Streetwise

Martin Bell's Streetwise deals with a group of transients in Seattle. The main characters are young (between 14 and 16), so this film is a really powerful look into their young lives. However, that's really all this film feels like: a look. The shots are set up to make it look less like a documentary and more like a traditional narrative film. I found myself forgetting that the film was actually a documentary, but that fact is brought back to the foreground once one of the main characters commits suicide in prison. The narrative feel of the film is both a positive and a negative. While the characters are extraordinary enough to hold our attention without bringing up the societal causes behind their positions in life, the film kind of flows from person to person without much in the way of a real story. Rather, it's a brief look into the lives of Seattle's street rats. Dewayne's suicide serves as the end point for the film, but it feels like much more could have been done with this story. Instead of focusing on so many peripheral individuals, Bell might have been better served further developing the stories of the central protagonists of the film. The end of the film leaves you wanting to know more about them, but it doesn't offer closure. I suppose Bell's point could be that for these people, there is no closure, so this film shouldn't offer any either. And that's fair. It's definitely a solid point to make.

The Unforeseen

The Unforeseen is a 2008 documentary directed by Laura Dunn. It deals with the attempted development of the Barton Springs area of Austin, TX. So it hits pretty close to home. It reminded me a lot of an attempted development project in Nashville, where a company tried to build up a previously undeveloped area of land that was only a few miles from downtown Nashville. Like what happened in Barton Springs, a groundswell of public support arose and the development stalled. So the beginning of this documentary kept bringing that to mind for me, and it made the issue easier to understand.
As far as the actual documentary goes, I was a little disappointed. Unlike any of the other films we have watched for class, there was no narration in this film. Instead, it moves from clip to clip, including interviews and historical filmed portions to make its point. As such, it doesn't feel particularly articulate. It lacks any sense of cohesion, and seems to jump randomly from issue to issue with the loose theme of urban development and property rights. This is a shame, because there are a lot of important points that can be made about urban development in the U.S. But The Unforeseen never really takes the time to make them. The cinematography is wonderful, with lots of sweeping overhead shots of Austin and developments in progress around the city, and these frames make as strong a point as anything anyone in the film says. Unfortunately, that alone isn't enough, and the movie just feels lacking. I believe the film would have benefited from a narrator to tie the themes together into more of a narrative, instead of the mix of interviews and shots of Austin that it ended up being. The Unforeseen ultimately gives the viewer a great taste of what the overall feeling is in Austin towards development, but that's all it is: a taste. For examining the issues behind development and getting a fair look at both sides' views, one is probably better off looking elsewhere.

Harlan County, USA

Harlan County, USA is a 1976 documentary by Barbara Kopple that deals with a strike by mine workers in the early 1970s. Kopple films the strike from the miners' point of view, attending union meetings and actual picket lines, where much of the film's action occurs. That is what was so interesting about this film to me. Despite the fact that it is a documentary, it seems to have elements of drama and action that get you to really care about the miners' plight and want them to succeed against the almost too-evil Duke Power Company. This story could have easily been adapted to a Hollywood vehicle, and it would have made perfect sense.
Kopple's main tactic in the film is using interviews with miners to establish their plight and create feelings of sympathy within the audience. Once you've heard the fifth story about how someone was injured in the mines due to terrible safety standards, it's very easy to agree that the miners deserve a pay raise. And once the strike-breakers show up brandishing weapons and trying to get the miners to disperse through intimidation, the viewer is left practically cheering for the miners to persevere.
Another thing I loved about this film was the soundtrack. Some of the songs in the film were actually sung on-camera by residents of Harlan County. Others were written by locals, and this adds an air authenticity to the work. When tales of miners' hardships are segued by mournful country and bluegrass music (the real deal, not the polished Nashville country that's all over the radio), it combines for an effect that is very powerful.
Overall, the film works very well. The inherent drama in the story makes for a very compelling documentary. However, the end of the film is somewhat ambiguous, with the miners' demands being met, only for another strike to be called by the union the next year. I suppose this shows the tenuous balance that companies and unions fight each other to maintain, but it was somewhat of a confusing message after the initial strike had finally ended (due in large part to the murder of a striking miner). Regardless, the film was very good, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone (who does not run a power company).

Sicko

Michael Moore's documentary Sicko deals with the health care industry in America, and particularly how it compares to the systems of other first-world countries. I feel like Moore did a great job with this documentary in showing both the way health care systems work in other countries and the way America's health care system doesn't work. His confrontational style works better in this film than it did in Fahrenheit 9/11 when he made hefty accusations about President Bush. While his stance there alienated plenty of viewers, his stance here, that people should be cared for and should not go broke just because they get sick, is much easier to rally behind. In fact, Roger Friedman of Fox News, typically an antagonist of Moore's work, lauded the film as "brilliant and uplifting" in his review. When Michael Moore and Fox News agree on something, it's safe to assume that it fits into the category of a valence issue.
Moore uses juxtaposition to make most of his argument, by showing the failures of the American health care system to cover its citizens and then contrasting that with the relatively easy and inexpensive access to health care in nations like the U.K. and Canada. Moore's ultimate argument is that the United States should move to a system like the ones employed in these countries if it hopes to provide the best care to the most people.
I would be remiss in writing my assessment of this film if I didn't at least take a moment to clarify my beliefs on the issue at hand. Sicko is opposed mainly by those who prefer to keep the American health care system at status quo. Conversely, I agree with pretty much everything Moore said in this documentary. I don't believe that people's right to live healthily should depend on the kind of insurance or medical care they can afford. This merely reinforces the class discrepancies that America has worked so hard to move away from. Very few people will argue with the statement that everyone should have an equal opportunity to succeed in life, but a surprising number of people will go against that very ideal when they oppose a health care system that will help give that opportunity to everyone. If someone needs a surgery and can't afford it, he or she essentially has two options under the current American health care system: don't get the surgery and risk whatever that entails, or get the surgery and go into debt, ruining any financial plans he or she may have made. I don't believe that this is acceptable in any advanced country, particularly not in the "leader of the free world."
Okay, I'm climbing down from the soapbox. All that said, I really enjoyed this film. I think it speaks volumes about what we as a country can do better to help everyone. It also speaks volumes that the health care industry has been so opposed to the film. If the health care industry really cared about helping people, it would embrace some of the changes that Moore has suggested to insure that more people are, well, insured. Instead, because it is an industry, it cares chiefly about profits, which it fears this film could deflate. Overall, the reactions to this film are just as enlightening as the film itself.

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth deals with global warming and all of the problems that it can bring. Gore does a good job of presenting his views in a way that doesn't seem to be overtly political. Obviously, Gore is an excellent politician, having served as vice president for eight years, but this movie doesn't seem to be much of a political statement to me. Gore himself states that climate change is "not a political issue so much as a moral one."
Gore's main tactic in the movie is the use of logos. Gore's appeal is not emotional as much as it is logical. He offers lots of evidence for all of his claims, and scientists tend to recognize the film as highly accurate to the facts. All of the data that Gore uses to solidify his points add to the efficacy of his argument. It's difficult to argue with the mountain of evidence he presents, so his more shocking claims of the potential effects of global warming have to be taken seriously.
Of course, this brings me to Gore's use of pathos. While not as prevalent as his use of logos, Gore's appeal to the audience's emotions is important. When he talks about the potential consequences of not adjusting to deal with global warming, Gore is counting on his audience to be afraid of those consequences and to be willing to seek out an alternative, even if that means changing their lifestyles.
Gore's emotional appeal is also made powerful by his previous appeals to reason. Presumably, the audience will have already agreed with his previous claims that were based on logic, so they will be more likely to agree with his more emotional appeals. This creates a kind of situated ethos in Gore, who already has some credibility on the subject, having spoken about it at length for years. Gore essentially becomes an authority on global warming to the audience, and this allows him to make the claims that he does with the credibility he does.
Overall, I felt that this was a very well-made statement about global warming. It was interesting in that it didn't operate as a typical documentary, but really more of a filmed PowerPoint presentation. However, I feel like this was probably the best way Gore could have presented his argument, because it allowed him to simply run through facts and scenarios without having to use editorial tricks to make points. Gore's argument's strength is in its logic, so he didn't want anything to outweigh that logic. Coupled with his self-deprecating sense of humor (his joke about being the "former next president of the United States" still cracks me up), the presentation works wonderfully as a statement of both Gore's personality and his beliefs on global warming.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit 9/11 is a film by Michael Moore that was released in 2004. Among other claims, it includes the charge that George W. Bush's campaign essentially stole the 2000 election, that Bush was unprepared for 9/11, and that Bush and his top officials mislead the American public while pushing for war with Iraq.
The film has plenty of interesting rhetoric, some of which is a little controversial. For example, after the film's opening credits, the screen goes blank and the audience is left to hear audio recorded during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. It produces a stunning effect, even for someone who has heard the audio before. Dissociated with any visual cues, the audience is forced to conjure up images themselves when they hear the panicked audio. However, immediately after this isolated audio, Moore begins his charges against Bush's preparedness for the attacks. I personally felt like this was sort of a cheap trick to play to the audience's emotions. Obviously the attack was a catastrophic event that changed the course of American history, but Moore uses audio from the event to get the audience worked up, then attacks Bush. I feel like there was enough factual evidence in the movie to make people angry about Bush's handling of the attacks, and that this device was really unnecessary and probably drew more criticism to the film than was really necessary.
Speaking of the factual evidence, Moore has lots of it. He spends almost twenty minutes of the film documenting the Bush family's business ties to the Bin Laden family. It's an interesting point that raises questions about how much contact the families had prior to and following the attacks. More importantly, all of it is made using actual documents and facts, which I feel is more unilaterally effective than Moore's emotional appeals, because those tend to come off as cheap and tawdry. Much of the opposition to this film came from people who thought that Moore was kind of a bully, which honestly, I can understand. That shouldn't get in the way of the good points that he makes, but unfortunately, it does for some portions of the audience.
That's not to say that the film doesn't have sincerely powerful moments. At the end of the movie, Moore follows a mother whose son died in Iraq as she visits the White House for closure. She breaks down weeping, giving a face to some of the human suffering that has been a result of the war in Iraq. It's extremely touching, and is enough to get anyone to at least reconsider the war effort. Regardless of political affiliation, one must take this woman's pain seriously and recognize it as genuine. The fact that there are many more mothers who have lost children in the war only strengthens Moore's argument that war should be avoided unless it is absolutely necessary. Obviously Moore believes that the Iraq War is not necessary, and his arguments center around that. The effect of the emotional appeal at the end of the movie is likely conditional upon the political beliefs of each viewer, but in no way can the woman's pain be ignored.

Flow

This commercial was created by Gatorade in 2009. Its use of flow is interesting, because the flow of the commercial is directly tied to its music. There are no spoken parts except at the very end. Instead, the focus is on the combination of music and video to reach the audience. Because there is no verbal solicitation to buy the product, much of the commercial works implicitly. It has shots of athletes participating in their sports, and mixes obscure footage with famous footage (like Michael Jordan's shot to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 1989 NBA Playoffs and David Tyree's spectacular catch in Super Bowl XLII).
The video moves very quickly from shot to shot with the beat of the music. It is mostly aimed at catching the viewer's attention and bombardic them with athletic actions and achievements. Though none of the athletes are seen drinking Gatorade, there are shots of people slamming down Gatorade bottles inter-cut with the actual athletic shots. This combines to imply that drinking Gatorade will make the viewer more athletically-inclined. By showing shots of the best athletes in the world and associating them with Gatorade, the company is hoping that anyone hoping to undertake in any athletic endeavors will go to Gatorade for their thirst-quenching needs.
Overall, I love the way the music and video work together in this ad. They not only allow for the unique flow, but also set the tone that Gatorade wants: that of intensity. The music is intense, the visuals are intense, and Gatorade hopes that its product will also be seen as intense.

"America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" -Susan Sontag

For class, we had to read an essay called "America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" from Susan Sontag's book On Photography. The essay focuses on the effects of photographs on the perceived importance of their subjects. Sontag argues that photography has gradually evolved from depicting idealized images to idealizing depicted images. In other words, photography has gradually equalized all of the things it depicts so that beauty can be found in any image. Sontag cites Walt Whitman's work as evidence of an emerging trend in democratizing all aspects of art. Whitmanesque thinking applied towards photography contends that photographs that are not of inherently beautiful subjects are more meaningful, because the beauty in them must be searched for.
Immediately after presenting this argument, however, Sontag brings up the work of Diane Arbus, whose work Sontag describes as "anti-humanist." Sontag explains that Arbus' intent was to ignore beauty altogether and depict the strangeness that she saw as inherent in the world, an ideology in conflict with Whitman's humanist opinion of beauty being in everything. Sontag argues that Arbus' views do not necessarily clash with Whitman's, however, because they both "rule out a historical understanding of reality" by depicting things that are different from what is typically perceived of as "normal."
Sontag then goes into great detail about Arbus' work and method of photography. At one point, Sontag describes Arbus' ideology as viewing the photographer as a kind of "supertourist," only briefly visiting the world of the weird and not attempting to give it any context within the rest of society. Arbus seems to have focused more on the experience of the photographer than on the actual subject of the photograph. The photographs of "freaks," as Arbus called them, were meant to convey the experience of the photograph being taken and then get the audience to empathize with the photographer's foray into the sub-cultural world the photographs were taken in. This kind of "photographer as character" was meant to shock audiences and react against the perception of cultural normality.
If all of that sounds complicated, it is. Sontag's assessment of Arbus' work is comprehensive in scope. It is clear that Sontag knows Arbus' work well. It was definitely an interesting read, because it profiled a photographer who basically challenged the purpose of art. Arbus was reacting against the status quo in all senses: politically, culturally, artistically. I wouldn't say I agreed with all of Arbus' ideas. The presentation of the artist as the central point of an artistic work is fascinating but only works to certain degrees. Sontag noted that once people see things they aren't used to enough, they become desensitized. Similarly, people eventually become desensitized to the artist's process and accept any irregularities as relatively normal. Nonetheless, it was a thoroughly interesting essay that presented challenging ideas not just about photography, but on the nature and purpose of art as a whole.

Visual Rhetoric Analysis

Today in class, we learned how to analyze pictures for visual rhetoric. Then, we were assigned to find our own image and analyze the visual rhetoric present in that particular image. Naturally, I forgot about this until about half an hour ago (9:15), despite the assignment being due at 8:00. As you can imagine, I was pretty bummed. I mean, this was my first assignment in the class, and I totally missed the bus! In a fit of dejection, I decided to check the website of one of my favorite bands so that I could delay this already late assignment even further. To my immense surprise, they had just announced that over the past five days they had recorded an album and released it for free on the internet! Don't get me wrong, I was still pretty mad at myself for forgetting the assignment, but this made my evening so much better! With this prologue of sorts in mind, I'd like to direct you to my image:

Image from Bomb the Music Industry!'s tumblr page (image link here)

This image is certainly not an example of photojournalism. It visual rhetoric is not inherently obvious, because visual rhetoric makes an argument about something. Because the image does not depict any event or zeitgeist, its rhetoric is subtle. It was released two days ago as a hint that the band was recording an album, something not announced until today. But this photo also provides insight into the band's recording process and mindset during this time. So, what kind of visual rhetoric does it use to convey these things?

Subject Matter- The first things the eye is drawn to in the photograph are the instruments (a guitar and a saxophone, plus another guitar that is harder to see) and the case for some equipment. Further inspecting the photo, one finds that, in addition to the music equipment, there appear to be many things one would find in a home: a bed, drawers, a large record collection. So, one can infer that the recording (at least a portion of it) was done in one of the band member's rooms! (For someone familiar with the band, that is not particularly surprising.)

Focus- The image's focus on music equipment instead of the room that the equipment is in reveals that the band is more focused on the recording process than the normal order of day-to-day life. It shows that the band is willing to sacrifice the comfort of the home in order to make music, which is particularly inspiring.

Audience- This is one of the most important parts of considering the photo's visual rhetoric. The intended audience is close-readers of the band's website (like myself). It was intended to provide a hint that the band was recording something. So its meaning is much more valuable to their fans than to someone who casually sees the image on a student's blog post.

Medium- This image was released online, allowing followers of the band to see it quickly and extrapolate that the band was recording. Had it been a physical photo, it is unlikely that anyone outside of the band would have seen it.

Context- The image had no real context at the time. It was released on line with no accompanying description. Now, of course, it is obvious that the photo was taken during recording.

Action/Static Shot- The image's static nature implies that the equipment in the room has some sort of permanence. Nothing is moving, which means that the space will not be ready to revert back to a simple bedroom immediately. This may speak to the feelings associated with the recording process. In order to record and release an album in five days, a lot of work has to go into it over that period of time. During the recording, it may have felt like it was a permanent process.

And that is the visual rhetoric of a picture I found on Bomb the Music Industry!'s tumblr page! Sorry for the lateness. (For the record, the album is excellent.)

Introduction

Hi! I'm Sean! Uh, I'm originally from Austin, TX, but I grew up in Nashville, TN. Now I live in Austin again. So that's kind of cool. As far as hobbies or interests or whatever go, I play guitar and love the Tennessee Titans. I'm also a big fan of a bunch of bands no one's ever heard of. They rule. But seriously, I love music (which is kind of like saying I hate mean people, I know). It's a big part of my life, be it listening or playing. If it weren't next to impossible to make a living just playing music, that's what I'd want to do. But I'm much more practical than that, so I'm an RTF student. Ideally, I can get a job writing for TV or movies or something. So yeah, super practical.
Well, I think that's about it for an introduction. I look forward to getting to know people getting to know me. Hopefully that makes some kind of sense.