http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf5svfS_bnc

"The Wizard of Oz (the film, not the book, which I didn't read as a child) was my very first literary influence. More than that: I remember that when the possibility of going to school in England ws metioned, it felt as exciting as any voyage beyond rainbows."

- Salmon Rushdie

Even though it has been a long time since I've seen the film, the story (which almost everybody in the world is familiar with) centers around a girl being whisked away to a surreal, fantastically unfamiliar world in which she and several other characters all attempt to chase after their various goals. It is doubtless then that Rushdie, the famous novelist in exile, as both a child and as an adult, finds deep significance in the film's theme of finding maturity amidst cultural alienation, in spite of (and as a result of) a lack of suitable parental influence from which to draw guidance. Of the video Rushdie would point out that the film's production as a staged play by Indian schoolchildren furthers its theme of fantastic cultural juxtaposition, that the children involved must pretend to be traveling through a word created by by a culture which is already somewhat alien for the express purpose of looking strange and magical. The international spreading of such worlds which exist only in the collective cultural imagination can perhaps be seen as the ultimate expression of globalism. The Children may as a result see the world in which Oz was created as a sort of Oz in and of itself, much as a young Rushdie saw England.

"The Wizard of Oz is a film whose driving force is the inadequacy of adults, even of good adults, and how the weakness of grown-ups forces children to take control of their own destinies and so, ironically, grow up themselves."

The Wizard of Oz is a film which on many levels is about the following of goals and a fantastic quest for guidance. The characters spend the entire time searching for a mystical wizard who supposedly will help them all reach their own form of self actualization when in reality his ability to give said guidance is a myth perpetrated by varying members of Oz, in reality all the Wizard does is point out that people already are what they want to be. The interesting thing about this quote is that it also says that no matter how well we learn from our life experiences we are all destined to be inadequate parents in an eternally self perpetrating cycle.

"Orphans arrive, hoping that the ruby slippers might transport them back through time as well as space..."

Finally, Rushdie would assert that to a certain degree, the fact that the play has been reproduced to a point that it has become a children's production in an Indian school is a result of that cycle at work. If the fact that the inadequacy of parents contributes more than anything to the maturity of children is an inherency of the human condition than it must also be so that whenever a message that appears to work as a good bit of guidance enters itself into the collective consciousness of a generation it will be repeated almost to the point of redundancy, becoming yet another part of this cycle.

http://www.funnyphotos.net.au/images/mona-lisa-on-the-simpsons1.jpg

Frederic Jameson would have much to say on the subject of the above image in which the Mona Lisa is drawn as though a character of The Simpsons with the now culturally ubiquitous town of Springfield serving as the backdrop. There is no doubt that the image (and indeed the show) fit into the postmodern canon, although how exactly it goes about doing that would be the topic of a lengthy discussion on what constitutes postmodern as opposed to modern or any art. Jameson would probably start by speaking to the background from which the movement emerged.

“the last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by sense of the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art, or social class; the “crisis” of Leninism, social democracy, or the welfare state, etc., etc.) Taken together, all of these perhaps constitute what is increasingly called postmodernism.”

According to Jameson, postmodernism is in many ways characterized by an underlying sense of the end being nigh. The world in which postmodernism, as opposed to modernism, has risen to prominence is one in which the downfall of man feels almost a tangible blip over the horizon and in many ways both acts as a criticism of and signifies the end of many facets of human achievement, including art.

“the enumeration of what follows, then, at once becomes empirical, chaotic, and heterogenous: Andy Warhol and pop art, but also photorealism, and beyond it, the “new expressionism”, the moemnt, in music, of John Cage, but also the synthesis of “classical” and “popular” styles found in composers like Phil Glass and Terry Riley, and also punk and new wave rock”

Perhaps, then, the superimposition of popular culture into classical themes such as this one speaks to postmodern playfulness, while the image's underlying humor can be seen as an expression of postmodernism's both reflective and pointedly cynical and stance on human development, what Jameson refers to as “inverted millenarianism.”

“Postmodernism in architecture will then logically enough state itself as a kind of aesthetic populism, as the very title of Venturi's influential manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas, suggests. However we may ultimately wish to evaluate this populist rhetoric, it has at leat the merit of drawing our attention to one fundamental feature of all the postmodernisms enumerated above: namely, the effacement in them of the older (essentially high-modernist) frontier between high culture and so-called mass commercial culture, and the emergence of new kinds of texts infused with the forms, categories, and contents of that very culture industry so passionately denounced by all the ideologues of the modern”

The image is also perhaps an example of postmodernism's destruction of the boundaries between high culture and commercial culture, this image going so far as to satirize said rift. The image and The Simpsons could be placed within either category of high or commercial culture, and in doing so inspires the new reading of the texts “denounced by all the ideologues of the modern.”

“One of the concerns frequently aroused by periodizing hypotheses is that these tend to obliterate difference and to project an idea of the historical period as massive homogeneity (bounded on either side by inexplicable chronological metamorphoses and punctuation marks). This is, however, precisely why it seems to me essential to grasp postmodernism not as a style but rather as a cultural dominant: a conception which allows for the presence and coexistence of a range of very different, yet subordinate, features.”A postmodern society is one in which all forms of culture are subjected to a self-perpetrating system by which every manufactured piece of art, regardless of intent or underlying meaning, even if that meaning is to distance itself from this very cycle, is swallowed into a vast, all encompassing cultural catalogue which absorbs and homogenizes the work. Everything produced within a postmodern society is a product, and as such is an extension of the progressively capitalistic western society from which it originated. Postmodern society is therefore society lacking perspective from which to judge itself. The image of the Mona Lisa is in this sense both a parody of postmodernism and a facet of the same dominant culture.

Jack Baur's entire life takes place in a fictional world similar to our own in every way, with the small difference that an any given point the entire place could explode into nothingness. Jack runs through life bouncing from one various potential world-ending crises to the next, and deals handles them with an all-or-nothing modus operandi in the most tension-creating way a team of screenwriters can conceive.

The paranoia and sense of constant threat which appears to pervade every hour of Mr. Baur's life, and the methods he employs to deal with said threats would appear to Freud to be the product of fears and desires originally manifested during an early stage of Baur's childhood development. Freud believed that all neurotic adult behavior can be traced back to childhood episodes and that such behavior is essentially an expression of fears and anxieties developed during that period.

An empirical relationship has exists between adult traits and common events during childhood and infancy. It is possible that Baur is the subject of a series degree of sublimation, that is to say his initial sexual impulses have been over time re-channeled by society into the ostensibly more useful medium of counter-terrorism and it is for this reason that he strives to save the world at any cost.

It may be that Baur obtained a fixation at the anal stage. Freud would possibly explain Jack's methodology for dealing with his superiors, everybody he believes to be on the wrong side, and people who stand in his way as the result of an anal expulsive character developed during the anal stage of his development. The anal stage occurs immediately after the oral stage. Beginning during potty training, and characterized by the subsequent shift in the primary erogenous zone from the mouth to the anus, it is during this phase that a conflict develops between the part of the child that wants to expel bodily waste and the newly present societal and parental pressure to control said desire. Children generally deal with this pressure in two ways. Either they outwardly rebel against their parents by expelling said waste particularly inconveniently, or they retain it in a move of passive-aggression. Children who choose the former, which probably describes Jack Baur, are characterized by recklessness, carelessness, and defiance, which quite accurately describes Jack Baur's particular idiom, as well as messy. Children who choose the latter tend to be the opposite.

However, Jack's methodology and masculinity are most probably explainable by fixation at the phallic phase. The phallic stage is characterized by the shifting of the primary erogenous zone from the anus to the genitals. According to Freud, during this phase as a child becomes aware of his genitals said child's instinctual love for his mother transitions to sexual love. He begins to see his father as an object standing in the way of his mother's affection, and as a result begins feeling envious of and aggressive towards his father. More so than aggression and envy, however, the child is afraid that the father will strike back and develops castration anxiety. As his castration anxiety greatly eclipses his desire for his mother, he represses this desire. Eventually, he learns to express this repressed desire vicariously through the father, which results in the child attempting to emulate and later identify with the father. Individuals who develop a fixation during this phase are characterized by recklessness, self-assurance, confidence and excessive narcissism. Fixation during this phase most accurately explains Jack Baur's masculinity as well as the manner in which he deals with objects that stand in his way.

Jurgen Habermas's “public sphere,” as defined in his essay The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, consists of a zone outside the immediate control of any governing body characterized by rational political discourse between subjects of a public which emerged as a reaction to the late 18^th century's polarized political culture, in which one portion of society attempted to subjugate the other by overpowering it. The “public sphere” emerged as a reaction to the polarized “representational culture” by providing the public with a forum in which criticism could be formed and directed towards the ruling classes and in doing so provided a countermand to said classes.

In essence, the public sphere's purpose can be seen as something which "mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer of public opinion, accords with the principle of the public sphere- that principal of public information which once had to be fought for against the arcane policies of monarchies and which since that time has made possible the democratic control of state activities.”

“Though mere opinions (cultural assumptions, normative attitudes, collective prejudices and values) seem to persist unchanged in their natural form as a kind of sediment of history, public opinion can by definition only come into existence when a reasoning public is presupposed.”

Habermas argues that the while individuals have and will always harbor critical notions towards those in charge, it was not until the emergence of a public sphere that these notions would enter into the collective opinion of any body large enough to carry influence. By this logic, the development of a public sphere was essential to and possibly a major factor in the development of democratic society in the western world.

Habermas also believes that the commercialization of mass media, which he believes transformed democratic culture into consumerist culture, and the development of socialist governments and socialist government institutions, which blurred the line between state and society, led to the transformation of the public sphere into something more akin to a zone in which members of the public argue over the distribution of government sanctioned wealth as opposed to a realm of genuine political debate.

Habermas would probably look at Ghosts of Rwanda and similar documentaries as the development of a new public sphere. Habermas speaks of the public sphere in terms of its effect on Great Britain and the French Revolution, but in an increasingly globalized world the advent of new technologies which advance the spread of information and communication across groups of people who would normally never be in contact films such as Ghosts of Rwanda exist as testimony to a sort of emerging global public sphere in which political criticism can be made the subject of universal debate.

“Only when the exercise of political control is effectively subordinated to the democratic demand that information be accessible to the public does the political public sphere win an institutionalized influence over the government through the instrument of law-making bodies.”

The documentary about the genocide in Rwanda exists not as a commercialized piece of mass media but as a piece of information designed to increase awareness of an event which would have otherwise gone undocumented and therefore to inspire rational political debate. The political situation in place in Rwanda as documented by the film bears much common ground with the oppressive pre-public sphere society described in Habermas's essay. The film Ghosts of Rwanda, in making the world at large aware of the situation, could aid the development of the vital critical element necessary to change the situation and the global public sphere could aid the development of a local public sphere.

Firstly, it should be stated that in my short twenty one years I have managed to rack up a relative abundance of life experiences, but among those I cannot count having ever seen more than a single episode of Law and Order, as such I may not carry the required level of certification for this post.

The title “Law and Order” itself implies a lot about the defining ideology of both the show and the viewers that watch it (it isn't called “Crime and Disorder”). The show is presented as a window into how the system ensures that everybody adhere to a basic set of socially accepted principals and rules of conduct at a base level. People who watch the show do so on some level because they agree with this code, however the show is not actually about the difference between right and wrong but the procedure involved with ensuring everybody who begs to differ from that code gets their just desserts.

While the show is told from the perspective of those who enforce the law in its various stages, the viewer retains the role of “television viewer” and thus the social identity of the observer at the 'moment of decoding.' “Television viewer” is probably in itself an entire demographic at this point. Because, as Stuart Hall mentions, the show is created by many different people subscribing to many different ideologies and, at its level of consumption, is received by only one person, the message taken by the consumer at the 'moment of decoding' is often either a reconstructed version of the original message or even something completely different from the message which was originally intended. The medium of television often differs from other media in that it requires a large number of people to progress from initial conception to the television screen and therefore has the potential to be far more ambiguous in terms of the message sent out than media produced by a single person or a handful of people. This often has the effect of creating a message which panders more to a dominant ideology and which, when re-constructed by the consumer, assumes the ideology particular to that particular viewer's particular vision of whatever the dominant ideology is, varying by demographic and personal taste.

Hall states that “certain codes may, of course, be so widely distributed in a specific language, community, or culture, and be learned at such an early age, that they appear not to be constructed- the effect of an articulation between sign and referent- but to be naturally given. Simple visual signs appear to be given a 'near universality' in this sense, though evidence remains that even apparently 'natural' codes are culture-specific” (511). Police/legal procedural shows are not a new phenomenon and those who create them probably give them much thought- at the moment of encoding- to how the show is interpreted, but not to how that interpretation reflects on the culture performing the interpretation. In order for a show to be successful it must maintain a large enough viewing base to either garner money from advertising or carry a strong enough reputation that people are wiling to pay to see it. For this reason viewers of such a widely successful show such as “Law and Order” usually take two different readings of a viewing: the one in which the dominant message of 'Law and Order' is accepted wholly, or the aforementioned one in which it is accepted partially, with the viewer placing his own personal vision of the dominant ideology on top of the one put forth by the show, usually dictated by demographic or personal preference. People who reject outright whatever message the show puts forth probably will not watch it, but these people must be in a minority in order to account for the show's success.

Dominant ideology is not therefore, in terms of the larger cultural picture, determined or perpetrated at the 'moment of encoding' by the creators of television-based media but at the moment of reconstruction by the individual consumer. Hall states that “Traditionally, mass-communication research has conceptualised the process of communication in terms of a circulation circuit or loop. This model has been criticised for its linearity sender/message/receiver for its concentration on the level of message exchange and for the absence of a structured conception of the different moments as a complex structure of relations. But it is also possible (and useful) to think of this process in terms of a structure produced and sustained through the articulation of linked but distinctive moments- production, circulation, distribution, consumption, reproduction. This would be to think of the process as a 'complex structure in dominance...'” (508.) Law and Order is therefore part of a complex cycle through which dominant ideology is refreshed and re-interpreted at the moment of decoding and then re-produced at the moment of encoding.

http://www.zoom-in.com/media/graphics/blog/content/soprano_poster_season6B.jpg

Barthes would respond to this image from CNN by disassembling it into two categories: that which is actually in the picture and the myth which arises from examining the picture. “Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appreciation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things. A tree is a tree. Yes, of course. But a tree as expressed by Minou Drouet is no longer quite a tree, it is a tree which is decorated, adapted to a certain type of consummation, laden with literary self-indulgence, revolt, images, in short with a type of social usage which is added to pure matter.” Barthes would say that the image has speech, says something, isn't just a collection of objects and people framed from a particular vantage that all happened to be in the same place at the same time. The mere fact that the image was taken from CNN asserts this. It was most likely used to further illustrate events described within an article which, without the image, would have said far less.

It is possible to deduce the image's meaning by examining various cultural signifiers that existing therein. Principally, we have an Iraqi flag painted on to what remains of a recently destroyed wall. An American soldier peeks around the corner of the section of wall over a large automatic firearm. Beyond him there is rubble and what appears to be some kind of guard tower, abandoned. Further still there is a road with a single individual standing on it, and beyond that another wall. The denotative code here has to do with what the scene says to Westerners exposed to the Iraq war. Regardless of one's opinion of that war, several aspects of the image say the same thing. The photograph is definitely a view of the Middle East as seen through the photographic lens of the West, not the other way around. The lone soldier finds himself standing in something of a mess. Destruction is a major theme here, as is confusion. The soldier appears to have poked his head around one destroyed wall only to be confronted by another wall. There are no enemies in sight, just an enormous mess. The linguistic code here is quite interesting: the only text is the Soldier's name on his helmet. Unlike in most war photos the soldier is not anonymous, but rather the most familiar looking part of the frame. The other text is the writing which is part of the Iraqi flag; a national icon but incomprehensible to one who does not speak the language and has no prior knowledge of the country.

Barthes asserts that myth is primarily a semiological system. He also states that within any semiological system exists a relationship between a signifier and a signified. What exists in this image is a relationship between the aspects of the image itself and the culture which interprets them, which led to the creation of the image itself. However it is not so simple as that. “Take a bunch of roses: I use it to signify my passion. Do we have here, then, only a signifier and a signified, the roses and my passion? Not even that: to put it accurately, there are here only 'passionified' roses. But on the plane of analysis, we do have three terms; for these roses weighted with passion perfectly and correctly allow themselves to be decomposed into roses and passion: the former and the latter existed before uniting and forming this third object, which is the sign. It is as true to say that on the plane of experience I cannot dissociate the roses from the message they carry, as to say that on the plane of analysis I cannot confuse the roses as signifier and the roses as sign: the signifier is empty, the sign is full, it is a meaning.” The same applies to the image here. The image is essentially as mentioned above just a collection of objects and people viewed from a particular angle which all happened to be in the same place at the same time long enough for a photographer to capture it. However, the purpose of capturing the image exists within the image but also existed before the image. Like the roses, the image can be separated into the image of the soldier itself and its cultural connotations. The image and its meaning are at the same time inseparable, because in many ways the image is its meaning, and certainly would not exist without it.

In his essay Rhetoric of the Image Roland Barthes states that only images from advertisements will be studied, “because in advertising the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentional.” Images from advertisements present an interesting study because all of the image's subtle language has not only been placed there on purpose, but has been put there with mathematical precision designed specifically to elicit reaction from potential consumers. This is an aspect of advertising which everybody is aware of on some level but which people do not necessarily consider to the degree that it actually exists. Literally every single part of an advertisement is designed to further the thought the ad is trying to instil. In visual ads such as the printed one for The Sopranos, the denotative and connotative codes are inextricably linked. “The linguistic message can be readily separated from the other two, but since the latter share the same (iconic) substance, to what extent have we the right to separate them? It is certain that the distinction between the two iconic messages is not made spontaneously in ordinary reading: the viewer of the image receives at one and the same time the perceptual message and the cultural message” (36). This is especially true of ads for entertainment which exists within a visual medium such as television. It is sometimes true that icons of pop culture become so ingrained in society's collective conscious that they become signs for themselves; in this particular ad Tony Soprano is a sign for Tony Soprano.

Upon closer examination one can dissect the image into the various messages it puts across. The ad's denotative code consists of the image of Tony Soprano, a suit wearing male pattern baldness sufferer, looking both contemplative and suspect while the Statue of Liberty and the sun's reflection on the Hudson are visible over his left shoulder. Some geese can be seen just over his right. In terms of connotative code the expression on Mr. Soprano's face implies shady dealings and a cold, calculating nature. His suit implies power, success: this character's aforementioned shady dealings have been prosperous. The statue and the geese speak of immigration, the cultural melting pot of New York City, as well as opportunity and of a slightly warped interpretation of the 'American Dream.' The monochromatic color scheme implies drama, as well as the contrast between good and evil. It is unclear which side Tony chooses but his eyes are looking away from the source of light in the image. The cloudy skies show the beginnings of a storm and appear to reflect whatever Tony is brooding on in a full blown pathetic fallacy. There is little text on the page apart from large black letters which say “The Final Episodes,” echoing the ad's epic tone, broadcast dates, and the only part of the image not printed in black and white, text reading “Made in America.” The double entendre here fortifies the slightly corrupt take on the 'American Dream' and ads a touch of dark humor. It is also probably worth noting that nowhere on the ad does the phrase “The Sopranos” appear. It may be that James Gandolfini's character is ingrained enough into the collective pop culture woodwork that at this point no introduction is required, but it certainly signifies that the ad is not aimed at people who have never heard of The Sopranos before (such people probably exist), and implies that the final episodes will not be anything new, implying rather that what the happy viewer already knows, loves, and expects from the show will come to a dramatic close.

Barthes also mentions how the ad he discusses, an ad for Panzani brand food products, attempts to emphasize the signs which represent Italy. “A second sign is more or less equally evident; its signifier is the bringing together of the tomato, the pepper and the tricoloured hues of the poster; its signified is Italy or rather Italianicity. (34)” Even more interestingly, Barth points out that these things do not establish actual “Italianicity,” but one as defined by an international vision (the ad is French) of what Italianicity might mean, and a vision based largely on tourist stereotypes at that. Barthes then mentions that even the name itself is designed to implant thoughts of Italy in a non-italian consumer base, as the name Panzani would not actually stand out amongst Italian consumers. “An Italian would barely perceive the connotation of the name, no more probably than he would the Italianicity of tomato and pepper.” (34) This is interesting when applied within the context of the Sopranos ad. Just as the Panzani ad attempts to convey a sense of Italian-ness, the Sopranos ad attempts to convey a sense of both Italian-ness and American-ness. Just as the name Panzani would not stand out amongst Italian consumers, neither would “The Sopranos.” The name is similarly tailored to evoke thoughts of Italian-ness amongst international consumers. The Statue of Liberty similarly conveys Americana, New York City, and the cultural hodgepodge therein. An Italian family Family in New York City combined with the image of James Gandolfini evokes at least in terms of American entertainment images of The Sopranos.

Two Quotes from The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction:

“...for the first time – and this is the effect of the film – man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.”

“Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.”

The novelty (or perhaps contrivance) of The Blair Witch Project can essentially be likened to its unique use of perspective. The first of the two quotes above from Walter Benjamin's essay places the reception and thus interpretation of art onto the perspective from which the recipient views the piece in question. In a live performance, the essence of Macbeth is inseparable from that of the actor who merely portrays him. With the advent of film as a pervasive form of mass culture the camera forms a sort of mediator between the performance and the audience: much of the meaning of the events transcribed on screen is dictated by the camera. In doing so a sort of self-conscious detachment is created, alienating many of the visceral elements of watching a film that arise from experiencing a situation first hand, and effectively altering what Benjamin refers to as the 'aura' of the performance.

This, however, is the nature of film in general. In the second quote Benjamin compares film to painting as much as to live performance. As with painting, another art in which a mediator exists between artist and consumer, a filmmaker generally tends not to replicate reality exactly nor obfuscate it completely, but rather to create a representative version which may or may not speak to deeper, more personal truths, either about the artist or about the human condition, or is at least entertaining. Where the two mediums differ is that painters are aware of this divide and actively employ it as a part of their trade. On the other hand, filmmakers arrive at this place by attempting to come as close to reality as possible, or by filtering reality as recorded by the tools of their trade to their own specific vision. As such, film can in many ways be seen as the art of channeling reality. Thus, to a modern audience film would appear the more relevant medium.

Where The Blair Witch Project comes into all of this is that it attempts to remove, at least partially, this mediator between the audience and the performance. Ironically, it goes about achieving this by making the audience aware of the camera's presence. Most films are shot and edited to be viewed as though the camera weren't there, giving the audience a sort of god's perspective. This enables the viewers to witness all of the proceedings effectively but unrealistically, as though looking through a portal into an alternate universe. Blair Witch counters all that by being as self-conscious as possible. The camera becomes a sort of silent fourth character carried along by the actors and actively telling the story to the audience, making the experience of watching the film more akin to the experience of being told a story by an actor in a live performance and resurrecting some of the aura that Benjamin is referring to. This worked perfectly, so well that upon watching the film many viewers expressed feeling cheated, as though they had been convinced something had happened which hadn't. This may of course have had a lot to do with the advertising campaign, which I believe for awhile actually claimed Blair Witch comprised of actual recovered footage.