Inception

What do I want to say about Inception? Phew. It's hard to even start.  Inception resonates with so many themes of reality, dreams, representations as alternative realities, that I'm so fascinated by this summer.   The confusion of reality and dream, reality and representation are pressing concerns in our contemporary moment, as we experience our lives increasingly through the artificial realities provided by the Internet, film, TV, literature, and video games.

Like Cobb’s journey into dreams within dreams, Inception brilliantly operates on multiple conceptual levels.  First, Inception is about the nature of our dreams, their relationship to our reality, and the driving power of our conscious and unconscious minds. In Inception, the characters can access and travel to the dream state, not only individually, but collectively.  Hooked into the shared network of dreams, the team can not only access other’s dreams; they can actually construct dreams in the shared space.  This network of artificially induced dreams (read: alternative realities) seems analogous to the network of Internet communities and cyberspaces. Through the creative imagination of a dream architect and the perception of the dreamer, a dream space is created. The alternative reality of the dream seems as real as living reality. For Cobb’s work of extraction and inception, the dreamer must not realize that they are in a dream; the blurred lines of dream and reality become indistinguishable. Cobb’s team must construct a dream that tricks the perception; yet, in the vivid dreamscapes they create, the team risks losing their own “grasp on what’s real and what’s a dream.”  To prevent this psychic disorientation, they all carry totems, individual physical objects that provide a tangible way of connecting back with reality. The sensation of the totem in Cobb’s hands provides his way back to the tangible Real. The film seems to ask viewers, what will be your totem in the world of artificial alternative realities? If we begin to live and perceive through the digital world, what is our connector back to the Real?  What is our totem?  

 As Cobb explains, the access to dream sharing lies in the gap between a mind’s creation of a dream and its perception. This gap in the mental architecture allows Cobb’s team and their dream technology to enter and manipulate the dream creation and alter what the dreamer perceives. Cobb’s team is able to manipulate a person’s sense of reality through the dream space, an alternative reality created through a blend of the architect’s imagination and technology. The combo of an artist’s imagination and technology that represents a version of reality.  This sounds like art. In Nolan's story of dream manipulation, we have another story, one about our contemporary relationship to representations of reality, like film itself. 

The conceptual puzzle of representation and reality Christopher Nolan constructs is, for me, the most fascinating aspect of Inception. What’s real? What’s a dream? How is Cobb’s construction and manipulation of reality any different than the alternative realities created and circulated by film, literature, and art?  What’s a film? What’s reality?  To return to an idea from my post on 3D technology, I wonder how the vividly crisp CGI images in Inception can momentarily cause viewers to lose themselves in the film, like Cobb loses himself in the dream.  Are there moments that our minds forget we are watching a film, a technologically produced alternative reality?  Do we ever think the film is real?  Nolan’s Inception raises questions not only about dreams and reality, but about our relationship to film’s alternative reality. The film itself is a process of inception, introducing and embedding an alternative reality in the viewer’s mind.

Inception warns against the dangers of losing our touch on reality, against the manipulation of dreams, against losing ourselves in the alternative realities that technology can provide. The film elegantly comments on the relationship between the creation and perception of artificial dream realities, while providing a vivid alternative reality in itself for viewers to get lost in. What is our relationship to these alternative realities, to dreams, to drug states, to representations, to art?  Inception dramatizes contemporary concerns about how we understand the Real and the artificial, themes which resonate far beyond the realm of dreams.  

Image Credits: Inception Poster

Why Do We Read?

Why do we read? What do we get out of this activity? These are questions that I keep tossing around, searching for possible answers in the stacks of books overcrowding my office. But, in the search for an answer, I’m finding incomplete evidence. The plurality of “we” in the question resists any definitive answer. How can I say why you or anybody reads? The best I can work with is the scattered insights in novels, essays, and criticism; different authors offering up to readers a glimpse of their sacred, individual relationship to books. Usually snuck into the narrative of a novel, these moments, where the author reveals his/her view of reading, often seem randomly thrown in, disruptive to the drive of the plot.  But in Richard Wright’s autobiography Black Boy, reading is a transformative activity that shapes the very direction of Wright’s life.  As a black male raised in the South in the 1920s, Wright’s reading practices exceeded that society’s normative expectations, and were even outright questioned as challenges to white authority. To be a black reader in the South was dangerous, for reading demonstrated the desire to expand one’s knowledge and potentially one’s position in the world, a move that would challenge the dominating rule of white supremacy of that time.

 Throughout Black Boy, the question, “why do you read,” is repeatedly posed by white and blacks alike.  Wright’s response poignantly resonates with the ideas about emotion, the imagination, and a reader’s relationship with texts I’ve been considering lately.   For Wright, reading is about expanding human potential.  In reading, he seeks “new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different” (272-3).  Reading allows Wright to see new perspectives, but it is more than just learning new knowledge about the world. Rather, the activity of reading evokes feeling in the reader, forging an emotional experience that connects us with that new perspective. Wright compares this encompassing emotional experience to a drug state: altering his mood and shifting his perspective, “reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days” (273). Through these “books that opened up new avenues of feeling and seeing,” Wright learns of and feels a wider spectrum of human emotion than ever before (275).  Living under the segregation and violent racism of the South, Wright’s restricted existence prevented him from experiencing the freedom and fullness of life that he reads about in novels.  He learns “that there were feelings denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach” (274).  The altered perspective and new emotional awareness gained by reading causes Wright to reevaluate the reality around him. He looks at his world in a more critical way: “My reading had created a vast sense of distance between me and the world in which I lived and tried to make a living, and that sense of distance was increasing each day” (277). 

Reading springs in him “a new hunger,” for reading “made me see what was possible, what I had missed” (274).  Reading not only shows Wright new perspectives and feelings, but also reveals the horizon of infinite and unknown possibility.  As he becomes a young adult, Wright dreams of moving North to escape his restricted and threatened life in the South.  His dreams of the future are inspired by the enlarging perspectives and limitless possibilities that he had gained from books.  Observing around him a world of black submission and defeat, Wright wonders, 

“what was it that made me conscious of possibilities? For where in this southern darkness had I caught a sense of freedom? Why was it that I was able to act upon vaguely felt notions? What was it that made me feel things deeply enough for me to try to order my life by my feelings? The external world of whites and blacks, which was the only world that I had ever known, surely had not evoked in me any belief in myself. The people I had met had advised and demanded submission. What, then, was I after? How dare I consider my feelings superior to the gross environment that sought to claim me?” (282)   

His answer: “It had been only through books—at best, no more than vicarious cultural transfusions—that I had managed to keep myself alive in a negatively vital way. Whenever my environment failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books (282).  For Wright, reading expands his human potential, providing him access to new perspectives to reevaluate his own world, invoking new feelings that expand his range of emotion, and inspiring his dreams of infinite future possibilities. For me, this is a powerful response to that central question, “Why do we read?” 

Wright, Richard. Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth. New York: Harper & Row, 1945.

Image Credit: Black Boy Book Cover

The Affective Experience of Music

Last night I saw Wolf Parade perform at the Boston House of Blues.  Perhaps because I’m getting older and standing still in a crowd for an hour kills my back, but I’m finding myself less able to get wrapped up in the concert experience like I did in high school and college.  I no longer find myself caught up and carried away.  Instead, I found myself thinking about the ‘concert experience’ more than experiencing the concert itself.   What I’d like to think about today is the experience of listening to music, how music engages the human body, and what kinds of affective experience (emotions) are produced from music.

Since we began dating, Nate has been teaching me how to listen to music. Sure, I was into music before, and had what I consider fairly good taste. But most of the time when I listen to music, I am engaged in another activity, while walking around the city, reading on the bus, or as I write. I rarely just listen to music on its own; I’m a passive music consumer.  What Nate has been teaching me is to engage with music, to give it an active ear. Mind you, these are not necessarily Nate’s words. I don’t want to injure his ‘street cred’ by my awkward word choice.  Like analyzing sports, I’m new to this music game.   My artistic medium of choice is text. I’m a reader.  The visual-oral appearance of the words on page engages me.  Yet, as I’m embracing other artistic mediums such as film, music, and even sports and dance, I’m finding they differ in how they engage the human senses. We listen to music.  We apprehend it aurally, first and foremost.   Though I’ve always enjoyed music, I’ve found I have to train myself to really listen.  I’m learning to take note of the nuanced variety of sound, and finding this aural concentration is changing my listening experience. 

Yet, music is not solely aural. It is experienced through a living body, which simultaneously sees, feels, smells, tastes.  How do we consider these other senses when we talk about music?  Music criticism very reasonably focuses on the aural quality of music.   But, how do we discuss the bodily experience of music?  How we listen to music matters.  The situations in which we listen to music shape not only how we hear, but also how we understand that music.  We listen with IPOD and headphones, with a stereo or computer, at a bar, attending a concert or even producing music ourselves.  Each of these situations invokes the different senses to varying degree, producing individualized emotions that affix to the experience of hearing that music, eventually embedding that sensory and emotional experience as a memory.  We carry these emotional memories of music with us, and we can often visually recall a time when we heard a certain song. How do these different music-listening situations engage the other senses and fulfill certain emotional needs?

As we listen to music, what do our bodies and minds do in the process of listening? Where do your eyes fixate? If you close your eyes, do you experience music more directly?   While music is primarily aural, it is not exactly non-visual.  Listening to music is an embodied experience; music is experienced through a living body engaged in multiple senses.  Our vision and sense of touch are not suspended as we listen.  At the Wolf Parade concert, I could feel the vibrations of sound in my stomach.  I could see the musicians on stage. I even bounced around a little to the beat (or in my case, slightly off the beat).  The songs, which I’ve only heard through my headphones or stereo, are now performed in front of my eyes.  I’ve often noted the feeling of the uncanny when attending concerts.  When you know a band’s songs intimately, yet have never seen them perform either on video or live, the experience of confronting the band’s visual existence can be surprising, incongruous and strange.  You sometimes doubt that that voice, that sound, is coming from the person you see on stage. This disconnect comes from how we individually imagine/visualize music when listening without a visual aid or spectacle like a concert or music video. Listen to a song, close your eyes, and what do you imagine seeing? 

Music has been described as the most abstract art form, for, as the argument goes, music resists visual representation.  What does a sound look like? How would you visually represent a song? Yet, if we turn to our cultural collection of music videos, we see music represented in incredible visual variety.  Music can be represented visually, but these representations are of course personalized interpretations, translations into the visual medium of film.  Are there certain principles or patterns to how we translate music into the visual?

I recently rewatched The Soloist.  The overly sentimental previews for this movie did this artistically challenging and moving film little justice, and I recommend that you check it out if you haven’t already.  Director Joe Wright takes up the challenge of visualizing music. He does this most successfully through shots of the affective experience of listening to music. Throughout the film, Wright uses close ups on the characters playing and/or listening to music, registering their emotional, affective experience as they listen. Through this pairing of music and the human body listening to music, Wright gives the abstractions of music a visual bodily presence.  The Soloist shows how we feel music, how the sounds become embodied within us by engaging our senses.  I’m still working out why all of this fascinates me.  This post feels scattered and confused, but I feel as if these ideas are touching upon some relationship I'm  seeing between art and the human.  So, to end this post of a million little questions, I'll return back to the big questions:  What are our bodily, emotional, and mental relationships to different art forms? And, what do we need from these relationships? 

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Last night I watched The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2010) and had one of those kismet moments. This film essentially touches on all the ideas I’ve been exploring in my work lately. Imagination, Dreams, Utopias, Escapes. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is whimsical, visually stunning, while metaphysically thought provoking and challenging.  It is eye candy for the impoverished imaginative soul. Terry Gilliam, who directed and co-wrote the film with Charles McKeown, presents a somewhat autobiographical story about the aging Dr. Parnassus who dreams of a world ruled by the imagination.
Set in contemporary London, the film follows a wandering band of gypsies who perform atop a theatrical caravan, seeking to enchant the public with the power of the imagination. During their performances, the troupe tries to entice people on stage to enter the mirror into Dr. Parnassus’ imagination. Going through the mirror, the participants enter the realms of their imagination, a world generated by their own minds. Once there, the participants are presented with a choice, go up the stairs to fully ascend into the imagination of Dr. Parnassus, or retreat to the distractions of the contemporary material world, represented as a bar and seedy motel in the film.  The participants must make a choice between sin and greed or imagination and enlightenment.  These choices are presented by Dr. Parnassus, on the side of the imagination, and his nemesis Mr. Nick, a devilish man in a bowler hat, who represents the darker side of scientific reason, capitalism, and modern progress. The participants choose not only between good and evil, but between imagination and reason.  The film presents the imagination as the supreme path to enlightenment and transformation. However, set in the contemporary moment, the film shows how Dr. Parnassus and imagination are losing in their immortal battle against Mr. Nick and the stampede of progress in the name of scientific reason and efficiency. Dr. Parnassus’ ability to enchant the world is strained under the current modern conditions, and the theatre troupe is cast on the margins of society. Yet, there is hope as Dr. Parnassus learns to adapt to the modern world, trying new methods of enticing the imagination of contemporary society.   

This is a story of dream worlds, of utopian Ideal Homes, and how the imagination serves as a vehicle of fantastical escape.  Gilliam’s aim for the film is to get us to dream again, to let our minds travel in the realms of the imagination. His stunning cinematography, with the exception of some low budget CGI scenes, fantastical costume and set design, and poetic dialogue mesmerizes viewers, leading us willingly through the magical mirror into Dr. Parnassus’ imagination. 

For a more complete plot summary or reviews, click on the links.

Image Credits:The Imaginarium; Valentina

The 3-D Experience

Yesterday, I saw Toy Story 3 in IMAX 3D. Toy Story 3 was fantastic and I recommend that everyone see it, but that’s not the purpose of this post. Rather, I want to think about the 3-D experience.  Watching 3-D movies, I'm always surprised by how the 3-D animated images invoke a sense of childlike wonder in me. I let myself get caught up in the awe of the spectacle. Watching the movie, I feel the story coming somehow closer to my heart. But this may just be my experience.  Today, I want to explore the experience of seeing a 3-D IMAX movie and how new technologies may be changing our relationship to artistic representations.

Seeing Toy Story 3 entails much more than the feature film; going to a Jordan’s Furniture IMAX Theater is a fascinating, absolutely bizarre experience in its own right. At the gigantic complex in Reading, MA, Jordan’s Furniture has teamed up with IMAX theaters to present a consumer theme park, complete with Bean World, a life-size model town made of jelly beans, a laser water light show, and flying trapeze activity center. This is just the entrance of the store. You then wander through the maze of furniture displays, caressing the plush fabric of couches as you dodge sales clerks hunting for commissions. As you finally reach your destination, the IMAX theater, you understand the meaning behind Jordan’s Furniture’s slogan, “it’s more than a furniture store, it’s an experience.”                                                                                      

As you wait for the movie, the theater projects a light show synchronized to music. The psychedelic-like light show is a throwback to the “electric collage” light shows of the 1960s, an interesting homage given that 3-D movies made their first popular debut in that same era. Unfortunately, the choices in music, “Zoot Suit Riot,” “Dirty Boogie,” and “Mustang Sally,” dramatically diminished the effect; if only Jordan’s wasn’t afraid to play some more fitting psychedelic rock and turn it up to 11.

After a few previews for upcoming Pixar and Disney films, an advertisement for IMAX comes on. If you were not already sold on the idea that IMAX 3-D movies are “an experience” all their own, IMAX is committed to convince you. The IMAX ad claims viewers will “See More, Hear More, Feel More.” Using images of old movie reels, IMAX pays homage to the history of film and uses these visual references to declare IMAX 3D’s place as the next level in the film legacy. IMAX 3D films claim to “deliver the world's most powerful moviegoing experience” (1). According to their website, “the IMAX Experience in 3D - the world's most immersive movie experience - has entertained and enlightened millions of people worldwide. With crystal clear, larger-than-life, 3D images complemented by exhilarating state-of-the-art surround sound, audiences feel as though they are in the movie.” (1). 3D images employ stereoscopy, which, according to Wikipedia, is “any technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual information or creating the illusion of depth in an image” (2). By wearing 3D glasses, the viewer sees an illusion of enhanced visual depth perception. The images seem to extend off the screen, giving viewers the sense that these 2-D screen images are three dimensional in form. I have to admit that I know very little about the technology itself. What is most interesting to me is the way these technologies are described. 3-D technology sells itself based on the idea that it can bring you closer to reality. You will no longer simply view movies in the same way. You will “see more, hear more, feel more.” This repetition of “more” is the most fascinating, implying that these technologies will actually extend our human senses beyond their natural state. This is a promise that new technology has made over and over again. Come on consumers, extend your human capacity through technology.

IMAX describes the experience as such, “Images of immense size and striking clarity surround you. Deep, sharp sound lets you feel every vibration. Towering screens immerse you in fantastic and exciting worlds. Specifically designed theaters take you on a journey every time you sit down.” (1). Books, films, music, photography, sculpture, each of these mediums invoke different human senses. Music is heard. Books are seen and sometimes spoken aloud. Films are seen and heard. Sculptures can be touched. Our senses forge the initial contact and first relationship to these representations. Our senses make us feel. As we take in the film, book, or art piece, we apprehend it through the senses, feel an emotional reaction to the representation, and then mentally process that emotion through our thoughts about the representation. Watching an IMAX 3D movie invokes multiple senses simultaneously. We see images in enhanced visual depth; we hear the “deep, sharp sounds” of the soundtrack; we feel the vibrations underneath the theater chairs from the Butt Kicker® sound systems, which according to their product website, “recreate amplified audio signals in the feeling range.” (3). By invoking the multiple senses of the viewer, IMAX 3D films bring the viewer into the story, into the representation. If the viewer experiences the film through sight, sound, and touch, does this cause the viewer to forge a more direct experience to the representation? What if we could smell and taste what was happening in the film? These possibilities are already being explored. At another Jordan’s Furniture location in Avon, MA, you can ride the Motion Odyssey Movie (MOM), a ride that “engages all of your senses—sights, sounds, balance, and even touch” (4). I have not yet experienced this, but am very curious. Their current ride is “Happy Feet: Mumble’s Wild Ride!”:

Dare to race down the frozen cliffs of Antarctica in Mumble’s Wild Ride! Join Mumble and his hilarious penguin friends for a thrilling 4-D ride as they reach chilling speeds in this breathtaking icy adventure. When you join Mumble on Jordan's Verizon MOM 4-D movie ride, you'll not only experience 3D visuals, motion, and sound, but also ocean scents, wind, strobe lights, and more! (4)

Visuals, sound, motion, and even ocean scents! It’s like real life. Well, almost. What is so interesting about these 3-D, or in this case 4-D, technologies is the way they promise a more complete, more real experience. But more real than what exactly? If the technologies of representation (a 3D film for example) can invoke all the senses, and we call it “more than real,” how do we then feel about the rest of our “real life,” the life lived away from the IMAX theater? These technologies promise more total sensory experiences, yet to what extent can technology enhance our natural human senses? And in what cases should our human senses be enhanced by technology at all? What really concerns me is this: if we have technology capable of invoking all the senses, and these senses register in our bodies as feelings and emotions, to what extent can these technologies manipulate our emotions? Let me remind you that I do love 3-D movies. But I think that as we watch these technologies progress, we should be mindful of two things: of how technology artificially invokes our senses in order to produce certain emotional reactions, and how these technologies are redefining our sense of human reality.

Image Credits:  Toy Story 3; Movie Reel; Kids with 3-D Glasses

Sports Identification Part II

I watched another ESPN 30 for 30 the other night and want to return to my discussion of sports. If you haven’t checked out this film series, I heartedly recommend it (check On Demand on Comcast). In his documentary June 17, 1994, Brett Morgen examines the multiple sports events taking placing simultaneous to OJ Simpson’s infamous run from the police. On June 17, 1994, The New York Rangers celebrated their Stanley Cup victory, the celebrated Arnold Palmer played his final round in the U.S. Open, and the Knicks and the Rockets squared off in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. In the midst of all this, it was discovered that OJ Simpson was in a highway run from the LAPD, sending the media into frenzy. Solely using news and sports footage from 1994, Morgen skillfully recreates the drama of the day’s events. Morgen creates, what he calls, an “experiential documentary,” immersing the viewer in the story as if the events are unfolding in real time. The film captures the intensity of the public’s reaction to the murder of Nicole Simpson and OJ’s subsequent run from the police. Even 16 years later, the story continues to invoke a strong visceral experience as the viewer confronts the disparate realities of OJ Simpson as simultaneous accused murderer and beloved sports hero. What I find fascinating about the case of OJ Simpson is how the public reacted to the news, and what this may say about our relationship to public media figures at large.

                                                                  librarising.com
What the public knew about OJ was a media-produced myth based on his sports career and off field public appearances. OJ’s well known public image as revered football player and celebrity caused his fans to believe they personally knew the “Juice.” Fans invested their faith in OJ’s innocence because they could not confront the conflicting realities between OJ as accused murder and OJ as sports hero. Watching OJ’s run, newscasters repeatedly stuttered in disbelief; as one reporter telling stated, “I can’t believe this reality is real.” This comment is revealing in how the media constructs a certain reality around a sports figure that many fans believe in without questioning the limitations of that representation.

The public myths, the stories we believe about public figures, are based on media representations, and not on these individuals’ private lives. We must admit that what we know about sports players and celebrities is very limited and always mediated by commercial media representations and our individual perspectives. In Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman looks at how his relationship to football is based on his individual perspective. He writes,

“I had played football and written about football and watched it exhaustively for twenty years, so I thought I knew certain inalienable assumed truths, which are not the same thing. I had brainwashed myself. I was unwilling to admit that my traditional, conservative football values were imaginary and symbolic. They belonged to a game I wasn’t actually watching, but was trying to see. Over time, I realized this had happened with almost every aspect of my life” (141).

Here, Klosterman recognizes that the football he watches is different than the football that others see. Based on his experience, Klosterman imagines football as a traditional, conservative game, but as he examines the NFL’s program and rules, he discovers it upholds more liberal and even socialist values. Klosterman’s view on football is an imagined and symbolic projection, a view on the world that Klosterman has chosen to see. Coming from different vantage points, we construct our reality based on our individual perspectives. Since we can never know and see all, part of our reality is what we imagine the world to be like. We can only imagine what life is like in the Middle East, or what OJ Simpson did or did not do. We project an imagined view of the world that helps us understand the things we do not know or have access to. This imagined projection creates symbolic meaning for us; it helps us understand our infinitely complex world. It allows us to consider the lives of others; by imagining their lives, we feel as if we can become connected to even strangers. But, what we must remember is that this imagined idea of others is only symbolic; it is necessarily true or real.

With that in mind, let’s consider the popularity of tabloid celebrity news. The American public seems to revel in the salacious stories of other’s mistakes. We discuss, interrogate, and ultimately judge these celebrities lives as if we have adequate knowledge to make a judgment on their lives. But we only have an imagined projection of what their lives are like. Yet, we feel personally outraged by the actions of John and Kate Gosselin, disgusted by Lindsey Lohan, let down by Tiger Wood. As I rewatched OJ flee from the police and media (on a side note, it is shocking how many people flocked to the highway during the chase in order to wave at OJ passing by), I could not help but feel sympathy for his flight. To have a nation watch and judge your downfall on TV would be absolute trauma. Yet, reality TV has made this spectacle of celebrity trauma into entertainment.

                                                            pocoperdiem.wordpress.com
Why do we revel in witnessing and judging the public downfall of others? Why do we feel personally affected by the actions of celebrities and sports figures? Do celebrities and sports figures make a social contract with fans to uphold and conform to set behaviors? I’m concerned with our too comfortable ability to judge celebrities. It is a dangerous practice because we feel justified in assigning judgment without adequate knowledge of the situation or the people involved, and without a conscious sense of ethics or justice. What if our legal courts operated like our public judgment? We must remember that our relationship to these public figures is imaginary and symbolic, influenced by our individual perspectives and the media’s limited representations. We must learn to differentiate between what/who we actually know and what/who we only imagine to know.

Reality on TV

"We nevertheless seek new means of creating the real"
 - David Shields, Reality Hunger, 2010

In Reality Hunger (2010), cultural theorist David Shields explores the rise of our “reality” obsessed media culture and its effect on our notions of the “real” and “true.”  Anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock the last 10 years knows that reality TV shows have become an American obsession, making up a significant portion of television broadcasts. Reality TV, as a genre, claims to depict non-actors reacting unscripted to different ‘real-life’ situations.  The reality TV genre promises a voyeuristic glimpse into the Real Lives of others.  Yet, as reality TV fans know, most shows are far from unscripted and unstaged. Rather, these reality TV shows present often highly sensationalized versions of “reality.”  Carefully produced and edited to attract viewers and generate advertising revenue, reality TV shows are only constructed representations of the situations and people they depict.  In framing “reality” in a certain light through the production and editing process, these shows do not show “reality” any better than fictional sitcoms.  Yet, for many viewers, there remains a desire for these shows to depict “reality,” to get as close to the Real as possible.  Why do we have this desire to see “reality” depicted on screen?  And what do we mean by the Real?

As David Shields notes in Reality Hunger, our contemporary American culture is captivated by “the lure and blur of the real” (5).  Shields suggests this desire to know and depict the real through artistic representation is a fundamental part of human society.   Drawing examples from Chekhov, Forster, Fitzgerald to Curb Your Enthusiasm, he claims, “Every artistic movement from the beginning of time is an attempt to figure out a way to smuggle more of what the artist thinks is reality into the work of art” (3). Shields argues that all art forms, even the most abstract, are manipulations of reality based on how the individual artist views the world (20). If reality is based on our individual perspective of the world formed by our background, experiences, education and values, than all of our realities are different, landing us in the unsteady, elusive terrain of perspectivism and relativism.  In this relative understanding of reality, we can see what Shields calls the “blur of the real.” This is not to say that we do not share common views on reality; social groupings of people based on shared views and values prove that we share some overlapping realities. Although we cannot claim there is a universal Reality shared by all, we continue to long for a connection to a realized, complete Reality.  We want the Real. We want to feel it. To experience reality’s realness.  So we seek it out through media representations and consumer products, which sell us produced, packaged versions of Reality.  But, what has convinced us that we, as living, breathing, feeling humans, do not already have access to this Real?

There’s profit to be made in selling humans the idea of reality.  Convince us that what we are experiencing is not real enough, and sell us what will help us get there.   Promoting their new 3D LED television, Samsung claims to bring the reality of a live soccer match to your home.

                          

                                           Samsung Soccer Mural Full Commercial - 3D LED TV

“Ever wonder if a picture could feel more like the real thing? We did. This changes the game. The Samsung 3D LED TV. Live sports in cutting edge clarity. Colors as intense as the game itself. And 3D that brings it all home. That's the wonder of Samsung.”

Samsung’s 3D LED television promises picture quality that is as “real” as the game itself.  As consumers, we’ve been trained to want a picture to appear and feel like the real thing.  Bringing us closer to “reality,” we experience a heightened connection to the representation.  Samsung suggests that we will no longer just watch TV, but we will experience the game in all of its actual intensity and immediacy.  3D televisions promise a more total sensory experience than their soon-to-be-outdated counterparts.  Like reality TV, these new technologies promise greater access to the Real than ever before.  But can they really deliver on these promises, when “reality” itself is a relative, perspective-based, elusive experience that no one can completely capture or represent?  What happens when we, as individuals and as a culture, accept these technological, mediated representations as the dominant and pure “reality”?  What are we escaping from when we’d rather choose to watch “reality” on TV rather than live in it?



Shields, David. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Print.
"Samsung Soccer Mural." Commercial. You Tube. 14 June 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sypGYRwrIKY&feature=youtu.be

Escapes

As the name of this blog suggests, I’m interested in escape as a human activity. People seem to seek out and/or create many mental escapes from their everyday realities. Literature, film, TV, internet, music, sports, games, drugs, meditation, even dreaming while asleep, all of these activities provide an escape for people. This is certainly not a new idea, but what I’m interested in is what characterizes our contemporary escapes. What are we escaping from? What do we use to escape? And what does this process of escape entail?

But let’s back up for a moment. What do I mean by escape? When we read a book or watch a film, we become invested in the lives of the characters. We follow their stories and, depending on the quality of the book or film, we become emotionally invested, feeling emotions along with the characters on page or on screen. In the span of reading or viewing, we mentally live through the life of another. Through this mental activity, we imagine another world, another life than our own. As we imagine this other world, peopled by the characters of the book or movie, we transcend our own everyday reality. We become caught up in the story of another so much that we temporarily forget our own realities. We can lose ourselves in the book, movie, or TV show. For me, this is a form of escape. We escape into books, film, and other cultural works in order to partially and temporarily leave our own realities.

This escape is not a mindless pursuit. It is more than just vegging out, zombie-like, in front of the TV. Rather, our mind is processing the representation; our mind thinks, and our bodies begin to feel different emotions as we become invested in the work (see my earlier post on the emotions of sports). Books, TV, film, etc., these artistic representations engage both our mind and bodies, and we begin to live through the representation. We stop participating in our everyday lives, and start living through the life on screen or on the page. We mentally inhabit another’s life and the world in which they exist, which provides a temporary escape from participating in our own individual reality. During these mental escapes, our mind and bodies actively engage with the book, movie, show, or song as representations of an alternative reality. These alternative realities can range from the fantastical worlds of science fiction to the more realist depictions of people in communities other than our own. These artistic representations of other worlds, both real and fantastical, have existed throughout the long and diverse history of human cultures, and seem to fulfill a fundamental human need to mentally leave our actual realities and inhabit the lives of others. But, why do we desire to escape into the lives of others? And, what happens when we live too much through the alternative realities offered by these representations, and lose touch with the Real? These are some of the questions that I'll be exploring in my posts this week.

Sports Identification

This first post comes from a budding interest in sports, Chuck Klosterman’s Eating the Dinosaur, and many late night talks with Nate.

This is an exercise in extending ideas I have about why we read books, watch films, listen to music, or look at photographs, paintings, etc. We have a culture filled with these aesthetic objects that represent aspects of human life. Yet, it is still unclear to me, why they exist. What human need do these representations fulfill? We experience works of art and culture through our bodily senses and process them through the mind. As we read, view, and listen to these works, we both feel and think. Do works of art and culture fulfill (evolutionary) emotional and/or intellectual needs for humans? Why do we find pleasure in experiencing these works, especially the ones that may bring us grief or frustration? These are some of the larger questions that will fuel the following exploration into sports culture.

Nate is teaching me to pay attention to the 3-Dimensional elements of sports. Beyond each official sports matchup, TV and radio stations broadcast a multitude of human stories. These broadcasts tell viewers stories about the individual lives of the sports figures we root for. As we watch these stories, we begin to identify with the sports figures. They become not only players on a sports team, but public figures whose lives some fans know more intimately than that of their own neighbors. We choose favorite sports players, not solely based on their physical prowess, but also on their personal values and actions as represented on ESPN and in Sports Illustrated. If we share the same values, we recognize aspects of ourselves in these sports figures. As their public images saturate sports broadcasting, we feel as if we know Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Tom Brady, or Tiger Woods. But, do we?

In Eating the Dinosaur (2009), Chuck Klosterman highlights how a media driven sports community creates fields of expectation that often eclipse the reality of an actual sports player’s skills and accomplishments. Klosterman uses the example of Houston Rocket’s Ralph Sampson, whose impressive physical build (7-foot-4) and finesse made sports commentators and fans believe Sampson would “revolutionize the game.” While Sampson had a solid career in the NBA, he ultimately did not meet the high expectations of fans and critics. Yet, as Klosterman points out, fans only saw the media’s representation of Sampson’s unfulfilled promise, ignoring the reality of Sampson’s actual accomplishments (three-time College Player of the Year, four-time NBA All Star). Fans felt personally disappointed by Sampson; but why? Why do sports fans have personal investments in players? What purpose does this emotional investment serve?


In the 30 for 30 ESPN Film, Without Bias, Kirk Fraser tells the tragic story of Len Bias, the University of Maryland basketball star who died of a cocaine overdose two days after he was selected as the Celtic’s 1986 draft pick. Bias’ death affected not only those in his local community, but much of the nation. Fans across the country grieved for the death of Len Bias. I want to take a moment to look at this phenomenon. By varying degrees, fans watched Len Bias play throughout his college career and rooted for his draft success. Bias seemed to be a player destined for greatness. Fans were emotionally invested in Bias’ public persona and thus grieved his death as if they knew Bias personally. Yet, we must remember that most fans likely only knew Bias through broadcasts of the game, TV interviews and segments on his career. These broadcasts were only representations of Len Bias. Recorded, edited, and televised, these media-constructed representations can only depict a partial picture of Bias. Fans watch and identify with these representations and become invested in the fates of these public sports figures. We grieve for the loss of Len Bias because we recognize the potential for unfulfilled promise in our own lives. As I watched the documentary on Bias’ death, Fraser’s detailed storytelling made me grieve for Bias, and even though his death does not affect my daily life, I felt this grief both bodily and mentally. In watching films or in watching sports, we experience a range of human emotions from jubilation when our team wins to frustration and grief when they lose. When our team loses, we feel as if we lost. This identification with sports figures is much like our identification with certain characters in books and films. And I believe it serves a fundamental human purpose.

When we identify with these public figures, we allow ourselves to feel a range of human emotions through these figures. We emotionally invest in these sports players. Through this emotional investment, we use these people to dream, to play out our desires and fantasies. Who hasn’t dreamed of becoming a sports superstar? Their sports victories become our victories; their losses (and tragedies in the case of Bias) become ours. Yet, why do humans want to feel these emotions, which are experienced not directly through our own lives, but through the lives of others? We experience joy, grief, frustration, camaraderie. It seems we learn from living emotionally and intellectually with these public figures. This form of empathy (identifying with the emotions of others) is valuable. It allows us to recognize the humanity in other people, a cognitive skill that has value far beyond sports. By experiencing these emotions through the lives of others, we practice feeling emotions that will help prepare us for our “real” life victories and losses. In watching sports, we practice being human.

Note: I'll admit I'm new to this sports fan world, so this is just an idea of how sports identification works. Sports fans, please set me straight if I am way off here!