Bibliography Unti 11

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (April 13, 1901 to September 9, 1981) was a major figure in Parisian intellectual life for much of the twentieth century. Sometimes referred to as “the French Freud,” he is an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis. His teachings and writings explore the significance of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious both within the theory and practice of analysis itself as well as in connection with a wide range of other disciplines. Particularly for those interested in the philosophical dimensions of Freudian thought, Lacan’s oeuvre is invaluable. Over the course of the past fifty-plus years, Lacanian ideas have become central to the various receptions of things psychoanalytic in Continental philosophical circles especially.

Lacan's article "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I" (1936, 1949) lays out the parameters of a doctrine that he never foreswore, and which has subsequently become something of a post-structuralist mantra: namely, that human identity is "decentred." The key observation of Lacan's essay concerns the behaviour of infants between the ages of 6 and 18 months. At this age, Lacan notes, children become capable of recognising their mirror image. This is not a dispassionate experience, either. It is a recognition that brings the child great pleasure. For Lacan, we can only explain this "jubilation" as a testimony to how, in the recognition of its mirror-image, the child is having its first anticipation of itself as a unified and separate individual. Before this time, Lacan contends (drawing on contemporary psychoanalytic observation), the child is little more than a "body in bits and pieces," unable to clearly separate I and Other, and wholly dependant for its survival (for a length of time unique in the animal kingdom) upon its first nurturers.

The implications of this observation on the mirror stage, in Lacan's reckoning, are far-reaching. They turn around the fact that, if it holds, then the genesis of individuals' sense of individuation can in no way be held to issue from the "organic" or "natural" development of any inner wealth supposed to be innate within them. The I is an Other from the ground up, for Lacan (echoing and developing a conception of the ego already mapped out in Freud's Ego and Id). The truth of this dictum, as Lacan comments in "Aggressivity and Psychoanalysis," is evident in infantile transitivity: that phenomenon wherein one infant hit by another yet proclaims: "I hit him!" and visa-versa. It is more simply registered in the fact that it remains a permanent possibility of adult human experience for us to speak and think of ourselves in the second or third person. What is decisive in these phenomena, according to Lacan, is that the ego is at base an object: an artificial projection of subjective unity modelled on the visual images of objects and others that the individual confronts in the world. Identification with the ego, Lacan accordingly maintains, is what underlies the unavoidable component of aggressivity in human behaviour especially evident amongst infants, and which Freud recognised in his Three Essays on Sexuality when he stressed the primordial ambivalence of children towards their love object(s) (in the oral phase, to love is to devour; in the anal phase, it is to master or destroy…).

It is on the basis of this fundamental understanding of identity that Lacan maintained throughout his career that desire is the desire of the Other. What is meant by him in this formulation is not the triviality that humans desire others, when they sexually desire (an observation which is not universally true). Again developing Freud's theorisation

 of sexuality, Lacan's contention is rather that what psychoanalysis reveals is that human-beings need to learn how and what to desire. Lacanian theory does not deny that infants are always born into the world with basic biological needs that need constant or periodic satisfaction. Lacan's stress, however, is that, from a very early age, the child's attempts to satisfy these needs become caught up in the dialectics of its exchanges with others. Because its sense of self is only ever garnered from identifying with the images of these others (or itself in the mirror, as a kind of other), Lacan argues that it demonstrably belongs to humans to desire---directly---as or through another or others. We get a sense of his meaning when we consider such social phenomena as fashion. As the squabbling of children more readily testifies, it is fully possible for an object to become desirable for individuals because they perceive that others desire it, such that when these others' desire is withdrawn, the object also loses its allure.

I have chosen the film "Whiplash" (2014) to analysis using Lacan's theory of "lack and desire" as it is about a young mans (Andrew) desire to become a world famous jazz musician drummer. This scene is a montage of his practice to impress his teacher (Terence Fletcher) and to get the part as the drummer for the song "Whiplash".  This montage first starts off him grabbing his drum sticks and walking past a CD of "Buddy Rich" using a pull focus to bring this CD into light and lingering on said CD for a short while. Buddy Rich is the drummer Andrew desires to be as good as, if not, better than. The scene follow Andrew printing sheet music with a non diegetic sound of Buddy Rich drumming, to show that drumming is always on his mind. It's an obsession at this point rather than a hobby. Even when we can hear the diegetic sound of Andrew drumming, the non diegetic drumming still continuously plays throughout this montage.  We see he's calm and collected throughout the first drumming scene of this montage which then cuts back to him in his apartment moving all of his essentials into his drumming room. This demonstrates the level of his obsession (desire) to become the next world famous jazz drummer as his now living in the same room as his drums so he can get the most amount of practise time he possibly can. He also sleeps under a poster of Buddy Rich - the drummer he now literally looks up to as he lays on his mattress for motivation for his desire.        




Sources:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lacan/
https://www.iep.utm.edu/lacweb/
https://www.iep.utm.edu/2005/page/3/
http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/symbolicrealimaginary.htm
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230390140_5
https://www.a-n.co.uk/media/52445075/
http://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/lacan/

Sigmund Freud

Perhaps Freud's single most enduring and important idea was that the human psyche (personality) has more than one aspect. Freud's personality theory (1923) saw the psyche structured into three parts (i.e., tripartite), the id, ego and superego, all developing at different stages in our lives. These are systems, not parts of the brain, or in any way physical. According to Freud's model of the psyche, the id is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.
Although each part of the personality comprises unique features, they interact to form a whole, and each part makes a relative contribution to an individual's behaviour.


The id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality. It consists of all the inherited (i.e., biological) components of personality present at birth, including the sex (life) instinct – Eros (which contains the libido), and the aggressive (death) instinct - Thanatos.
The id is the impulsive (and unconscious) part of our psyche which responds directly and immediately to the instincts. The personality of the newborn child is all id and only later does it develop an ego and super-ego.
The id remains infantile in its function throughout a persons life and does not change with time or experience, as it is not in touch with the external world. The id is not affected by reality, logic or the everyday world, as it operates within the unconscious part of the mind.
The id operates on the pleasure principle (Freud, 1920) which is the idea that every wishful impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of the consequences. When the id achieves its demands, we experience pleasure when it is denied we experience ‘unpleasure’ or tension.
The ego develops to mediate between the unrealistic id and the external real world. It is the decision-making component of personality. Ideally, the ego works by reason, whereas the id is chaotic and unreasonable.


The ego operates according to the reality principle, working out realistic ways of satisfying the id’s demands, often compromising or postponing satisfaction to avoid negative consequences of society. The ego considers social realities and norms, etiquette and rules in deciding how to behave.
Like the id, the ego seeks pleasure (i.e., tension reduction) and avoids pain, but unlike the id, the ego is concerned with devising a realistic strategy to obtain pleasure. The ego has no concept of right or wrong; something is good simply if it achieves its end of satisfying without causing harm to itself or the id.
Often the ego is weak relative to the headstrong id, and the best the ego can do is stay on, pointing the id in the right direction and claiming some credit at the end as if the action were its own.
The superego incorporates the values and morals of society which are learned from one's parents and others. It develops around the age of 3 – 5 during the phallic stage of psychosexual development.


The superego's function is to control the id's impulses, especially those which society forbids, such as sex and aggression. It also has the function of persuading the ego to turn to moralistic goals rather than simply realistic ones and to strive for perfection.


The superego consists of two systems: The conscience and the ideal self. The conscience can punish the ego through causing feelings of guilt. For example, if the ego gives in to the id's demands, the superego may make the person feel bad through guilt. The ideal self (or ego-ideal) is an imaginary picture of how you ought to be, and represents career aspirations, how to treat other people, and how to behave as a member of society. Behaviour which falls short of the ideal self may be punished by the superego through guilt. The super-ego can also reward us through the ideal self when we behave ‘properly’ by making us feel proud.


If a person’s ideal self is too high a standard, then whatever the person does will represent failure. The ideal self and conscience are largely determined in childhood from parental values and how you were brought up.

Sources:
https://www.simplypsychology.org/psyche.html
Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 1-64.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. SE, 19: 1-66.

Laura Mulvey

The Male Gaze theory, in a nutshell, is where women in the media are viewed from the eyes of a heterosexual man, and that these women are represented as passive objects of male desire. Audiences are forced to view women from the point of view of a heterosexual male, even if they are heterosexual women or homosexual men.

From the feminist perspective, this theory can be viewed in three ways: How men look at women, how women look at themselves and finally, how women look at other women. Typical examples of the male gaze include medium close-up shots of women from over a man’s shoulder, shots that pan and fixate on a woman’s body, and scenes that frequently occur which show a man actively observing a passive woman.

The Male Gaze suggests that the female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male. In 1929 Salvador Dali released a film called Un Chein Andalou, which is an abstract short film that portrays a perfect example of this. One scene in the film, a man is found dissecting the iris of a young woman’s eye, which infers this idea of female sight not being central, and that men are not only the audience, but also in control of the action, the camera, the direction, the writing, et cetera, therefore completely running the show, dominating the entirety of the narrative and how it is depicted.

Not only is the Male Gaze theory relevant to cinema, but it also correlates with every-day life. Some theorists have noted that in advertising, objectification and sexualised portrayals of the female body can be found even in situations where sex or representations of sex have nothing to do with the product being advertised.

Although as of recently, movies like Frozen (2013) and Suffragette (2015) do Mulveyjustice in highlighting women’s independence and empowerment, breaking away from the Male Gaze, decades later we still see the same broken record playing, with films like The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) revealing women in extremely sexual and somewhat unnecessary manners.

One reason for this is simply that the movie companies producing these films are male-dominated, as cinema is predominantly a male-run industry, and just like when Mulveyoriginally wrote this critical analysis of film, producers are still churning out the same work that has proved to be successful in the past with audiences as they invest to make profit. They believe that they are giving the public what they want, when that isn’t necessarily true. They are giving audiences what a proportion of males want, and what the rest of society has been brainwashed to accept.

However, many people argue against Mulvey's theory of the camera being a heterosexual male. This argument can be made in films such as Magic Mike (2012) which is a film the revolves around male strippers and the pleasures that females again from watching. I wouldn't in this instants see the camera as a heterosexual male as watching male strippers wouldn't bring gratification to a heterosexual male, however, it would to a heterosexual female. 

Sources:
https://www.filminquiry.com/film-theory-basics-laura-mulvey-male-gaze-theory/
http://www.studentnewspaper.org/laura-mulvey-and-the-male-gaze-in-the-21st-century/
http://www.luxonline.org.uk/articles/visual_pleasure_and_narrative_cinema%28printversion%29.html
http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-female-gaze-52486

American New Wave Video Essay Evaluation

Once I gathered all of my contextual research on the American new wave, I decided to create a video essay about three of the most famous new wave films "Bonnie and Clyde", "Taxi Driver" and "Easy Rider" and how the new wave changed over time being less afraid to show taboo subjects on screen such as, death, mental illness, drugs, alcohol, and sex.

Originally I wanted to do a voice over myself talking about all my contextual research, how the new wave started and why these films were so important. However, I couldn't build up enough courage to do so as I knew I would stutter or ramble on. So instead I used a text to speech bot and recorded the audio from that and used it for my voice over. As is it was to use, some of the pronunciation of words were incorrect, some pauses were too long or not long enough between words and the overall voice was a bit too robotic/monotone.

During editing, someone of the sound was too quiet in certain areas and too loud in others, I feel as I could have spent more time carefully using automation or compression to get the levels just right. However, the overall on-screen editing I feel went well. It wasn't jolty and what was on screen helps the viewer to understand what the text to speech bot is saying, as well as giving visual evidence to back up my contextual studies.

I feel like the structure of my video essay pieced together smoothly as it talked about what a new wave is, why it started and then went on to speak about my three chosen texts. To improve my overall video essay I feel as I could have added a conclusion as the end to help summerise the entirety of my video essay to help keep any watching it up to date and on track.

New Wave Film, Brief And Evaluation

Brief:

From the research of my contextual studies of American New Wave, I've noticed that the main focus of their techniques is to break the rules of what then was traditional Hollywood cinema. The way they break the rules includes, handheld cameras; lack of/improvised narrative (or one that makes little sense); lots of jumpcuts; long cuts that continue even after the main focus has gone off screen; unusual camera angles; natural lighting; and non-actors.

For my own new wave film, I want to take the unusual camera angles and bring it into the spotlight with the entire film being recorded from a POV (point of view) shot. By doing this I could create a behind the scenes film where it shows a day in the life of a new wave filmmaker as he gets up, does his morning routine, meets his friends and they make a new wave film. I also want to add in shots of the person looking into a mirror holding the camera to remind you that you're watching a film (breaking the 4th wall). During editing, I want to create the morning routine into a montage with lots of continuous jump cuts almost enough to disorientate the viewer. For the audio and lighting, I want it to be all diegetic and natural to give a sense of realism.

Evaluation:

Due to the weather and confusion of meeting points, I managed to get my morning routine shoot sorted but the recording of the fake new wave film, unfortunately, didn't happen but recorded most of the day all from a POV shot and ended up with 40 minutes worth of footage that needed to be taken down to about 2 minutes. I took this into consideration and made my entire film into a montage of the day with a lot of fast-paced editing unless there was dialogue in there I wanted the viewer to hear. Even though my contextual studies were based on the American new wave, my film had more influence from the French new wave, with the black and white and French writing. I added those French title cards in as partially a little in-joke but as well to openly reference the fact the film isn't perfect and has mistakes. The title cards translate to "missing images" and "SD card full" this was due to the fact some clips I felt were unusable or took up too much time so they were "missing images" and my SD became full at the end of the day which is why I stopped recording otherwise I would have gotten a home routine recorded too. After I edited my video I got some feedback and everyone felt like I could add something else to make it more disorientating. So I rendered my footage and revered it, lowered the opacity, panned the revered audio left and the original audio right. this created a more disorientating effect especially when the audio starts to sink up in the middle of the film making it more chaotic and with headphones on, gives the viewer a tingling sensation throughout.      

           

   

American New Wave Video Essay And Script

The American New Wave or also known as New Hollywood was a movement in American film history from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in the United States bringing influence from The French New Wave. It all started in 1919 when four leading figures of American Silent Cinema M. Pickford, C. Chaplin, D. Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith formed the first indie studio "United Artists". Their aim was to better control their own work as well as their futures.
Then shortly after the second world war, major studio companies lost the majority of their power due to The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers which was formed by many of those who were members of United Artists combined with portable cameras lowering in price allowed indie filmmakers to compete with major studios and create more films.

The movement started with 'The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde" both released in 1967. They both influenced the future of movie-making as these films saw less influence from their production studios and more influence from their directors. This lead onto more films created in the same style with a brand new set of conventions which mostly included breaking the rules of traditional Hollywood movies. these conventions included: Non-linear narratives or ones that just don't make much sense. Handheld cameras. Hiring random people off the street to act and work on the film with you. Unusual editing techniques such as the jump cut which traditional now was never used in American Filmmaking before, and overdubbing. As well as natural lighting and a natural setting. Most of this was due to a low budget but it was also a new way for young filmmakers to express themselves like no filmmakers have before. New Hollywood resulted in commercially viable pictures that explored previously taboo subjects in innovative new ways. However, New Hollywood isn't so much a style of filmmaking as it is a movement and a period of time. Within this video essay, I'll be talking about "Bonnie and Clyde" "Taxi Driver" and "Easy Rider".

Taxi Driver:

This is one of the most famous scenes from "Taxi Driver" where Travis practices confronting someone in front of his mirror. He points his gun at his reflection and utters the words, “You talkin’ to me?”

Taxi Driver was definitely a massive departure from the traditional style of Hollywood and exemplified what The American New Wave wanted to achieve in a number of ways from its non-traditional narrative combined with the unique aesthetics

Its style of editing was one of the key conventions in American New Wave. In opposition to the traditional continuity editing of Hollywood, disjunctive editing further distanced American New Wave films from their predecessors and served a number of purposes – from forcing the audience to actively be engaged in the film to disorienting them for artistic, ideological, or psychological purposes

The editing used in this scene, as well as the non-diegetic sound of Travis’s voice-over,  was done to make the audience disturbed and disoriented, as well as portraying the paranoia and delusions occurring in his head. While it brings the viewer closer into Travis’s state of mind, it also makes his thoughts seem more violent and disturbing.

In her book, Hollywood Renaissance, Diane Jacobs discusses the innovative editing and camerawork present in Taxi Driver, saying: “While the camera’s pacing accelerates as the film progresses, it is as restless as its character’s mind from the very start” ( page 146).

Bonnie And Clyde:

With Bonnie And Clyde being one of the first American New Wave productions, it took a lot of its influence from The French New Wave. The film was based on the real-life events of Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow who were American criminals who traveled the central United States with their gang, during the Great Depression, robbing people and killing when cornered or confronted

It originally took a while for "Bonnie and Clyde" to catch on. The film barely made it out with Warner Bros rebooting its opening. However "Bonnie and Clyde" dunked the cinema in style, blood, and glamour. It was the start of the creation of new American films which was proven by the fact that the two homicidal lovers on the run were to be recreated many times in films such as "Thieves like us" "Natural Born Killers" and "Badlands" But none of those films matched the brutal ending scene of "Bonnie and Clyde" where they were ambushed by the police, their bodies riddled with bullets in powerful slow motion. That exact sequence is what changed movies as we know it, opening the floodgates to more fearless movie makers to explore more taboo subjects and to not be afraid to show anything.

Easy Rider:

This scene from "Easy Rider" is one of the most iconic for American New Wave. It starts with a long cut of a mid 4 shot of the group actually drinking and smoking in a real cemetery. There wasn't a script written for this film so all dialogue was improvised from what the director told them to talk about or they were genuine reactions from what was happening like in this acid trip scene.

The dialogue in this long shot is heavily accompanied by what sounds like machinery making the dialogue almost inaudible. From what I can hear we have one of them asking "What's that?" and the others telling her to take what we can only assume is acid. When the acid is beginning to settle in, the scene starts to cut to and from a slowly tilting camera shot of an old run down building, with a huge lens flare and a female preacher talking in the background. This has been done to slowly show the effects on the acid in which they have taken. It's also done to remind you that you're watching a film instead of immersing you into it. American New wave was well known for doing this with techniques such the lens flare, breaking the 4th wall and bizarre jump cuts.

This is when the crew breaks one of the most important filming rules in Hollywood by pointing the camera directly into the sun. By doing this, the lens can act as a magnifying glass and focus the sun rays onto a very small area on the shutter and could burn a hole into the shutter or aperture mechanism of the lens itself

The rest of the scene is a montage/sequence of events that show a handful of American New Wave conventions. We see one of the actors having a real mental break down about the death of his mother as he sobs over a statue that reminds him of her. When he says "shut up" he's actually telling the crew to shut up and stop filming him. We also see more jump cuts and the use of hand-held cameras. Everything that happens here is unscripted and the crew secretly filming them. The director himself said that they used random people off of the street to hold the cameras for them and act as it was cheaper than getting professionals to do it for them.