LINK
The other night I attended a concert at the Sound Academy for French electronic duo Justice. When I received the tickets in the mail a few months ago, I was hit with a disturbing sight:
MYSPACE TOUR
with
JUSTICE
Myspace Tour? Myspace??!? Suddenly going to see this band had taken on a whole new meaning, a whole new 'brand' image. Now it came into question: Does this make Myspace more trustworthy, or the band Justice less trustworthy? Why is this commodification so disturbing? Seeing as well that this show was all ages, I began to think of the expansion of this community that would be there. Instead of just older fans, there will be younger fans as well, and instead of just die-hard Justice fans, there will be casual fans that discovered them through the promotion of the show on Myspace.
At the show, when we entered the 19+ area there was a ton of Myspace merchandise left out for anyone to take home. There was dozens of buttons, Ipod holders, and t-shirts. The t-shirts were actually good quality, and had very cool designs, but because it said Myspace on them I knew that it would just be a way of advertising the website. All this was free though. It wasn't sold for profit, and even though it is for the purpose of advertising the website, a lot of work and creativity was put into the merchandise. The Myspace bandanas were adorned by half of the audience by the end of the night. Nobody was forced into taking the items, it was completely up to them.
So really, turning this show into a promotion for Myspace was also a way of promoting the band Justice. It was an equal opportunity, for a company to help an artist, and an artist to help a company. Justice made Myspace 'cool', and Myspace made Justice more popular. Unfortunately though, this ends up commodifying the band because the band is placing value on quantity. Maybe there would have still be more of a pure aura of the event if it were held at a smaller venue and wasn't promoted - but maybe then I wouldn't have gotten tickets.
The media and it's polarizing ways of discourse with the public can be quite confusing.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Larry David: His Fictional Life After Fiction
Curb Your Enthusiasm clip
Larry David's sitcom of his own life 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' has been a popular show on HBO and has now just completed it's 6th season.
The show started out as just an hour long documentary of the same name. Larry David's claim to fame is being the creator of 'Seinfeld', an even more popular show that has been in syndication since the early 1990's. What makes Curb Your Enthusiasm so interesting is that it is a TV show about Larry's life, but not in a fictional or non-fictional way.
The stories are written, but the dialogue is improvised. It's shot in a pseudo-documentary style but it's not at all reality television.
As it documents Larry's life, it shows his private life in the public world of television. It blurs the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, as Larry plays himself and everything but the written storylines is somewhat based on the facts of his life. Larry David engages with the mechanism of play here, as he has a "license to explore" his own life and himself as a character and human being. The show's humour is based mostly off of Larry's tactlessness and anal retentive attitude towards everything. He is at times cynical and stubborn, which all adds up to a hilarious depiction of how a person should not act. Because it is a staple of the show, we applaud his flaws and laugh at them whenever they arise. This is a perfect example of media as a mechanism of engagement to play. The rules of decency are broken repeatedly, and even though the show is fictional we assume that Larry David is actually like that yet he still has the arena to play and push these boundaries.
On a more personal note, whenever I've felt the need to say something I know is tactless, I've steered it into a joke by saying "I know I may sound like Larry David when I say this" before revealing the statement. This allows me to transcend seriousness and engage in my own arena of 'play'. I'm engaging with media, by referencing a TV show and claiming that my own actions are directly influenced by this article of media. Even though I am able to cross the boundaries though, I am firmly reclaiming the boundaries because I know that what I'm saying is wrong. When I think of the tactless thing I'm going to say, it reminds me of Larry David, because I know that it is wrong. Through the arena of play, and referencing Larry David, I can still show that I value tact and know that what I'm saying is wrong. What I'm saying is clearly a joke, and because it's play, I know that is wrong and will leave it in the 'arena of play'.
Another thing that makes the show interesting is the fact that it goes along with a lot of what Adorno talks about with the problems of 'free time'. Larry has this fictional show that has him living off of the successes of Seinfeld. In most episodes, he fills his days with leisurely activities and you often wonder what he does for work anymore. The interesting thing is that as you watch him live this comfortable and relaxed life, he is in reality working hard at making this TV show that you are watching. To sum it up, it takes a lot of work to appear as though you are relaxed and comfortable. This is the dark reality of leisure time that shows that time free of work does not exist and we are perpetually chained to labour despite not being punched in.
It's just like our own lives, where even in our free time we are perpetuating this idea of work and labour. We consume, like workers, we relax, like workers.
Curb Your Enthusiasm shows that by it's conception, but one wonders whether it is aware of this? Just like every other part of the media, it does need to make money. The sales of the DVDs that fuel the production of more seasons just proves that it Curb Your Enthusiasm is part of an industry and not just a clever piece of art that dissects our ideas of media and fiction. Yet we trust it by giving it our money and receiving more entertainment. By tuning in each week, we give it our trust, and when it makes us laugh it gains our trust. There is a back and forth discourse of trust, as we commit through our purchasing of DVDs and as it distributes more entertainment for us to enjoy. We are stuck in consuming the show, but we always know the exit is by changing the channel. We know that we have freedom in not purchasing and in not watching, but we are convinced by each episode to stay committed.
So now we wonder - would Larry David watch this show? If he was a fictional character, maybe he wouldn't, but as a real person he is self-absorbed enough to watch every episode. Since we are designed to believe that he is the real Larry David, then we follow and watch each episode without ever being disappointed. Not by the character, the real person, or the show.
Larry David's sitcom of his own life 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' has been a popular show on HBO and has now just completed it's 6th season.
The show started out as just an hour long documentary of the same name. Larry David's claim to fame is being the creator of 'Seinfeld', an even more popular show that has been in syndication since the early 1990's. What makes Curb Your Enthusiasm so interesting is that it is a TV show about Larry's life, but not in a fictional or non-fictional way.
The stories are written, but the dialogue is improvised. It's shot in a pseudo-documentary style but it's not at all reality television.
As it documents Larry's life, it shows his private life in the public world of television. It blurs the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, as Larry plays himself and everything but the written storylines is somewhat based on the facts of his life. Larry David engages with the mechanism of play here, as he has a "license to explore" his own life and himself as a character and human being. The show's humour is based mostly off of Larry's tactlessness and anal retentive attitude towards everything. He is at times cynical and stubborn, which all adds up to a hilarious depiction of how a person should not act. Because it is a staple of the show, we applaud his flaws and laugh at them whenever they arise. This is a perfect example of media as a mechanism of engagement to play. The rules of decency are broken repeatedly, and even though the show is fictional we assume that Larry David is actually like that yet he still has the arena to play and push these boundaries.
On a more personal note, whenever I've felt the need to say something I know is tactless, I've steered it into a joke by saying "I know I may sound like Larry David when I say this" before revealing the statement. This allows me to transcend seriousness and engage in my own arena of 'play'. I'm engaging with media, by referencing a TV show and claiming that my own actions are directly influenced by this article of media. Even though I am able to cross the boundaries though, I am firmly reclaiming the boundaries because I know that what I'm saying is wrong. When I think of the tactless thing I'm going to say, it reminds me of Larry David, because I know that it is wrong. Through the arena of play, and referencing Larry David, I can still show that I value tact and know that what I'm saying is wrong. What I'm saying is clearly a joke, and because it's play, I know that is wrong and will leave it in the 'arena of play'.
Another thing that makes the show interesting is the fact that it goes along with a lot of what Adorno talks about with the problems of 'free time'. Larry has this fictional show that has him living off of the successes of Seinfeld. In most episodes, he fills his days with leisurely activities and you often wonder what he does for work anymore. The interesting thing is that as you watch him live this comfortable and relaxed life, he is in reality working hard at making this TV show that you are watching. To sum it up, it takes a lot of work to appear as though you are relaxed and comfortable. This is the dark reality of leisure time that shows that time free of work does not exist and we are perpetually chained to labour despite not being punched in.
It's just like our own lives, where even in our free time we are perpetuating this idea of work and labour. We consume, like workers, we relax, like workers.
Curb Your Enthusiasm shows that by it's conception, but one wonders whether it is aware of this? Just like every other part of the media, it does need to make money. The sales of the DVDs that fuel the production of more seasons just proves that it Curb Your Enthusiasm is part of an industry and not just a clever piece of art that dissects our ideas of media and fiction. Yet we trust it by giving it our money and receiving more entertainment. By tuning in each week, we give it our trust, and when it makes us laugh it gains our trust. There is a back and forth discourse of trust, as we commit through our purchasing of DVDs and as it distributes more entertainment for us to enjoy. We are stuck in consuming the show, but we always know the exit is by changing the channel. We know that we have freedom in not purchasing and in not watching, but we are convinced by each episode to stay committed.
So now we wonder - would Larry David watch this show? If he was a fictional character, maybe he wouldn't, but as a real person he is self-absorbed enough to watch every episode. Since we are designed to believe that he is the real Larry David, then we follow and watch each episode without ever being disappointed. Not by the character, the real person, or the show.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
The American Version
Remake Trailer
Original Trailer
This past weekend Michael Haneke's film "Funny Games" was just released to North American theatres. His film is a psychological thriller that dissects violence in the media using post-modern tricks and aesthetics. What is interesting about this film though is that it is actually a remake. In 1997, Haneke released an Austrian version of "Funny Games" in German. The film was released in North America but with English subtitles. What Haneke has produced now in 2008 is an exact shot-for-shot remake with American actors and no subtitles.
What makes this remake so interesting is that it causes so many people to ask 'why?' Looking back at past remakes, they have all been for artistic purposes or for translation purposes. For instance, Gus Van Sant did a shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and what it produced was an experiment in filmmaking. Using different actors, in a different era, but trying to recreate the film exactly to it's original caused a completely different experience. As an experiment, it does elevate the artistic nature of the film to a more 'high culture status', as Herbert Marcuse would say for its motives are not based on technological rationality. Gus Van Sant did not want to remake Psycho solely to make money as it had already been a successful English language classic. What Van Sant probably knew from remaking the film was that audiences would be divided by the corruption of a sacred film, and that would produce a lack of revenue.
However, if you look at an example of a remake like The Grudge, where Takashi Shimizu remade his own film for North American audiences, it was clearly to make more money. As the film had been in Japanese, producer Sam Raimi (who is the director of the Spiderman films, which were adapations, but that's a whole other can of worms!) saw the original film and realized it's potential so contacted Shimizu and helped him make a version that Americans would watch. This was clearly to make more money, as it shows elements of technological rationality. As well, the remake had cut out scenes from the original, was this an experiment to see if the film would work in English? It seems hardly plausible when the original could be watched with English subtitles. There's no elevation of the artistic nature.
But what's wrong with subtitles you may ask? Friedrich Kittler's rants about print culture may bring to mind the same issues with sub-titles. The data flow of dialogue in the films "have to pass through the bottleneck of the signifier" (Kittler 12). The dialogue is already a coded flow of information, which then has to be coded further for English speaking audiences. What we get is a lack of the signified, although the film presents images of the signified. The dialogue becomes the signifier and requires decoding by the audiences. When emotions don't match the sentences, we wonder where the meaning is? What the meaning is? How can it be found?
Now with Haneke's film "Funny Games" in consideration, did he remake this film to overcome the extra layers of codification for English speaking audiences? His film is already deeply rooted in meanings and messages, so for the audience to miss out on dissecting the coded content of the film they would miss out half of its experience. This seems to create a sense that his motives are innocent, for his film is already controversial and abrasive to an excess that will not appeal to the mass market of moviegoers. His audience will end up being comprised mostly of people that are already fans of his work, as I know that is my main reasoning for seeing this film.
Is it impossible to rule out that maybe Haneke did recreate this film to make money? His new version stars celebrity actors like Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Michael Pitt. These are all established actors that have done critically acclaimed roles, but you cannot deny their fame and ability to draw audiences for that. The film will now be talked about in magazines like Entertainment Weekly, People, Rolling Stones, etc, whereas the original 1997 version would have only received media coverage in magazines that cater to more high cultured audiences.
Now this makes you think of Silverstone's explanation of media as the texture of experience and the ubiquity of it. Maybe Haneke feels as though his film needs to be seen by American audiences, because of it's strong messages on violence in the media. Maybe he realized that the only way to have more people see his film was to have his film engage with more forms of media. It does make more sense when considering that Haneke's film dissects violence in the media.
The avant-garde components of "Funny Games" do tamper with communication, as Marcuse had talked about. *SPOILER* At the end of the film, when you feel as though the good guys have fought back and possibly won, the main villain picks up a remote control and rewinds the film then manages to change the events so that they still remain on top. This break of the 4th wall is very avant-garde, as it breaks the communication between the audience and the film. The audience, who thought they were going to be finally rewarded for their endurance of some truly torturous scenes by the victory of the protagonists are betrayed in the most demented way. This type of scene is supposed to be abrasively frustrating, and it's this type of scene that reaffirms the avant-garde nature of Haneke's film. Remaking an avant-garde film then engages with some truly post-modern ideas of high and low cultured art.
Original Trailer
This past weekend Michael Haneke's film "Funny Games" was just released to North American theatres. His film is a psychological thriller that dissects violence in the media using post-modern tricks and aesthetics. What is interesting about this film though is that it is actually a remake. In 1997, Haneke released an Austrian version of "Funny Games" in German. The film was released in North America but with English subtitles. What Haneke has produced now in 2008 is an exact shot-for-shot remake with American actors and no subtitles.
What makes this remake so interesting is that it causes so many people to ask 'why?' Looking back at past remakes, they have all been for artistic purposes or for translation purposes. For instance, Gus Van Sant did a shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and what it produced was an experiment in filmmaking. Using different actors, in a different era, but trying to recreate the film exactly to it's original caused a completely different experience. As an experiment, it does elevate the artistic nature of the film to a more 'high culture status', as Herbert Marcuse would say for its motives are not based on technological rationality. Gus Van Sant did not want to remake Psycho solely to make money as it had already been a successful English language classic. What Van Sant probably knew from remaking the film was that audiences would be divided by the corruption of a sacred film, and that would produce a lack of revenue.
However, if you look at an example of a remake like The Grudge, where Takashi Shimizu remade his own film for North American audiences, it was clearly to make more money. As the film had been in Japanese, producer Sam Raimi (who is the director of the Spiderman films, which were adapations, but that's a whole other can of worms!) saw the original film and realized it's potential so contacted Shimizu and helped him make a version that Americans would watch. This was clearly to make more money, as it shows elements of technological rationality. As well, the remake had cut out scenes from the original, was this an experiment to see if the film would work in English? It seems hardly plausible when the original could be watched with English subtitles. There's no elevation of the artistic nature.
But what's wrong with subtitles you may ask? Friedrich Kittler's rants about print culture may bring to mind the same issues with sub-titles. The data flow of dialogue in the films "have to pass through the bottleneck of the signifier" (Kittler 12). The dialogue is already a coded flow of information, which then has to be coded further for English speaking audiences. What we get is a lack of the signified, although the film presents images of the signified. The dialogue becomes the signifier and requires decoding by the audiences. When emotions don't match the sentences, we wonder where the meaning is? What the meaning is? How can it be found?
Now with Haneke's film "Funny Games" in consideration, did he remake this film to overcome the extra layers of codification for English speaking audiences? His film is already deeply rooted in meanings and messages, so for the audience to miss out on dissecting the coded content of the film they would miss out half of its experience. This seems to create a sense that his motives are innocent, for his film is already controversial and abrasive to an excess that will not appeal to the mass market of moviegoers. His audience will end up being comprised mostly of people that are already fans of his work, as I know that is my main reasoning for seeing this film.
Is it impossible to rule out that maybe Haneke did recreate this film to make money? His new version stars celebrity actors like Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Michael Pitt. These are all established actors that have done critically acclaimed roles, but you cannot deny their fame and ability to draw audiences for that. The film will now be talked about in magazines like Entertainment Weekly, People, Rolling Stones, etc, whereas the original 1997 version would have only received media coverage in magazines that cater to more high cultured audiences.
Now this makes you think of Silverstone's explanation of media as the texture of experience and the ubiquity of it. Maybe Haneke feels as though his film needs to be seen by American audiences, because of it's strong messages on violence in the media. Maybe he realized that the only way to have more people see his film was to have his film engage with more forms of media. It does make more sense when considering that Haneke's film dissects violence in the media.
The avant-garde components of "Funny Games" do tamper with communication, as Marcuse had talked about. *SPOILER* At the end of the film, when you feel as though the good guys have fought back and possibly won, the main villain picks up a remote control and rewinds the film then manages to change the events so that they still remain on top. This break of the 4th wall is very avant-garde, as it breaks the communication between the audience and the film. The audience, who thought they were going to be finally rewarded for their endurance of some truly torturous scenes by the victory of the protagonists are betrayed in the most demented way. This type of scene is supposed to be abrasively frustrating, and it's this type of scene that reaffirms the avant-garde nature of Haneke's film. Remaking an avant-garde film then engages with some truly post-modern ideas of high and low cultured art.
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