questions as to why the person shot that shot. If Trinh Minh-ha thought that by observing with a camera does not create meaning she was wrong, the shots that she edited together begs the question as to why those shots. All of it has meaning.
I'm going to have to agree with Toyiah's comment above in saying that images definitely carry meaning from the outside. No matter what a documentarian/filmmakers objectives are for creating a piece, once it has reached an outside source, it becomes something different for each and every viewer. Creating or deciding upon a films "meaning" is all relative to the theorist, observer, or critic who views it and draws upon some feeling (emotion) particularly invoked by that film. As for Higgins and her idea that we have made a tradition out of putting our faith in images, I think she is absolutely right. What we see is what we know and what we know is our "truth".
ReplyDeleteImages get most of their meaning from outside. The filmmaker can manipulate images to present his own meaning, but the final decision of what images means are going to come from the various viewers. Documentary film definitely appeals to our search for truth. This search for truth is problematic since we are aware that images do lie and take reality out of context, especially when filmmakers try to direct images towards his/her understanding or opinion of reality is.
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