{"id":113,"date":"2005-10-24T14:54:59","date_gmt":"2005-10-24T18:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/10\/24\/oh-no-moving-images-and-other-thoughts-on-media-in-flux\/"},"modified":"2005-10-24T14:54:59","modified_gmt":"2005-10-24T18:54:59","slug":"oh-no-moving-images-and-other-thoughts-on-media-in-flux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/10\/24\/oh-no-moving-images-and-other-thoughts-on-media-in-flux\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh no! Moving images and other thoughts on media in flux"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I was your age, I walked twelve miles wearing no shoes through six feet of snow.  And so follows the older generation’s disappointment in and fear of youth and new ways of doing things.  While reading Walter Benjamin, I kept in mind the context of his article—written in 1936—and the times’ apprehension about new media and the changes it would usher in.  In his discussion of how an appropriate distance is lost between art and viewer when media becomes transportable (or statically containing movement), I was reminded of current debates about media use on the Internet; for example, the music industry’s suing a twelve year old girl for downloading music, and a writer’s association is accusing Google of massive copyright infringement.  For Benjamin and I’d say for the organizations of our time who believe they are threatened by technological advance, it seems as though there’s a lot of oversight and jumping to conclusions; in his discussion of how the camera changed the viewers’ position, Benjamin says that the viewer will no longer identify with the stage actor and instead connects only with a machine, the camera.   What Benjamin ignores is the artist behind the camera; yes, the audience may only see the actor on a screen, but the audience takes part in a holistic piece of art put together by the filmmaker—the director.  As a portrayal of reality, film is admittedly fragmented, with cuts taken here, effects created out of order and inserted back into film, and yes, the camera has many angles to choose from, which is why a camera offers more dimension than say static art.  <\/span><\/p>\n

            Elsewhere, Benjamin notes the quality of culture in which film is a dominant art form.  He says that the film audience is in the position of critic, but is an “absent-minded” one due to film’s rapid movement of images.  We who watch become immersed by the illusions and cannot stop to think about what we’re watching, and oh no, the powers that be will control our minds with it.  Well, okay, commercials and pop-up ads are behind huge sales in our distracted society, but it is rather ridiculous to blame violence and inhumanity on a means of expression, whether it be film, text, or sound—there’s as much negativity that one can find when viewing or listening to today’s web page as one can find in a literal reading of the Bible.  My last thought on the Benjamin article is that he never thought of all the good drugs we’d develop for our adult onset ADHD.  The oversight of it, heh!         <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was your age, I walked twelve miles wearing no shoes through six feet of snow.  And so follows the older generation’s disappointment in and fear of youth and new ways of doing things.  While reading Walter Benjamin, I kept in mind the context of his article—written in 1936—and the times’ apprehension about new … Continue reading Oh no! Moving images and other thoughts on media in flux<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}