Performativity

Feminist theorist and philosopher Judith Butler described performativity as "that relative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains." She applies this to her study of gender development. Butler sees gender as something being rehearsed and that people come to perform in the mode of belief, and believes that the key to performativity is repetition. An example of this would be a father teaching his son to play football, and through repetition, the son would learn to love football.
                                          
Whilst this isn't exclusively a male thing to do, most of the time it is a male figure who introduces you to the sport, whether it be your father or a sports personality, like the character Jess Bhamra from "Bend it like Beckham" (Gurinder Chadha, 2002).
                                                 
                                                   
Judith Butler also believes that performativity also applies to sexual orientation, with heterosexuality and homosexuality acting not as fixed categories, but as a conditioning through repetition.

                   
In Butler's definition, performativity is seen as an authoritative voice, enforced by laws or views of social norms, and that our most personal acts are being scripted by society, with the difference between private and public being a fiction designed by an "oppressive status quo".
                                               
                                                     

Rothwell's Interviewer roles and my accident.

Rothwell's "mode of address" is used to establish the role of which the interviewer adopts, in relation to the film and the events that they are describing. These modes range from participant, giving us a first hand view of the events, to artist, using metaphorical or symbolic interpretations of the event. I will be retelling the events through the perspective of a "guide".

When I was 15 my friend convinced me to try to learn how to skateboard with him during the summer holiday. After creating a Frankenstein like skateboard out of second hand and store bought parts we set out on our quest for fun, learning from scratch with him acting as my guide and mentor. For the entirety of the summer holiday I learned how to cruise and go down hills and bumps, eventually leading us to go to my local park where they had a course for bikes (no one actually took there bikes there so the local skateboarders used it instead). Here I practised my ollies and kick flips, honing my skills on the cement hills that filled this little corner of the playground.

With a new school year approaching and an accident free summer, I was called out on the last day to skateboard some more. What could go wrong? after a few more hours of practice with my friend, i figured I should go home and get ready for school. However, my friend insisted that I go down the big hill one last time before I leave. I had a bad feeling about it but I figured I had gone down the hill enough times to be confident enough. As I stood on top of the cement hill, friend by my side saying words of encouragement, a football flew by and knocked my skateboard out from under my foot, shaking my confidence all the more before my decent. After a few more seconds to compose myself, I took a deep breath and leaned forward, propelling myself down the relatively small but steep hill. As I got to the bottom by front wheel hit a pot hole, trapping itself in place and sending me flying forwards. This is it. I landed on my front, twisting my shoulder and slamming my chin on the concrete floor. I heard a crunching sound in my mouth and spat out what I assumed was a small stone I must have accidentally gotten in my mouth during the fall. I spat out a shard of tooth. I stood up and popped my shoulder back in place and as I sat down, my friend and the other skaters ran to get me some water, tissues and a plaster, which at that point I had no idea what that was for as all I did was break a tooth and dislocate my shoulder. I hold the tissue against my broken tooth assuming it was for that, at which point my friend said "No dude, that's for your chin." I held it against the underside of my chin and wiped away a large amount of blood, which looked darker as my vision had started to go blue from the adrenaline.

After I had gotten home my dad and sister had decided to accompany me to the A&E to get stitches. My dad was in a particularly bad mood as this was his day off and he assumed my mum was over reacting to my gash and after the 3 hour wait I was finally seen by a trainee doctor. After my dad saw how bad the gash actually was he had an argument with the young doctor, who simply wanted to glue it shut and after a second opinion from a more experienced doctor, they proceeded to take out the anaesthetic and sewing needles. After I dealt with one of my biggest fears at the time (needles), I told the doctor about my shoulder and she assured me that I was fine and I went home feeling a little shaken up. The next day I went to the dentist to get a filling for the broken tooth (which broke two weeks later and had to be replaced), and a year later my shoulder started falling out of the socket. After a month of physio my shoulder was practically good as new (minus the odd clicking sound).

Open Voice and "Rough Aunties"

"Open voice" is a narrative style theory by Carl R Plantinga that follows a character centred,  episodic style that typically observational, reflexive yet ambiguous, leaving the viewers with open questions/ answers. Plantinga said "Where the formal may be said to explain, the open voice shows, provokes, and explores. The open voice exploits the abilities of cameras and microphones to observe and show, record and play back."

"Rough Aunties" is a 2008 documentary by Kim Longinotto that follows "The Bobbi Bears", a group of South African women who have devoted their lives to helping and rescuing children and young people from sexual abuse and neglect.

Plantinga's "open voice" applies quite well to longinotto's emotionally powerful documentary because it portrays the very sensitive subject of wild abuse, something that is very hard to overcome and takes time, which results in the film showing episodes in the lives of victims as the Bobbi Bears come to give their support. Due to the nature of the subject, Longinotto stays strictly observational throughout the entire filming process, providing little to no input to the events taking place.

An example of the film's episodic nature is when the Bobbi Bears meet a young girl who has been beaten and neglected by her grandfather. At first, the ladies question and console the girl, all working to to learn about this girls's troubles and better her better her life. Later on in the film we see the Bobbis confront the grandfather about his actions, which he denies ever doing. at the end of the film we learn that one of the Bobbis took the girl into foster care and after a long discussion with her husband, they adopt the girl.

Throughout that entire episode, several questions are left unanswered, which works well as it portrays real life, which is all to often ambiguous and depressing.

Poetic Documentary of my local area

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYnOSdE_Ewk

Ethical Issues in Documentary and March of the Penguins.

Bill Nichols stated that there are two kinds of film, the documentaries of wish fulfilment and the documentaries of social representation. documentaries of social representation are referred to as non fiction and represent the world we live in, making social reality visible and audible.
Nichols said that in non fiction, people are treated as "social actors", where they conduct their lives in more or less the same way as they would without the presence of the camera, so this essentially means that the film maker is nothing more than an observer, who's soul purpose is to capture the events that unfold with little to no interference. This however can raise some ethical issues as the film maker is forced to allow certain events to unfold, events that they could have stopped or changed the outcome, yet this would go against the idea of realistically representing the world.

"March of the Penguins" is a 2005 feature length documentary directed by Luc Jacquet and narrated by Morgan Freeman. The film follows a colony of Emperor penguins as they try to cross the south pole to get to their breeding grounds at the end of the Antarctic summer, and the struggles they face, whether that being environmental factors or predators like the leopard seal.

In one scene, several young penguin chicks perish during a storm, eventually leading to some of the mothers trying to steal chicks from each other, and some parents die while searching for food, dooming their chicks back at the breading grounds.

Director Luc Jacquet and the other members of production had to observe and refrain from interfering as this was the natural struggle the penguins went through on a yearly basis, and interfering would be disrupting the natural cycle of life for these animals and the predators that hunted them.

"Cornetto Trilogy" and Seriality

Seriality is the concept in which the process of occurring in a sequential manner; a serial manner; a succession. When talking about seriality in terms of films, this essentially means  how a film begins a series and can even apply to transtextuality and how said films have been referenced in or influenced other films and media.

The "Cornetto Trillogy" is a nickname given to the series of films created by English director Edgar Wright starring comedic actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The trilogy consists of "Shaun of the Dead" (2004), "Hot Fuzz" (2007) and "The World's End" (2013), which are all interestingly not related to each other in a canonical sense, but rather different characters played by the same characters who go through similar circumstances, but in different genres.

"Shaun of the Dead" is a horror/ romantic comedy with zombies (lovingly dubbed "The RomZomCom") which revolves around Shaun (Simon Pegg), an electronics store employee who lives with his deadbeat childhood friend Ed (Nick Frost). Shaun's life starts to fall apart when his girlfriend Liz leaves him because he lacks commitment, his other roommate, Pete, threatens to evict Ed and a zombie apocalypse just so happens to break out. Shaun gathers his friends and family and try to survive by making it to the only save haven he knows of, a local pub called The Winchester.

"Hot Fuzz" is an action/ crime comedy with a murderous cult which revolves around Police Sergeant Nicolas Angel (Simon Pegg), who has just recently been transferred to the small village of Sandford where he meets and befriends the constable's son, Danny (Nick Frost).  His girlfriend had left him because he is too dedicated to the job, his new colleagues don't like him because he is too serious and he happens to come across a conspiracy involving leading members of the community who kill those they deem "nuisances" all in order to make Sandford  "Town of the Year". Nicolas and Danny gathers their fellow officers and fight to rid the town of the murderous cult.

"The World's End" is an action/ Science fiction comedy which revolves around Garry King (Simon Pegg),  a depressed patient who decides to relive the greatest day of his life by gathering his old estranged school friends Andy (Nick Frost), Paddy, Martin and Eddy and head back to their hometown of Newton Haven to complete the pub crawl they never finished. Unfortunately they discover that everyone in town has been replaced with androids by aliens and now have to fight their way to the last pub on the pub crawl, The World's End.

This mixed genre comedy trilogy amassed a cult following which has lead to references in other films and tv shows, comics and action figures. However, most of this wouldn't have happened if it weren't for a tv series that aired in the early 2000's by Edgar Wright which also featured Simpon Pegg and Nick Frost as the main characters, with the third episode being the inspiration for "Shaun of the Dead". While "Hot Fuzz" and "The World's End" were well received, most of the transtextuality has come from "Shaun of the Dead", which was the only film in the series to receive its own comic book adaptation and had the characters Shaun and Ed cameo in the "Phineas and Ferb" episode "Night of the living Pharmacists", which was also a comedy of the zombie sub-genre. 

Ndalianis talks about how franchises can influence the media and entertainment industry and makes reference to Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" and how it spawned numerous sequels, games and theme park attractions. It goes on to say how the advancements in technology have broken down boundaries and have incorperated the film style, genre and actors into the space of said media.

This could never happen to the "Cornetto trilogy" in the same scale as "Jurassic Park" as it was intended for a more mature audience and filled a niche role in the film industry.  

"Talk to Her" and Neurophenomenology

"Talk to Her" is a 2002 Spanish drama by Pedro Almodovar about Marco Zuluaga, a journalist/ travel writer, and Benigno Martin, a nurse, who form a friendship while looking after the women they love who are both in comas. However, Marco finds out that his girlfriend, Lydia, had gotten back together with her ex weeks before her accident and Benigno's obsession with his patient, Alica, grows stronger and more delusional.

Neurophenomenology refers to the neuroscientific explanations of embodied experiences. This means that actions, emotions and sensations of others are mapped onto the observer's own sensory- motor and viscero- motor system. This simply means that we mirror the emotions and actions of the characters we witness on screen, from their emotions to their blinking or breathing. This is done through the mirror neurons which are motor neurons that discharge when the motor act is observed.

Elsaesser and Hagener's "Cinema as Skin and Touch" states that "we take in films somatically, with our whole body, and we are affected by images even before cognitive information processing or unconscious identification addresses and envelops us on another level. " When watching "Talk to Her", we grow to like these characters. We imprint ourselves on Marco as he seems closed off at first, similar to us as we are unfamiliar with the characters, but he soon opens up to Benigno who is shown to be  kind, caring yet awkward. Through his interactions with Marco we open up to him. After Marco leaves to travel, we are left watching Benigno when we learn that Alicia is pregnant, and Benigno is the prime suspect. When we first hear the implications of rape, like Benigno, we stiffen with shock and tension. We hope it wasn't Benigno despite the fact that he is infatuated with her, to the point where he openly talks about wanting to marry her. He is finally accused of the rape and like Benigno, we sink with sorrow, mirroring him as he slides down his chair a little. We are disappointed with Benigno for what he has done and once Marco hears about Benigno's actions and imprisonment,  he mirrors us as he too shares our emotions.