Myth, Advertising, Future, FOSS, HCI, SEO

(If you are reading this through a feed, such as in the Columbia EdBlog site, you may not have full video functionality. I recommend viewing at the home site, perelandran.org/wordpress. Also, if you are planning on reading the entire essay, you may wish to begin a download of the main video now, as it is a big file: stephen
We must all multitask…)

Proposed Assignment Question:

In light of Lang’s ‘Metropolis’, why might he have been approached by Joseph Goebbels to make movies for the Nazis?

Response:

1.
To delve deeply into historical reasons for the Goebbels offer, we would have to engage in quite a bit of historical analysis with reference to Nazi propaganda, social and economic trends within the Weimar Republic, and histories of other propaganda methodologies. One could examine Moses, the Indian Brahmins, Pericles, the Medicis and their Macchiavelli, the mid-19th century Europeans, or the Bolsheviks, to name some that come to mind. Since we are trying to answer the question in the light of Lang’s ‘Metropolis’, we would necessarily have to examine the Semitic implications of the film, including Rotwang’s seeming Jewishness (F1), as well as Lang’s views on the decadence and distractedness of the Weimar Republic, and make all sorts of connections between the film’s representation of the plight of workers in capitalist societies, and the ability of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party to ride and create certain social waves.

All of this is interesting and important for a satisfactory answer to the question. But it is for another time, and requires much legwork and penmanship. In what follows, my primary question does not rely heavily on historical reconstruction or analysis but on aesthetic experience and future vision, both of which are hopefully shared by the gentle reader.

Lang is a filmmaker. Riefenstahl was a filmmaker. Lang fled the country after Goebbels, the minister for Propaganda, offered him the job (so they say…). Why are filmmakers important to a Fascist state? In one way this is obvious. Clearly film is a method for communication of message, of persuasion, of manipulation. Yet this is vague, and does not explicate the full portent of film as a Fascist or Totalitarian medium. I wish to take some specific steps toward a less vague statement.

‘Metropolis’ offers lots of material to work with in this regard. In addition, I will be using other films as texts, as well as a film of my own near the end of the essay. Sometimes I will be using films as separate moments, to show one particular aspect of film’s power. At other times I will be trying to display connections between scenes and between films. I also show other films to display some of ‘Metropolis” seminal status for certain types of techniques or meanings. I am not a film historian. I know full well that Fritz Lang had teachers, such as Eisenstein and Murnau, but I do not know what those teachings were. If anybody does, I would love to hear about it in the comments section. After viewing Metropolis along with ‘Blade Runner’, I certainly now know about one of Ridley Scott’s major textbooks, and after viewing ‘Le Mepris’, about one of Godard’s teachers.

As some of you reading this are aware, this essay was initially supposed to be constructed and submitted within a module called VITAL, which is a creation of Columbia’s Center for New Media, Teaching, and Learning. It’s a great tool that allows easy integration of a film into an essay. I was unable to use the module because of my Linux operating system (I won’t go into details), so I have chosen to construct my own functionality using this blog. It has been a pretty liberating experience, and pushed me to make a short film of my own, which was very enjoyable. On the other hand, the essay could fall prey to too wide a lasso, because it is not confined to just the one text (‘Metropolis’). Hopefully the positives (as I think they do) far outweigh.

Because of this decision though, you, reader, are at the mercy of my ability to use appropriate media and media distribution methods. In the time I had, I’ve done my best. All video files are of course available for direct download, and are in common video formats (avi,mov,m4v,and flv–sorry everybody, no ogg theora. I worried about readers’ ability to view them. Perhaps this is unwarranted. Up FOSS!). I have also attempted to make all videos viewable through the embedded Shadowbox.js player, so if you are perhaps blocking javascripts (as I hope you are!), and you wish to use the shadowbox functionality, please know that you can do this. Otherwise, I’m sure you have your browser set up to display various media types. Ok.

2. Film and Persuasion

Both film and Fascism involve persuasion and manipulation. Fascism seems to involve some form of submission of reason and compassion to manipulated emotions or mindsets. I am no expert in Fascism, but I think I get the gist at least (although I am a United States citizen, which qualifies me to some degree at the very least). So I won’t go too much further into just what Fascism is, or how it happens. I will concentrate more on film’s particular ability to persuade and to manipulate, and why this would therefore be extremely attractive to a person or group that is hoping to persuade or manipulate others.

Again, Metropolis is an excellent basis for this analysis. Regardless of the coherence or incoherence of the plot or the message (both of which have a lot of explaining to do. Lang freely admitted as much.), the film is both an example of and a story about manipulation, and the consequences thereof. In this essay we won’t really reach ‘consequences’. We will, however, begin to reach ‘methods/tools’ and ‘experience’.

Before completely delving into the persuasive power of film, let me just say that I of course don’t think that film is all bad, as you probably weren’t thinking I was thinking in any case. Emotional manipulation does not have to be consigned only to its negative aspect. Whether or not the propaganda is used for ‘good’ or ‘bad’, manipulation can happen. Aristotle and Plato knew this of course. Many others as well. Brecht may have disagreed. Below are two scenes, both pretty memorable, that perhaps fit into the ‘good’ (perhaps Benjamin’s ‘revolutionary’?–”They are on the other hand, useful for for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art.–Benjamin, prologue”), rather than, say, scenes from ‘Triumph of the Will’, which can pretty much be classified as for ‘bad’ purposes, or “for the purposes of fascism–Benjamin, prologue”. My use of these two scenes should hopefully make it clear that the current essay is not about film’s aims, but about it’s abilities. However, perhaps this makes the essay a possible tool for the purposes of Fascism. So be it for now. Not that many are reading, anyway.

attica

the Marseillaise

In the following section of clips, I have roughly shaped five categories of persuasive film technique. They are by no means definitive, only presently helpful. Certain extremely important clips are followed by annotations. These montages and these categories preface a comparison of film’s abilities with the abilities of other major artistic media (pre-1940), writing, photography, live performance, and painting.

speeches-
There is a great deal of speech-making in Metropolis, by Maria, the Babylonian Maria, Freder, Grot, and several no-name workers. Speech is an old persuasion tool. Winged words have long been feared.
Speeches

geometry-
The image of the triangle is strong throughout, most powerfully as a stairway (which is often a triangle due to perspective). The triangle is associated strongly with both revolution and Moloch. There are many crowds marching slowly or quickly up triangles of stairs. The triangle is also weighted with occult significance (see Rotwang’s Pentagram), becoming stronger via references to the Egyptians, the (not too Jewish looking!) enslaved tower builders, and the pyramids during the Babel story. The image of the priest with arms raised at the pinnacle of a triangle directly follows Maria in the same placement, and is (less exactly) also mimicked later. Most towers are triangular, even the Chrysler building (at the top). There is just no enough room up there. Rem Koolhaus has interesting things to say about this with regard to the NYC skyline in his ‘Delirious New York’.

The triangle is Lang’s primary geometric-symbolic method of representing mass movement and its consequences. This is pretty clear in the following clips:
processions
opening

The last clip from the procession sequence is peculiarly different because of several factors, including plot, speed, music, and the presence of a church (and execution device–Rotwang was just killed BY THE CHURCH, another reason for treating Rotwan as essentially the only Jewish, and therefore reviled, character in the film–Joh Fredersen somehow escapes our wrath).

The upward triangular movement is twin. Masses are climbing the tower only to fall off the cliff into the mouth of Moloch. They are like lemmings, or like buffalo tricked by a Hopi brave (who also wore a fake skin to give the illusion of sameness, like the machine-mensch Maria). The summit looks like the promised land, but that which gleams from afar becomes, in full time, the guillotine, the Moloch of the French Revolution, mechanized public execution, the death of children. Queue minor key Marsellaise leit-motif.

time-
Certain events can be given symbolic meaning by consecutive appearance, or by image melding, such as the example of the clock and Freder’s crucifixion.

cloxificion

light-
Lang uses light in many ways, some of which are displayed below. He uses it mainly to represent enlightenment, but also to use it for the production of fear (clip not shown – Maria chased by Rotwang’s head lamp).
headsup

symbols-
moloch

Moloch comes loaded with meaning, coming from Jewish history as it does. According to some of the stories, the cult of Moloch involved child sacrifice by burning (against which practice some might say arose the story of Abraham and Isaac, contra Abel). One of the more relevantly interesting stories is the one that tells of the main idol, which was supposedly ingeniously MECHANIZED so that after the child was placed into the hands of the stature, its arms would raise and throw it into the fire. Tough to tell just how much of this Lang was aware, but he was clearly aware of some of the stories.

The meaning of Moloch is central to the film, as it can represent both the machines themselves, and all harmful consequences due to technology, and not just mechanical technology. For example, cancer, autism, the ‘invention’ of private property, the spectre of catastrophic climate change, rogue nanobot collectives, genetic discrimination, consequences to the Earth’s crust due to drainage of naturally occurring fossil fuel (which nobody EVER talks about). And on and on. My paranoia could write that sentence for centuries.The M machine (Moloch) is one of many images of machinery in the film, but is the most powerful, and is the main impetus for Freder’s decision to ‘help his brothers’.

Of course he may never have ‘seen’ Moloch if he hadn’t been visited by Maria in the Garden, where, like a subtle serpent from nowhere she stops Freder in his tracks, and the scales fall from his eyes. He is enlightened.

So there is Moloch’s symbolic meaning, but there is also the method by which Moloch can be seen. It is only through a type of enlightenment. After taking Maria’s offered apple in the Garden, Freder has an amazing ability to SEE and FEEL things, that he otherwise may not have. Moloch has been existing all the time, but Moloch must be perceived, and in order to perceive it, one must have an awakened, perceptive, feeling nature (which means to have been visited by the Serpent, or the White Rabbit, or Gandalf, etc. and to have accepted the offer of greater, but perhaps more painful, vision). To have taken the red pill.
(The following video sequence is quite long. You may have better results if you download it directly.)
enlightenment

It may also be necessary to be one who is seeing Moloch and its consequences of Evil for the first time, rather than to have grown up around and within Moloch (e.g. the workers who calmly collect the exploded dead). It may be necessary to come from ‘outside’.

Additionally, the symbol of Moloch strongly underlies the central child-killing motif, which is contextualized via the Jewish story of Abraham and Isaac as well as the Christian Passion, and actualized later in the film through the ignorant (barely averted) killings of the children of the workers and Freder, Joh Frederson’s only begotten son, the son with no living Mother.

The use of clocks is quite obvious and powerful, as clocks are machines themselves, and specific machines that have great power over the human mind. They are the symbol of the broken Sabbath, or slavery, of Death, etc. To be extremely small inside of a clock is to be in the exact visual placement of a worker in Metropolis, surrounded and enclosed by gears and ceilings.

Additionally, the use of the metric 10-hour clock has strong associations with the French Revolution, with its introduction of the Metric System. In this way Moloch and the Clock are entwined, the guillotine being the Moloch of the French Revolution. The minor-key Marsellaise motif used throughout also strengthens this connection.

These methods are hardly ever used alone, and there are many combinations, such as geometric-symbolic-light combinations. Again, this was just a simple structure upon which to display some of film’s persuasive power, as well as to speak about some of the major relevant themes in the film.

I have also not touched on what is probably the main method of film’s persuasion, and this is because it is more general. This is film’s power to produce illusion. We will come to it.

But can not the stage also use these methods (including the as yet un-described ‘illusion’)? Can not the written word? Can not a painting? Film does not seem to have a monopoly on artistic manipulation methods. Which methods are specific only to a film, or at least made easier or more powerful by film? (Ben. footnotes 11,17)

3. What is film’s power?
So then what is film, exactly? What are its abilities? What can it do that other arts cannot? Film (in 1930) has the following powers: to record and to transform light and sound within space, time, and context (meaning). This definition of powers cannot be applied to the four candidate media (writing,painting,photography,live performance).

The following chart lists the four candidate media along with A/V film. It compares their ability to perform four types of action. They are:
-manipulation of sight and sound
-manipulation of meaning
-manipulation of time
-ability to record and edit

Notice that these four types of action are not simply a restatement of the specific film techniques I was describing earlier, such as geometric-symbolic association. They are, of course, related, but I have tried to break the abiities down to bare bones, so as to make clear the distinction that film has over its competitors.

The comparison purports to represent answers to the following question: Can the medium, by itself, perform the action? For example, ‘Can painting, by itself, perform manipulation of sense perception? (Yes it can.)’ Perhaps there could be some debate over these answers. For example, I have claimed that photography does not manipulate or use time. Clearly, time is a part of the photography process, but can we really speak of photography manipulating it? I’m not sure. For the present, I fall on the mercy of the gray area. Does cubism manipulate/use time? Perhaps. This approaches Benjamin’s statement regarding the way that ‘traditional art forms in certain phases of their development strenuously work towards effects which later are effortlessly attained by the new ones. (his 17th footnote)

Only recorded A/V can well fulfill each of the four actions.

Painting and photography do not manipulate/use time. Live performance is live, and does not ‘record’ (unless we want to go ancient and speak of epic poetry performance recording onto ancient memories, which, clearly, we could attempt). All the media manipulate/use sights, sounds, and meaning. Recorded A/V is the only medium to easily and powerfully manipulate and use sight and sound, meaning, time, and record/edit. This is not just a feather in its cap, or power steering. It is a big deal (Or as Joe Biden would say…).

Recorded A/V has the twin powers of (1) RECORDING light and sound within space, time, and context, and (2) EDITING (dividing, combining, arranging, and transforming the recording). A note: recording implies editability. If something is gone, it cannot be edited. But if it is still here, or if a copy is still here, editing can occur.

It is the editing power that gives film its massive powers of illusion. Illusion has always been a part of art, but film takes it to a new level. Here are some clips that demonstrate some aspects of this. However, the illusion of which I speak is do deep within film, that really, any clip of any movie could be used, because there is so much of illusory nature in what we see in the finished product on the screen.
illusion

(Although it’s certainly debatable as to whether or not Brecht would have been a fan of David Lynch, that last scene in the ‘illusion’ sequence, from Mulholland Drive, is certainly Brechtian to a large degree, as is the film generally.)

“This circumstance, more than any other, renders superficial and insignificant any possible similarity between a scene in the studio and one on the stage…It’s illusionary nature is that of the second degree, the result of cutting. That is to say, in the studio the mechanical equipment has penetrated so deeply into reality…” (–Benjamin, 11th chapter)

4. Machine Tools

So recorded A/V is the best example yet (as of 1930) of a tool that is extremely well-suited for recording and editing sight and sound within space, time, and meaning. When a tool can powerfully do this, it allows for a possibly vast array of manipulation techniques (especially if Psychology and BioChemistry have advanced to a stage where human reactions are extremely predictable). And it is film’s machine virtues that allow this to happen. Humans, by themselves, record and edit, but are woefully powerless with regard to some of film’s recording and editing capabilities (F2). Let us take another step then, and think of A/V recording as merely a subset of a supra category, ‘recording tools that can analyze, store, and leverage (F3). Clearly, we are starting to talk about computers.

Recording and editing. Perceiving and then manipulating the perception. How does the man do it? How the machine? Let us compare, as is merely hinted at in Metropolis, some of the relevant virtues of the Machine compared to the relevant virtues of the Mensch. Both ‘agents’ have methods of HOW they sense the WHATS. I in no way intend a re-invention of psychology or epistemology here, so please accept my descriptions in as laymanlike a way as possible, for now. Again, I throw myself upon the mercy of the gray area.

The Mensch can sense via the eyes, ear, tongue, nose, and ‘the body’ (and in other ways, if we are to follow Blak, HUxley, etc. in cleansing our Doors). These perceptions (somehow, sometimes) become memory. The ‘objects’ that can be sensed can be visual, auditory, olfactory, tangible, or tasteable (or perhaps spiritual/prophetic/Blakean–and that’s the last of that). We have the Media, the senses, and the Messages, the sense objects themselves. There is recording (in the memory), and then there is analysis, editing, etc., in the mind. Things that can be sensed include perhaps gravity, mass, light, energy, chemicals, etc.

The Machine can sense via it’s human sense organ imitations, and later invented organs that will probably exist, such as smellers, magnetometers,quarkvisualizers. These sense imitations are perhaps never perfect mimicries (perhaps lacking understanding, or at least human understanding), but they are more powerful in many ways, including the ability to sense such things as more of the electro-magnetic spectrum, very slow things, very fast things, chemical emissions, etc. (“evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye…”–Benjamin, Chapter 13). It should be said here that tools such as mathematics, parallax, telescopes, microscopes, Galileo’s New Sciences, Dialectic, Writing, Spoken Language, are all types of machines/tools that expand human perception, or perhaps information. But clearly, the future is the computer.

The Machine has its own memory, whether it be the film negative or the magnetic disk image. This memory, like the human memory, can be analysed, edited, etc. in the computer’s ‘mind’. These powers are (in many ways, but perhaps not all) many,many factors of strength greater than the human brain’s analysis (at least if we continue to increase computing power and design). So, and this hearkens back to the shadow of Fascism, the film camera is simply the beginning of our ability to use computers to manipulate emotions via methods that involve recorded and edited ‘Perceptions’.
machine-vision

“For the entire spectrum of optical, and now also acoustical, perception the film has brought about a similar deepening of apperception. It is only an obverse of this fact that behavior items shown in a movie can be analyed much more precisely and from more points of view than those presented on paintings or on the stage…” (–Benjamin, chapter 13)

5. Ineluctable Modality

‘So it requires enhancement to understand?’
‘Yes, most art does.’
–from The Age of Spiritual Machines

“In this way any man might even find himself part of a work of art.”
“At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer.” (–Benjamin, chapter 10)
“It is to him, aimlessly strolling through the crowds in the big cities in studied contrast to their hurried, purposeful activity, that things reveal themselves in their secret meaning: The true picture of the past flits by” (‘Philosophy of History’), and only the flaneur who idly strolls by receives the message.”–Arendt’s introduction to Benjamin)

(The following short film is essential to the essay, but is large. You might have a better time with it if you download it directly and then play it on your own player. It is in .mov format.). It’s also nicer if you give it some more screen space.

stephen

The following is the text to the narration in the previous short film–

(begin narration)– Later, Stephen would run his daily percep through his revamped filter, which let him concentrate on the relevant data. His amblings through Morningside would produce just under a terabyte, and an 1/8th of his RAM had fritzed out the day before. There was no fear of data loss of course, he just knew he wouldn’t have as much processing power back home today. This meant filtering a bit more than usual.

He would probably get by with only blocking the top half of the EM spectrum. He certainly needed the bottom. He even scrapped the visible spectrum completely, since there was no need in terms of the project. Although it was in truth a miniscule cut.

The main focus would be the radar and GPS combine for his walk-web. He was allowing various contexts to be downgrepped and associated in real time during the walk: historical, electoral, demographic, literary, trigonometric, and harmonic. This lump would be analyzed at home.

He was composing a series, ‘Leopold Bloogle’. Even though the Vatican bloc of West E.U., surprisingly opposed by Ireland itself (with Parisian support), had held strongly to much of Irish copyrights, it relented with Joyce’s work. Although the Irish brand was the lynchpin of the Vatican’s recent ‘Up Spirit!’ campaign, they had little use for a self-exile, whereas the majority of the Irish and the Parisians felt that it was Joyce’s main desire to be subjected to a good flaying. The vote had taken place one week earlier, and Stephen was very excited to get on with the financing of the project, which he could finally begin.

He would get it rolling with a doubleprelaunch buzzbounce, which was industry standard, and pretty much the only reliable method of obtaining the coveted art-flex-ad-7 credit he needed. This required initial committments to pre-assign rights to the finished project to various advertising firms. He already knew which firms would be at the door. He’d done the research.

This particular piece was inspired by the recent ‘Go, go, Odysseus!’, by the Damien Hirst Collective (or so Stephen liked to think. A more keen percept might see in this piece a plagiary of Duante Aliger’s new ‘Waiting for Anchises’. At least, one could anticipate the criticisims.).

As long as he didn’t need to filter out too much,, he could probably wrap up the initial visualization before this evening’s game (the Knicks had finally reduced their incumbent salary weight, James Dolan III having fired general manager Derek Fisher, who had pushed them way over the salary cap. They certainly weren’t competitive, but it beat overpaying for mediocrity. Hey, they were on the bubble for a 16 seed, and it was almost April. There’s always next year.)

He would run the visualization analysis tomorrow, after making the tough call between the pro-Foucault or the pro-Kierkegaard choice engine. He would probably end up using both engines for the series, which would have have 24 pieces in total.

It would turn out later that he would need to cut the tradaudio portion of the harmonic context. Although, he loved to listen to tradaudio combines while working, he had more than enough left over from last week to keep his ears numb and happy, and the data wasn’t necessary. All he really needed was the overtone mathematics, in keeping with the overall differential theme he was trying to elucidate.

As a pigeon fwugged by his head his mind flitted momentarily back to the Dun Laoghaire swim cove, where you could jump in the icy cold beneath the Martello’s gaze and feel the muck between your toes. Nothing else to do there but feel it, and think, and keep walking. (–end narration)

6. Enlightenment and concluding remarks

Enlightenment is a central theme in ‘Metropolis’. I feel that ‘feelings of enlightenment’ must happen to all people at various times, and that those who might wish to control others sometimes know this.

I continue to have moments of epiphany or possibly enlightenment throughout my life. However, this experience of mine could be conditioned in many different ways. Did I really experience ‘enlightenment’, ‘epiphany’, ‘wonder’, when I watched that Nike commercial? Did the Nike corporation want me to think that I had? What about Hitler? Etc. Or did I just have a specific physical reaction (chills), which occurrence was specifically calculated by advertisers as an effect of their advertisement?

Film is the birth of mechanized recording and editing and can be powerfully manipulative. Although film records and edits audio and video, there is a brave new world of machine perception that is currently, and on the verge of, opening up, and it’s effects may be scientifically calculable. Some uses of this computerized record/edit will serve mankind. Others will be used as attempts to enslave it. One of these methods of enslavement will be ‘false enlightenment’. ‘False enlightenment’ seems to play a role in persuasion, and persuasion towards Fascistic impulses. I realize I’ve offered no ‘proof’, only, shall we say, riffs.

Enlightenment mimicry, or false enlightenment, is no new idea. It is deep in our human stories. It was in Eden and in Gilgamesh. It is an aspect of Loki, of Hermes, of Anansi. It is an extremely weak chink in our psychological armor, and can be powerfully exploited by those who have the Will. Film by itself has been a Way, and film’s computer children are the tools for stronger Ways still.

Footnotes
F1: I’ve also claimed that live human performance is the only medium without the capability to record and edit. I am obviously speaking of qua live human performance, without the addition of recording tools. The question is, ‘Can live human performance, without…,perform recording? (No it can’t)’.)

F2: However, I do always like to think of humans as having some magical combination of internal recording and editing that one can’t put one’s finger on, but is still always somehow ‘better’ than the method of a machine. But this ‘Neo’ishness is not to the point. In any case, reproduction and distribution are clearly to the advantage of the machines.

F3: Such as programs using other programs, and the outputs of other programs as new perceptions upon which to perform manipulation, distribution, and new perception intake.

Resources:

Benjamin, Walter:
“Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

Blake, William
“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”

“Carroll, Lewis”
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

Curtiz, Michael:
“Casablanca”

Gilliam, Terry
“Brazil”

Godard, Jean-Luc
“Le Mepris”

Huxley, Aldous
“Brave New World”

Kurzweil, Ray:
“The Age of Spiritual Machines”

Lang, Fritz:
‘Metropolis’–There are various versions floating around. I have one of the newest ones.

Lumet, Sidney
“Dog Day Afternoon”

Lynch, David
“Mulholland Drive”

Malone, Luke
“Yeah, I’m good at FinalCut.”

Orwell, George
“1984″

Proyas, Alex
“Dark City”

Riefenstahl, Reni
“Triumph of the Will”

Scott, Ridley
“Blade Runner”

Wachowski Brothers
“The Matrix”