...And now for something completely different...or not.

Christian Metz was a french film theorist who was known for trying to make connections between cinema and Sigmund Freud's psychology as well as Lacan's mirror theory. The way he saw film was that it has become a language, because of the films that have told stories which have now become narrative conventions, we as individuals understand these conventions as primers if you will,  something that is presented on screen is instantly labelled in our heads, for example a shoe, on screen is always going to be just that,  an object we all know and understand, but in most other languages, there is a different word for that object. You could play someone form another country an English speaking film without subtitles and they could know the narrative of that story, basically enough, through images, the words are not important, in fact if you say "bird" to one person, it might drum up a totally different image in someone Else's head.  It has been suggested that there are only seven true plot lines in existence, so every movie, no matter, how original they seem to be, will somehow fall into one of those seven stories. Which in fact makes it easier for everyone to understand the supposed "language" of film.
It's interesting to note that , if you read a book, your imagination does the work, in film it possibly can't, in these terms film is a fixed medium, which maybe a reason why many adaptions from book to film do not go unscathed by criticism. Many people say that the more you move something further away from it's source material the more it suffers., but in some cases, is that because many people have that film in their heads because they've read the book, their ideas will not necessarily end up on screen , because only the perspective of those involved in the making of the film will maybe get to see what's in their heads put on screen.It's interesting that many films have to deviate from the original novel and to create a cinematic narrative, characters can be changed or removed entirely, large portions of the novel can end up being re arranged and replaced, expanded and reduced for a cinema audience, in fact to film a book page by page would be impossible, simply because linear time is not relevant in a novel, in a film you have only a certain amount of time to tell the story, or one of the seven.In fact when mining for new stories to adapt, some films simply take story threads from author's works Philip K. Dick and James Elroy are two prime examples. Usually  a movie based on a Dick story features the tag line "inspired by..." or "based on..."

Film can mean anything to us, we can choose to put as much meaning and information in it as we want to,if we choose to analyse a film, other than the technical and visual aspects we must consider the author themselves, what they maybe trying to say with their work and what context it is in, films are always a product of their time and what the people involved  have experienced in the world around them whist making it.Our interpretations may differ from everyone else;s but  a film maker in one way or another is communicating  and commenting on their environment, culture, political climate, other media and the general state of the world. the best examples of this is when different filmmakers cover similar themes in different time periods, through this you can see how different these films are, in their visual and technical states but also  in terms of mood , pacing, sound and themes. These two clips being a very appropriate example of how two completely different films can be made from the same source material in two different times.
I could literally go on about this subject for ages, i really feel that this the very core of theory of film and why it remains  a very subjective subject, that anyone can put them selves into whether they are the viewer or the author.Don't worry i will be revisiting this  topic at  a later date!. Don't fall asleep!

Places.

This is  a picture of a train travelling between Teignmouth and Dawlish, these towns are very significant for me, as they are the first towns that i lived in. They're dirty, rough, plagued by a failing tourist industry, yet as a child i felt differently. These were the places i made friends, the places i took my first tentative steps, the places i first fell over in the street, anyway you get the point. It has been said that "home" is a point of departure, for me that means, whatever i have seen, experienced  and lived through, this place will always be home, for all it's faults and it's fairly  non - descript setting it will always hold some  sort of significance.To me this is very definition of "place" somewhere that has a very specific meaning and historical significance to it. it represents my "roots" if you will. even so i do challenge the theory of "non place" in the sense that non places describes areas of transience i.e. ; airports, subways, shopping centres etc. but i almost feel like Dawlish train station is  part of my home, yes the urine soaked, grey, damp, station where crazy hobos dwell and train arrive when they want to, it's a strange idea that something like this is something that you can regard as "home".
It's interesting to think that  as people with actual homes that we retire to regularly, how a homeless person makes that choice or even if they can. I can't imagine how it must feel to think of your home, your point of departure , to where you are now, if you don't have one. De Certeau said " space is a practised place, what we do in it give it it's significance.". This is certainly true if you think about how, subways and stations are seemingly  non threatening during the day, they serve their said purpose, yet in the evening, the minute, you see people there that aren't usually there, passing through or hanging around in groups, the place seems to take on a more ominous atmosphere, simply because it's being used for something other than what it's meant for.


















Marc Auge talks about the theory of "super modernity" which i mentioned in an earlier blog, and maybe that gives an explanation as to why as a society our definitions of home are changing. i.e. the world is getting more populated, cities are getting bigger and stretching out wider. We're being slowly  consumed by cashpoints, b billboards, franchise restaurants, shopping centres etc, they are meeting the needs of the consumer in us all, "supply and demand" is very much part of the lexicon of modern living, we're willing to let those that supply take up more space, appropriate the land that we once knew as home to make space for more advertisements, more buildings that are there to facilitate the research that decides what we "need" as consumers. I always like to say  that as  the unique character that we imbue into the places we call home slowly fades away as office spaces grow larger, McDonald's spreads wider and shopping centres have more air conditioning we will lose our ability to know what "home " really is, the space that we call our gets smaller, our back door is slowly becoming everyone's back door.  Just like everyone else i let this happen, it shows that i saw a train station as part of my home, where my parents saw the villages they grew up in, the fields they played in homes, spot the difference?, What in the name of Bill Murray  are my children going to recognise as home?. It's a scary thought, this is why people hang around where they're not supposed to, because In a  world that is meant to meet their needs and give them what they want, they have no place to go. It's scary that you can watch a work of fiction like Blade Runner and what you see is in the city scenes is becoming a very strong reality.