Truman Show

There are so many things to comment on for this movie. I thought the Truman Show was a good movie, an interesting concept, and it was a different side of Jim Carrey. One wonders why he does not do more roles like this one.

The line that keeps buzzing around in my head is when Ed Harris says, “Cue the sun.” There is something so richly ironic about a television producer deciding to control an almighty force like the sun. Typically, Mother Nature is the one thing that human beings cannot control and they can only predict it to a certain degree.

I keep thinking about the issue of product placement. When Laura Linney made the pitch for Mococoa in the middle of a heated, emotional argument with Truman it was blatantly commercial. But a couple years ago there was a heated debate over a publisher who was starting a line of young adult fiction books were companies could pay to have a product placement. In other words the heroine (the books were marketed to girls) would use a certain brand of make-up and only that brand in the story. Whether or not this is ethical is still up for debate.

Christoph says we accept the reality of the world we’re presented. I think this is both unfortunate and true. I think if less people had accepted the President’s rhetoric about Iraq as the reality we lived in, and instead had asked some more questions, we might not be there at all.

Conceiving Ada

I have to say, I think this is my favorite film so far. I first encountered Tilda Swinton last semester when we watched parts of the film Orlando in the Woolf/Faulkner course. Somehow, she’s no less weird in this movie even though she’s not changing gender.

Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers about this film, specifically because I had a hard time understanding the technology being used. I understood that Ada had written the codes (right word) for what is considered the modern computer, but I don’t understand how Tilda Swinton was able to go back and time and talk to her through the computer screen. I especially don’t understand how her unborn child’s DNA was used, although I do understand that the memories and knowledge of Ada were somehow transplanted into the baby, to be discovered bit by bit as she grows up.
I also didn’t understand a couple sentences from the Kinder reading. She says, “Although Conceiving Ada and Teknolust are digital movies projected on a screen rather than interactive works, whose structure can be altered by users, they still help us conceptualize what is possible for new media technologies particularly concerning the gendering of agency” (171). Which type of media have its structure altered by users? Digital movies projected on screen, is that what we’re used to seeing? That is a typical movie? And what the heck does she mean by “gendering of agency?” That completely threw me.

As a woman I empathized and understood Ada’s feelings of being driven and feeling trapped. As a Lit student, the fact that she was Lord Byron’s illegitimate child only made things more interesting.

Can't believe how bad that movie was

In his essay, “Plato’s Pharmacy,” the deconstructionist Derrida breaks down the binaries surrounding Plato’s use of the Greek word Pharmakon. Derrida points out the slipperiness of language by illustrating how in The Phaedrus, Plato uses the word pharmakon to mean both “poison” and “remedy.” It is, perhaps, not by coincidence that in the film Johnny Mnemonic, the Asian company, responsible for so much of the society’s ills, is called Pharmakon. In the film, technology is the pharmakon: it is both the poison and the remedy. As we learn later in the film, the cure for the disease that plagued the people was always there, the company just realized that there was more money to be made treated people for the disease once they had it, instead of vaccinating them before they managed to get it. The dual nature of technology being illustrated is that while technology can kill, it can also heal.

The terrible acting in this film was fairly distracting, but one can see the opposing uses of technology at work through the film techniques. The concept of being able to use the human memory in the same way one uses a jump drive is fascinating. Yet, Johnny’s LSD-like flashes and his fear of imploding from carrying too much data are indicative of the Promethean dangers of technology. The lack of light, the futuristic costumes, the clean lines of Johnny’s appearance, all suggest a world taken over by technology and one that is very streamlined, very programmed, and very sterile.

Total Recall-totally hilarious

Although I could not make sense of the Rheingold reading, I did find some interesting things to observe about Total Recall, a movie which wasn’t as heinous as I imagined it would be. Actually, it was somewhat amusing.

I was struck by the use of technology in the beginning of the film to achieve the soothing and picaresque. Instead of living my a lake, Sharon Stone and Arnold Schwarzenegger can just hit a button and all of a sudden they are breakfasting in view of a lovely, natural lake setting. While in many of the films we’ve viewed so far technology is viewed as ethically questionable, this use seemed rather pleasant.

The use of technology becomes unsettling when Quaid goes to visit the Recall Memory Services. They promise a “perfect” vacation with their memory implant, telling Quaid that he can avoid all the pitfalls and inconveniences of a real-life vacation. My question is, though, why would you want to miss those inconveniences? No human experience is completely perfect and one of the best nights of my life was the night I got lost walking around Venice.

I notice this movie, despite its age, encapsulates some fairly universal themes, namely the struggle for power. There were two scenes I thought were interesting for this reason. The first is when Quaid gets to the station on Mars and there is a sudden attack by insurgents. This reminded me a great deal of the situation and instability in Iraq. The scene is in Cohagen’s office, when the camera pans in on the goldfish. He, the master, drops some food in their bowl and they come running (or swimming rather), completely under his control.

The other thing I was intrigued by was the struggle to tell the real from the unreal. I felt this was enforced in the movie through lighting, sound, and in vast, industrial looking scenery.

Bladerunner

The idea that the body is no longer a sanctuary is demonstrated in the film Bladerunner and in the article, “Cyborging the Body Politic.” The film demonstrates the evasive nature of science concerning the human body. Tyrell, the company portrayed in the film, created part human/part machine creatures and then left them to their own devices, forcing them to deal with their defects on their own. I particularly liked the quote from the Dery article on page 235: “We are entering a colonialist phase in our attitudes to the body, full of paternalistic notions that conceal a ruthless exploitation carried out for its own good.” The use of the term colonialist demonstrates a separation between the body from the mind and the emotions, as though the science we inflict on our bodies is not inflicted on ourselves but on some entity separate from our true self. I believe we are all cyborgs because as soon as we put anything in our bodies, slather cream on our faces, or poke holes through our skin, we are less human and more creation. People walk around with heart monitors in their chest, fake eyelashes on their eyes, and steel rods in their spines. Whether or not these make us machines is debateable, but they do make us less human. We could also consider ourselves cyborgs because of the mechanical actions we adopt. Like a robot, many of us simply go through the motions without really thinking or feeling, whether it’s taking a shower and getting ready for work or being an employee.

Tron: The creative spirit in other areas

I'm so not a sci-fi, person. The people that know me refer to me teasingly as a technical wizard.
I didn't have as much trouble following Tron as I did TXH-1138 and I'm almost reluctant to admit that I really enjoyed the lecture on Wednesday. I think the guest speaker had a lot to do with it because he was someone I could relate to. I have several friends who survived the dot com boom and I work closely with a couple of them on the volunteer organization I'm involved with here in DC and in Chicago. Check it out at www.onebrick.org The idea of the creative vs. the corporate really resonated with me because I see it at work in our organization and it's something that comes up all the time. At heart, we are a grassroots organization but in the last couple years we generated enough interest to attain the sponsorship of a corporation in upstate New York. They have brought a decidedly corporate attitude to our little garage shop organization. Then again, we weren't so little when they came to us. By the time we got their attention we were in three cities and had about 20,000 volunteers in the combined databases. So it's never a quick fix when someone proposes to spend $1,000 of our budget even though we have the money to spend. My friend and one of the co-founders is always telling us it's just easier to keep the budget skinny than it is to try and trim it at some later date.

As we've recruited and looked for people to take on administrative duties I notice most of the people who are interested in taking on these responsibilities come work in a corporate environment and/or hold MBA degrees. So even from our own people there is the pressure to spend money, institute structural changes, etc. that more closely resemble a corporation v. a nonprofit organization. What has also always interested me about the structure of our organization is that it runs, essentially, like a business and it lacks the undesireable attributes (disorganization, lack of funding, poor staffing, etc.) of the typical nonprofit. One of the things I thought of when Michael was talking about Google and Craigslist is that while these two organizations have managed to retain the creative spirit, the creative spirit essentially is the spirit of its top leaders and if so many organizations change over time, it is often due to change in leadership. Right now we still have the original founders at the helm but I wonder if our organization will be able to sustain its momentum if those three people are no longer able to be involved. My boyfriend worked for MBNA when it was one of the most profitable companies in the country. But despite its size, the energy and the direction came all from one man: Charlie Cauley the CEO and founder. When MBNA was bought out by Bank of America, Charlie retired and the company is no longer the same.

I know I've gone on a tangent, but I did want to get to Tron. During our talk on Wednesday I also wondered about how suitable the creative personality would have been in distributing this technology to the masses. Artists are creative, but not necessarily practical. Would we be able to buy a personal computer for $300 if it had been left up to just the artist?

THX-1138: Not my favorite Lucas attempt

I don't actually have anything very productive to say about this film, mostly because I couldn't follow the plot. I thought it was boring as hell and completely convoluted. What was it about anyway?
I think the most interesting part of the film for me was watching a very young Robert Duvall. I have not seen anything with him at this age.
I think the jist of the Dery article was that technology could easily escape us and escape our control. If this is correct, then one sees some of this in THX-1138. The scene where the machines seem to be taking out all the essence of Robert Duvall's character that makes him him and implanting devices so that they can monitor his brain and body was disturbing. What exactly were they implanting, anyway?
I was mostly interested in the concept of "thereness" in the Dery article. People throw around words like "cyberworld," but I realize I've never stopped to think about what that might mean. I mean, it's not a world, not in the sense that places have an essence and a location. You can't point to cyberworld on a map. And yet, like real places there is a real sense of place and community to the cyberworld. How can we "be" in a place that does not actually exist?
My one answer to that is that it's not our actual presence in a real life geographic location that gives a place a sense of "thereness," but it's our connection to other people. And goodness knows there is plenty of connecting to others online.