Visual slight of hand and the narrative format -

The movie “Look” demonstrates the basic fears of technological change– the fear of documentation, the use of our images, but in particular, the idea that they can be integrated into a vast conspiracy of some sort. The concern is not just that ‘our’ images are getting away from ‘us,’ but also those images suddenly become part of a catalogued and indexed centralized machine - that someone takes our casual gestures and removes them from their context to use them against us. The movie trailer uses a visual slight of hand by positioning the viewer behind all the cameras which surround our lives. The assumption is that the technology works in an unhindered, transparent way that reassembles messages in a coherent way for the ‘audience’ of either security systems or other cultures. Video as a format is extremely tied to the movie/television format - narrative coherence, problem/solution, etc. In particular, this lends the impression of videotaping as a breakdown of our ability to manage persona. Essentially, we want to be able to create a school persona (character), a work character, a home character... all these are personas we project towards specific people and places with an eye to their specific interests in us. The fear of surveilence technology, shown in the trailers for the film essentially concern the interruption of voyeurism on activites we normally consider private, because they concern our ability to manage our lives (stealing as subverting power, shopping and the relation of a parent to their child, attempting to get away with murder...). All concern managing our presentation of face to specific people, the camera becomes the third person who subverts this frame. It breaks down the barriers between the presentation of different forms of face, and forces a coherence onto our lives.

Fortunately, the power of the image will be the failure of video surveillance technology. The perception that the image discloses all potentially to an over-reliance on camera technology, which can be subverted in many ways. The Rodney King video demonstrates why this is true - the super-persuasive image which should have been a cinch-win for King, turned against him when reassembled and dissected. Other basic media-theory questions undermine the power of video surveillance - the importance of framing images (both ideologically and physically), as well as the ideological position of the reader as the key to meaning of video.

There are plenty of ideological slights of hand that go into making video surveillance 'work.' Each of them can be carefully undermined in their own way, which is the untold story of media 'progress.'

Duncan

holidayss

Ahoy- I've been writing a lot lately, but not neccesarily for this blog. Here's a post I wrote a few days ago

I’ve noticed a negative reaction to the Thanksgiving holiday from several of my friends in activist-y circles, regarding it as merely a celebration of an imperial past, dressed up in plastic turkey. I think its important to consider the substance of what people are doing with their time and why during the holiday. The most important feature of the ideological meaning of holidays is a division between the normal and the celebratory. Taking time off (from what?) acknowledges a difference between the good and the necessary. Holidays work as an opportunity as much as command, the chance to embrace non-work. In many ways, the time-crunch blackmail of capitalism necessitates holidays, but it also shapes what we do on days off from working. The individually driven culture of capitalism and accumulation acts as its own stress, and the fallback onto established and strong (socially sanctioned) social networks. Symbols create community – the use of the established terms for holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. – use these tools as pragmatic means for creating connection moreso than as deeper political statements. Popular culture supports this idea – the most pathetic, heart wrenching moments in dramatic movies about Christmas in particular, are those where people spend holidays alone. Scrooge is the quintessential holiday villain, someone who takes time alone, who doesn’t celebrate the connections he has with people around him. The public and private enter each other at holidays, where people embrace their private space as a counterweight to their public face. The significance of any given holiday, attached to a date, concerns the need to control the means by which people create holidays. Imagine if we could celebrate any number of holidays, which we created in our own minds. The use of an authoritative historical narrative connected to a day in particular limits the number and character of holidays, which otherwise could exist at any point and time.

Duncan

Apathy again

Much of the discussion surrounding student apathy makes comparisons to the heyday of student activism and public protest, ie the 60s. The real problem with this is that it skip so many movements that failed in between then and now. The nuclear-disarmament movement was as activated as the anti-Vietnam war protests, with what was for a long time (until 2004 with the March for Women’s Lives) some of the largest protests in history. In many ways the Iraq war has more to do with the nuclear power industry than it does with the Vietnam war – the interests of the participants are narrowly entrenched, with no mass-base of people with immediate exposure to the war machine (nuclear war was always just an idea, as in many ways the Iraq war remains just an image on the screen). The false comparison between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ student bodies overlooks this ultimately failed movement, as well as other forms of failed political engagement (2004 election, anyone? Huge turnout, look where we are). So, a big part of the problem with the rhetoric of passivity is that it makes the assumption that activation translates into effective action. Movement building requires careful planning and strategic thinking – it is here that the facile dichotomies of the rhetoric of apathy trips itself up. It implies a failed strategy in its own right – taking to the streets at all costs, broadcasting indignation every which-way and by god, getting properly upset about the world. There is no reason to believe that a merely riled up and angry student body takes us anywhere, and I refuse to believe that protest for its own sake means anything.

Duncan

The Apathy Lie

I believe that the rhetoric surrounding the apathy of college students is an excuse for bad organizing. More than ever, college students are engaged with their lives and politics – and I don’t just mean this in the liberal-Kos/Obama sense. At the risk of sounding cliché, Students define and redefine themselves constantly through Facebook and MySpace, and go to great lengths to involve themselves by participating in (innocuous but telling) activism related to incurable disease and apparently incurable conflicts like that in Darfur. Even this doesn’t get to the core of the issue: students are motivated now more than every to pursue individual ends through the traditional means of power. The most powerful academic institution on any college campus blessed with their presence is the business school. I’ve seen students line up out the door to win free chicken at Chik-fil-a in Georgia, I’ve seen similar fervor for Broadway tickets and on campus events at NYU. The belief that these things represent nothing more than apathy willfully ignores the time and personal investments required to do them; it also demonstrates a woeful arrogance that the complainer simply knows better than anyone else what the real issues to be organized around are. I’ve seen lots of people get worked up about the lack of student protest against the war in Iraq, I’ve never seen a student praised for organization against environmental degradation or copyright politics. The issue selection and tactics choices of most of the mainstream anti-war movement is poor – I don’t even know why ending the Iraq war at this point would be anti-war, except in a facile sense. Even if it was, I don’t see why the amount of time taken to dislodge an oil-driven, well financed occupation makes sense in comparison to the ongoing war of poverty and sexual violence in America. Apathy, no; disregard towards the traditional quasi-fascist bullshit of the old guard left, more likely. Students do things. Lots of things. They just do things according to a different economy of attention and focus than has ever really been seen before. I’ll be honest: the most interesting and engaged activism I’ve seen did not come from either a political party or the traditional organs of the anti-war movement: it came from people my age or in school still (standing in front of trucks, marching through DC with masks, disclosure meetings at NYU, hanger-selling at UGA, Rhizome in Austin, fuck, every Critical Mass ride I’ve ever been on). What other people see as apathy more likely constitutes taking the reigns of power out of their hands. I don’t believe in an messianic transformation of the public sphere centering on the power of the internet and communications technology, but I do know that things are different for me than they were for other people in the past.

Duncan

test

this shit