New York, Part Two: “I see you and I record you”

In last week’s green guide (3/8/06) Jim Schembri wrote of Big Brother:

Reinforced was the notion that the culture is fostering a generation that is not “media savvy” but “media stupid”. It seems, quite ironically, that total immersion in the medium does not enhance people’s awareness of its power but renders them oblivious to it.

We know the BB housemates aren’t selected for their IQ, but that they were still happy to masturbate, fart, insult, lie, deceive and backstab live on national television remains difficult to fathom. So too, the inevitable surprise by freshly evicted housemates as they view montages that – hey! – editing distorts things. In 2006 this should be a revelation to nobody other than tourists from Mars. 

(the full article is here)

Personally I’m slightly torn- I’d like to say that at its core, Schembri’s comment is disingenous- that it ignores the complexity of what experiencing Big Brother from the inside must entail, that the show trades upon sharing a kind-of in joke with its audience, which is probably more sophisticated than some critics give credit for.  I’d also imagine that it is obvious to many people, regardless of whatever derrogatory comments one might like to make about a big brother contestant, that being involved in a reality tv program must be a difficult experience to negotiate- an experience which is designed specifically to manipulate one’s behaviour and emotions to an extent that awareness of its engineering means nothing. 

Watching Jonas Mekas’ Lost Lost Lost however, made me entertain the possibilty that Schembri could be right: is it possible to become so comfortable with the technology around us, that what we are shown through the lens becomes naturalised, the fact of its manipulation invisible?  Do we accept the outcomes of that manipulation without thought to the process that creates it?   

The first few reels of Lost Lost Lost reveals the camera to be an almost non-existent presence, it sees and it records, and the overall style is such that Mekas’ voiceover, editing and music contributions do little to suggest that what we are watching is anything but exactly what Mekas himself saw and experienced.  This of course is a misnomer; even ignoring the film’s manipulation, the fact of the technology, the existence of the camera itself claims its inherent function as representation only.  However, at the time of Mekas’ explorations with his Bolex camera- while familiarity couldn’t be claimed, the technology presented an equally compelling sense of ”undeniable immediacy of impact and enunciative address continuously couched in the present tense” (Arthur, 2005: 2).  Film was considered to be such a powerful agent that the “16mm camera was potentially considered to be a weapon of provocation and subversion” (Stevenson, 2002: 182). 

This notion of ‘immediacy’ and ‘presentness’ seems to somehow intimate a kind of truthfulness, predicated upon the strength of the recorded images presented.  Our familiarity with filmic technology may no longer necessarily suggest immediacy, however our concept of the image as a truth teller has certainly not dissipated much- the phrase “a picture tells a thousand words” remains as literal and uncomplicated by irony as ever.  Today, some reality fails to exist without the images to support them- there is in fact, an expectation that any reality will automatically have visual representation:  a news story is not news unless there is a photo or footage support it, and the Vietnam war tells us how much more compelling we find the image than the word. 

Watching Mekas’ visual ‘diary’, it struck me that regardless of its re-edited form some twenty five years after the footage was filmed, the visual fact of its existence aids us to believe in its veracity.  The images own so much legitimacy and ‘truth’ that Mekas’ refrain of “I was there, I saw it, I recorded it” can be construed merely as uncomplicated fact.  For Big Brother, where everything we are shown is based upon a patently artificial premise, its appeal is derived not from our knowledge of its artificiality but rather the show’s overall projection of transperancy and immediacy derived from an endless parade of images from as many angles as can be imagined.

For all that, I cannot agree with Schembri, his analysis is overly simplisitc and too determined to delineate an aware/unaware dichotomy, which in today’s climate is certainly too complicated to designate.  However if there is one thing a show like Big Brother is going to reveal, I’d argue it’s a desire to believe in the images with which we’re presented- which we mediate through the conscious endorsement of our own immersion.  We allow ourselves to be complicit with the show’s producers in order to suspend our cynicism and disbelief.  Equally, I’d argue that it would suit the purposes of  the housemates to allow themselves to behave in a manner that suggests they are unaware of the cameras, both in and outside of the big brother house.

Mekas’ Lost Lost Lost for me ultimately conveys its character as artful representation rather than simply a recorded diary replaying its already acknowledged truths.  As the film progresses, Mekas’ growing sophistication with the camera allows it to become more than merely a recording device.  This is furthered by his voiceover, which acts to compose even the earlier reels as artful- with Mekas’ repetitious phrases of ”I was there, I recorded it” and “I see you and record you” rendered poetic, so clearly are they without function, usurped of their literal meaning by the moving images on screen. 

Felicity suggested in the first lecture for this subject that some of the films screened during the semester may possibly allow the mind the wander.  Perhaps even the simple act of recording itself, like Mekas’ seemingly never ending random footage, also permits us this kind of mental space- the act of recording becoming the act of representation, allowing us a broadening of experience that ‘actually being there’ could never provide.

The two art works shown below, John Baldessari’s “What is” and Fred Wilson’s “Guarded View” respectively- I think convey this ‘broadening’ experience.  When it comes to art, I’m very much a philistine (so forgive my clumsy analysis)- I think they’re interesting examples because both explicitly play with notions of representation through their literalisation- much like Mekas’ Lost Lost Lost.  The second image, the Fred Wilson mannequins, highlights the fact of New York museums’ almost all black/African American security guard community.  Its currently on display at the Whitney, where it was flanked by several African American guards, to which it referred (interestingly, of all the museum security guards I saw on my trip- and there were many, I remember the ones surrounding the mannequins the best and in detail).  Apparently Fred Wilson’s work specialises in commenting upon the instiution of the museum.  It is explained much better here.