Rushdie on Replicating the Wizard of Oz

After looking at the video of Indian kids doing their interpretation of The Wizard of Oz, I think that Rushdie would agree that that video would be a very bad first impression of The Wizard of Oz. He would feel that it certainly fits the definition of 'Bollywood' cinema in the same way that Bombay Talkie does. In fact, the video seems like a better representation of Bombay Talkie than of The Wizard of Oz. He would likely agree that the reason that this song was performed was because it represented their desire to escape to a land like that of Oz. Finally, a reason that their teacher, or teachers, had them do this could have been that it served as indirect way to get them to embrace the idea of growing up.

Top 10 Movie Endings

1) It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

2) Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

3) Blazing Saddles (1974)

4) The Blues Brothers (1980)

5) Shawn of the Dead (2004)

6) Beetlejuice (1988)

7) The Addams Family Values (1993)

8) All of Me (1984)

9) National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)

10) Hitch (2005)

Jack Bauer's sexuality

As we can see in 24, Jack Bauer is quite obviously a heterosexual man and, therefore, according to Freud, not an "invert." When talking about Jack's sexuality, it's most likely that the two things that would be evident immediately would be his castration complex and sadistic tendencies. To elaborate, despite being a dominant person in the workplace and with his family, a castration complex can be said to be brought about by the stress that comes with both of those things. In the beginning of the pilot episode, we first see that he and his wife had been having trouble already. Now, that does not cause the complex to completely surface but, with the running away of his daughter, it begins to surface and, then, when trouble erupts at work, only stressing him more, it certainly comes into full view. His possible failure to perform at work would be castration but, more importantly, so would his failure to find his daughter. A more secondary reason for the existence of his castration complex is that his wife does not want to operate with the family model that he wants his family to follow. He wants to be in control whilst his wife wants it to be more of a joint effort.

Moving on, his sadistic tendencies become most evident when we see what it is that he does for a living. He is a Federal agent in an anti-terrorist unit and you could argue that the reason for that is that, in his sexual life, he doesn't get to express his aggressive tendencies and, therefore, he has his job to compensate for that. The guns that he fires could be seen as being phallic.

In all, Jack Bauer can be said to be sexually well-balanced due to having his wife with whom he expresses his sexual desires and he has his job in which he expresses his aggressive side.

Roland Barthe Applied to The Sopranos

When looking at the advertisement for the series finale of HBO's The Sopranos, according to Roland Barthe's essay, it would be most important for us to take into account the following: the linguistic meaning; the connotative meaning and the denotative meaning. First, there is the linguistic meaning. That is to say, the meaning of any text used. In the case of this advertisement, the text has both implicit and explicit meanings. The first text that you see, 'the final episodes- April 8, 9:00 pm' has a very explicit meaning and, as Barthe would say, the importance of this text is that it's there. Having been in the bigger font, you can tell that it has the more important message which is simply the 'what' and 'when' which viewers certainly need to know. However, Barthe's assumption about only the presence of the text counting is wrong when it comes to the second message which reads 'made in America.' Since it does not have an explicit meaning, it's presence is not the only thing that matters. This secondary text's phrasing also matters since it should be intriguing to viewers, especially, Sopranos fans.

Secondly, there is the connotative meaning. The connotative meaning, or connotation, is the subjective meaning that can be denied or accepted depending on who is doing the interpreting. Or, as Barthe says, 'the number of readings of the same lexia varies according to individuals.' One person, a Sopranos fan, could see this and know immediately what it was about- what the last episode's story might entail; where the climax would take place; etc. Whereas, a person unfamiliar with The Sopranos might see it and come up with a completely about what the episode might be about because he was giving to much significance to the wrong parts of the picture. For example, they might think that the Statue of Liberty had something to do with the episode or that the character shown might have more of a part than he does.

Finally, there is the denotative meaning. That is, the literal meaning of what's in the advertisement as a whole. The denotative meaning, according to Barthe, 'naturalizes the symbolic message.' That is to say, that, after taking in the denotative meaning, the connotative meaning simply follows. However, in the case of this poster, again, that assertion doesn't always apply since not everyone who sees it may not be a Sopranos fan. So, in the case of a non-Sopranos fan, whatever connotative meaning they might come up with would still make sense, providing that it was taken from the denotative meaning and everything in their connotative interpretation could be back up by the simple denotative meaning.

"Blair Witch": Filmed with a Wand or a Scalpel?

I have to say that, after looking at the two quotes from The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, that I believe that the quote regarding magician and surgeon versus painter and cameraman is a better one to apply to The Blair Witch Project. I say this because giving the actors the camera made it, in turn, much more a portrayal of their reality than a movie is when the camera is operated omnisciently. It showed everything that happened to the characters as well as everything that they saw. However, regarding the last part of the quote, The Blair Witch Project wouldn't be considered art because, while watching it, we are constantly reminded of the presence of the camera due it being shaken so frequently.

Now, regarding the first quote and why it is not as applicable to The Blair Witch Project as the second one, I feel that, since the actors are, for the most part, portraying themselves, the idea of aura does not enter into it. Any aura, however, that is created stems from the fact that the camera is not put between us and the actors but is used by the actors and is more a part of the actors than it is in the case of movies that are shot with the camera having an omniscient point of view.

"Tokyo Story" vs. classical Hollywood: 2 Types of Realism

What I see as the biggest difference in perspective between Ozu's Tokyo Story and a classical Hollywood film is that they vary in the number of perspectives that they are shown from. Now, what this leads to is a question of which movie makes a greater use of realism. The way perspective is used in classical Hollywood movies is such that the viewer, for the duration of the movie, is lead to believe in a world where the only perspectives that count are that of God (referring to omniscient point-of-view) and of the protagonist(s). On the other hand, perspectives used in Tokyo Story are many more than that. Everyone's perspective is utilized in Tokyo Story so as to illustrate the values of Japanese culture. These different uses of perspective not only illustrate the cultures that create the differences between Japanese and American films but also illustrate the different ways that the concept of realism can be interpreted. The way that realism is interpreted in Tokyo Story is that reality is believed to be something that is shared by everybody whereas, in Hollywood cinema, reality is portrayed as something that is decided upon by the important people (that is, the main characters).

Robert Frank photo

Regarding Robert Frank's photo depicting a black woman standing against the outside of a building holding a baby, taken from his anthology, The Americans, I have to say that there are many ways it could be interpreted. Starting with Bordwell and Thompson, interpretation of this picture could begin by comparing and contrasting it with Frank's other works. In doing that, you could look for motifs. Having seen other works of his, I know that this has the motif of people in it with them and their foreground in the focus and their background out of focus so as to emphasize them and where they are. Another way of comparing it using Bordwell and Thompson would be to summarize the work using the four different meanings, referential, explicit, implicit and symptomatic. A referential meaning could read as follows: in 1950s urban America, a sidewalk is empty except for a 30-ish looking black woman who is nurturing a white baby. Skipping to the implicit meaning, the meaning could be extended to talking about how the otherwise empty sidewalk could be said to imply that the two were isolated since, in that era, bi-racial relations were not looked well upon.

Now, moving on to how Sturken and Cartwright would interpret it, here might be a place where a survey of many people's interpretations would come in handy since their book, Practices of Looking, emphasizes the idea that meaning consists of what viewers take away from a work. Also, it would be appropriate to look at the aesthetics of other works from this time period as well as from Frank's other works. In addition to that, it would also be appropriate to look at photography before and after Frank, who had a great influence on photography.

To close, I should say that, for my interpretation of this photo, I would be much more inclined to go with Bordwell and Thompson's method of looking at it in the context of Frank's other works as well as that of the era in which this photo was taken. So, for my interpretation, I believe that this photo is speaking about how, at that time (the '50s), bi-racial relationships were frowned upon but, despite that, those in them persisted.