Films on the Transforming the Society Technologies - Term Paper Example

?Tell the audience about how the technologies transform the society from the three films below, which are Illusions (Julie Dash, USA, 1983, 34 min Sleep Dealer (Alex Rivera, USA, 2008, 90 min) and Papapapa (Alex Rivera, USA, 1995, 30 min). Technology is continuously evolving and bringing about changes in the society. Changes in technology are due to alterations in the material environment, and to acclimatize these changes, people often make changes in social institutions. Ogburn observed that technological innovation influenced the society. Technological innovation first had its effect on the automobile industry, it then changed our economic structure by affecting the business cycle, and level of competition. Automobile, manufacturing, IT- all have evolved radically. Technology impacted the television and movie industry. Sound and Color effects in cinematography all has changed along with the time (Ogburn, 81). In this paper, the main focus lays on the development of technology and its impact on the movies, keeping sync with the society. Here the discussion is based on three different movies of three different times: Illusions-directed by Julie Dash of 1983, Papapapa directed by Alex Rivera of 1995 and Sleep Dealer directed by Alex Rivera of 2008. Analytic Filmmaking: In the modern world the concept of new digital video technologies are changing the way people are documenting, publishing, and consuming different ideas. According to the analysis of Germano, knowledge production is now increasingly associated with digital or visual modes of expression. In his view, a new way of imparting social science research and a new way of making nonfiction films may be described as analytic filmmaking. There is a clear difference between analytical and documentary films, whereas in the past the main focus used to be on the documentary films when people were more interested in political affairs. In modern age social and political films also have appeal to the intellect with considerable special effects and use of science and technologies. Technological innovation in moviemaking started with Julie Dash’s Illusions where the concept of voiceover (sound dubbing) was first represented in front of the audience (Germano, Abstract). The Movie Illusions: Transformation of Sounds: Illusions was one of the well known and award wining movie of Julie Dash. It was released in the year 1983. In this movie, the audience was first come across with the concept of sound effect –more precisely the use of technology in order to develop the sounds effect. According to Klotman, the movie Illusions was the first segment of Dash’s planned series about Black women in the United States. The movie has won award for Black American cinema society in the year 1985 and was also nominated for a award in the year 1988 for Art Direction as well.(Koltman, 193). According to the review of Dash, the movie Illusions follows the story of a fictitious production studio and two African-American women in the film industry: Ester Jeeter, a singer who lends her voice to a white actress, and Mignon Dupree, a studio executive who appears to be white. In this movie, Dash portrayed the struggles of these women to be recognized for who they are, especially in the white-dominated Hollywood studio of 1942. According to the review of Caughie, modern concept of sound engineering is being dominated by the concept of dubbing. In his word “Being heard but not seen offers possibilities for re-imagining ‘passing’ as other than erasure, invisibility, appropriation or blackface”.(Caughie, 97). The application of this concept was first demonstrated by Dash’s movie Illusions in the year 1983. According to his point of view, Illusions takes its subject matter from the common practice of having black women dub the voices of white singers performing jazz or blues songs. In the film, Esther Jeeters (Rosanne Katon), a black woman, is hired to fix the faulty soundtrack when the words sung by the white film star do not synchronize with her mouth movements. Sequestered in the recording studio, Jeeters was never seen on screen (though the film audience does see the actor, Katon, who, ironically, is not singing herself but lip-synching Ella Fitzgerald).(Caughie, 97-98). According to the analysis of Mellencamp (1994), the work of the sound track has historically been subservient to the image track. The movie Illusions “provides an advanced modeling of representation and reception —critically revising theories of vision through sound, making intellectual arguments through the sound track” (Mellencamp, 83). In this point of view, there is a possibility of a theory related to the aural identity, but in the past the concept of aural identity was not well accepted. The analysis of the trend clearly represents the fact that the black performers of the film industry were not remembered and later on erased from memory as the theory of creating an identity through sound was not so much well accepted in earlier times. In this movie the best scene was the last one where Miss Dupree was thinking that one day she also could get the same recognition like the white men and women present in the Hollywood. Voice dubbing was not very uncommon but using the voice of an African girl for any white actress was very uncommon. This scene clearly represented the fact that African people can also perform equally well as the white people of Hollywood. The meaning of “illusion” was clearly represented in that very scene itself. The analysis of Mellencamp clearly depicts that representation, it seems, depends on being seen. Even in discussing a film about dubbing, critics tend to give priority to the visuals. To be heard but not seen is to be seen as not there. The movie made by Dash in 1983 raised a question in the mind of the audience about giving equal recognition to an actor or actress whom the audience could see on the big screen especially those voices which popularized them. Thus technologically has been effectively used to transforming people’s ways of thinking and social behavior. Review: Papapapa Directed by Alex Rivera of 1995: Alex Rivera is a well known digital media artist and filmmaker. His work has won multiple awards at the Sundance Film Festival and has been screened at The Berlin International Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim, The Getty, Lincoln Center, PBS, Telluride, and other international venues. His work for the last 15 years was mainly based on the technological innovation; his works illuminates two massive and parallel realities: the globalization of information through the internet, and the globalization of families, and communities, through mass migration. In his movie, Papapapa, he has used the concept of “virtual reality” to describe mental space. Rivera’s Peruvian father inhabits his adopted home of upstate New York. The video describes how technologies of communication like the television, telephone, and the internet allow new immigrants like his father to inhabit a ‘third reality’ – neither here nor there. In Papapapa Rivera called this in-between space a “virtual reality: VirtuaLima”. The film’s title “Papapapa” was a combination of the Spanish terms "potato" and "father," which co related the association between the Peruvian roots of the potato and Augusto Rivera. Rivera’s main objective was to connect the worldwide allocation of potatoes alongside with father’s journey in migrating to the United States. The potato, a vegetable first cultured by the Incas in Peru, has undergone alteration after the Spanish introduced it to the rest of the world in the 16th century. In this movie, he has demonstrated the worldwide distribution of potato along with his father’s journey of migration in the USA. The most discussed scene of this documentary was when he used handcrafted shape with an image of his father's face riding a potato from Peru to the United States. Through that particular scene he tried to demonstrate the essence of both the stories he tried to portrayed, one is how potato and different bi-products were migrated to USA and also how the migration changed the way people represent themselves in the countries where they were working. If we analyze the scene it was a clear representation of difference in appearance of the people from the way they represented themselves in their home country. By broadcasting the changes in potato, from the time it was first cultivated in Peru and later when it was introduced by the Spanish in the 16th Century to rest of the world, he in this short documentary tried to correlate the effect of migration on the human being by displaying his father’s story. From that particular scene his point of view regarding the migration and its effect was very clear as he tried to mention that his father has also been culturally transformed like the potato. From the analysis of his documentary, another important aspect was the pseudo television broadcast named “Inca Television” which he incorporated in his documentary. That part was also very interesting as it helped elaborate the difference between the brown colored potatoes with the rest. By this scene he tried to demonstrate the concept of colored idealism. Review: Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera, 2008: Sleep Dealer is another great movie of Alex Rivera, like the previous one this movie is also based on technology and innovation. According to the analysis of Silverman, the movie of Rivera was a clear indication of the fact that technological development is not there to set any one free; in his view the movie was a clear representation of futuristic world of have-nots, where 21st-century gadgetry sucks resources from the population of world's poor for utilization by the wealthy sections. According to his review, Sleep Dealer was considered as a great example for a film set in the future where the advance use of technology was utilized to represent the political and social concept. He also mentioned that the main theme of the movie was based on the concepts of outsourcing, corporate possession of water, distant warfare, confessional internet diaries and military contractor who ware accountable to no one. It is a rare political film without any reference to contemporary politics (Silverman). The movie is about the story of Memo, a young Mexican Oaxaca who travels to Tijuana to become the new kind of migrant worker. The movie showed that he was a citizen of Mexico but used to export his labor to the United States, with the help of cybernetic implants. Later on he met Luz, a young journalist who sold her real memories online via her own cybernetic implants, and she installed "nodes" on her body in a very Cronenberg-esque scene. The scene where she installed the nodes was breathtaking as it indicated how the advanced technology of movie shoots changed the concept of shooting. The sight where Memo was first connected to the telepresence network and his responsiveness was unpredictably inside a robot worker on a building site in the United States was really spectacular. From that very scene one could get a sense of how bizarre it must be to move one’s arms and legs and have a robot's limbs respond. This represented how technology works and an allegory could be noted from the way film technology operates. The live actors perform and their images on the screen are only a visual impression of the reality. Memo made the mistake of looking down and realized he was over hundreds of feet above the ground — or, rather, his robotic body was. In this movie with the use of technology he also pointed out the importance of Mexican workers in the United States. Main characteristics of Alex Rivera’s Movie Making: The main characteristics of the Alex Rivera’s movie are the use of high end technologies. In all his movies there is extensive use of technology, the advancement of innovation and science in all the aspects of his movies. According to Adams, it can be possible in the future that people of the world get connected to the internet with the nodes implemented in their flesh but the visualization of the same was already there in his movie Sleep Dealer. In this movie, the border between USA and Mexico is closed but people from Mexico, especially the Mexican workers can cross over the border virtually with the help of a “coyotek,” – a back-alley surgeon who implemented the expensive applications and other important needs at cut-rate prices. Privatized water supply, already a reality in several parts of Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia, has made its way to southern Mexico as well, where under pressure compassions pay top-dollar to irrigate their small patches of land. According to his analysis, Rivera started to work on the movie Sleep Dealer in the mid-1990s, inspired by the confluence of economic liberalism and cultural xenophobia. He also pointed out that in that same year, the NAFTA was implemented that dissolved the trade barrier between the two countries, USA and Mexico, and in that very year also US government began their operation Guardian –the movement related to anti-immigration measures. Adams in his writing pointed out the speech of Rivera where he mentioned, “If we live in a world where businesses can travel freely across borders and build factories wherever they want, but then walls are put up so the workers can’t move, the picture isn’t pretty”.(Adams,). According to the analysis of Adams, from the very early stage the concepts of movie of Rivera were encouraged by the concepts of border crossing. His earlier movie Papapapa, produced when he was a political-science major at free-form Hampshire College, retraces his father’s immigration from Peru. According to his analysis, there were number of directors who were interested in making movies related to different political as well as social factors, and their movies were basically in the documentary format. But the movies of Rivera, although were based on politics and social affairs had great use of animation, technology, and sense of humor. In order to represent all these factors in the movie, according to Adams, the work of Rivera was “mix in an element of surreality, in order to talk about all the aspects at a single attempt, at times, very violent, very intense, very absurd reality that the individuals were live in” (Adams). Conclusion: At the end, the above analysis shows that the movies represent the social as well as political structure of the nation as well as it also demonstrate how the changed took place through out the time. The critical analysis of the 3 different movies also pointed out how the advancement of technology helped the director to represent the political and social aspects in the more interesting way. According to Mimura, from the late 1960s different Asian American film and video makers have regularly produced different short films and documentaries which clearly represent the cultural development of the society. They were also keen to know the contribution made by different Asian Americans in the development of the studio industry, on screen as well as behind the camera and also in the technical production during the silent film era and thereafter. (Mimura, xiv-xv). Over the past decade and also in the last five years lots of powerful digital video technologies developed which helped the film industry to change the approach towards movie making. The changes in movie making, use of 3d concepts all helped the audience to understand how the society will appear with the use of that advancement in coming years. Virtual presence of the individual, their hypothetical movement across the globe, all can be used in both positive as well as negative ways as it is entirely dependent on the individual to utilize those developments. References Adams Sam, The Future is Now in Alex Rivera & David Ricker’s Sleep Dealer; Sloan Science and Film, 2008; Web; 10th December, 2013 Caughie L Pamela; Audible Identities: Passing and Sound Technologies; Loyola eCommons; Humanities Research XVI .1, 2010, 91-109. Print Dash, Julie, Illusions, Review summary; The New York Times/Movies, 2013, web, 10th December, 2013 Germano Roy; Analytic Filmmaking: A New Approach to Research and Publication in the Social Science; Perspective on Politics, nd ,12.2 ,1-32 , Print Klotman R Phyllis, Screenplays of the African American Experience, Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianpolis, nd, Print Mellencamp Patricia, ‘Making history: Julie Dash’, Frontiers, 15.1; 76–101, 1994, Print. Mimura M Glen, Ghostlife of Third Cinema, Asian American Film & Video, nd, University of Minnesota Press, London, Print Ogburn F William; How Technology Changes Society; Social Implications of Modern Science, 249; 81-88, 1947; Print. Silverman Jason; Sleep Dealer injects Sci-Fi Into Immigration Debate; Wired, 2008, Web, 10th December 10, 2013 from Read More