Idea moodboard

lacan

jaques lacans name is oddly fitting as his theory of the mirror stage focuses on a persons own personal lack, lacan stated that people have a mirror stage, the mirror stage is something lacan initially theorised took place during a childs early development but later expanded upon claiaming that people constantly experience the mirror phase through out there lives. the mirror stage involves someone invisioning a perfect version of themselves which they then see as unobtainable, this creates aconstant desire to become that best verion of yourself but as it is unobtainable the person will experiece various lacks in their life which they will try to furfill as they believe that will help them become that perfect version and be happy but as the mirror version is unobtainable there will constantly be new lacks and the person will always be missing somthing there perfect counterpart has no matter what they do.

lacans idea of lack comes from the desires of a person and can essientally be boilt down never being satified, a person will always have a lack and will seek to fill it but whenever they get what they desire they will want somthing else, essentally humans as they are will never be satified, whiplsash: whiplash is a film that focuses on an unhealthy obsession and what ignoring those around you can do to someones life, during one scene of the film the main character neeman experiences a car crash whilst trying to make a performance on time, dispite being bloody and battered he still makes his way to the performance even though he needs medical attention, this focuses on how his obsession has made him value his career over his own life. in another scene of the film neeman empties his room of everyting but his drum kit and a matress, this is the directors way of using mis en scene to show the audience how neeman thinks, him removing everything else from his room excpet the bare nessities is representing him pushing out all the parts of his life that arent drumming like his dad and girlfriend, it also shows how he seems drumming as a vital part of life like eating and sleeping

multi me 4 hour film challenge

contextual studdies evaluation

My contextual studies assignment was initially met with a degree of difficulty, my decision to study the Australian new wave in particular was actively discouraged by my teacher john as he made very clear that he did not have resources on the topic, this did prove challenging in the early stages of the assignment but whilst john was correct in the that resources sense were difficult to find, once I found them there proved to be an ample amount of information out there and indeed and deep and interesting cinema that I would have a lot to talk about. After my initial endeavour of research into the Australian new wave I reached the conclusion that the films of this period focused on the distanced relation between the rural and urban parts of Australia as most of the films featured characters being place into situations they weren’t comforted to, in addition a lot of focus was placed on the aboriginal Australians and highlighted how the way they lived their lives was different from the more urban white Australians. I began to formulate my presentation and choose my films, starting with the 1972 film wake in fright. I had selected this film due to its plot and premise supporting my argument that the Australian new wave highlighted differences. As time went on I began to struggle, particularly with choosing which other films to cover at which point I had a one to one catch up with john to receive feedback, here he told me to focus on the Australian aspects of the films and what about them is so significant that it could only have been made in Australia, if it weren’t for this feedback I do not believe the rest of the assignment would have went as well as I believe it did as without that feedback I would not have realised the true theme of the Australian new wave which linked back to its creation and thus I believe I would not have as strong of an argument to make. After my second round of research, I focused on the Australian aspect and concluded that the Australian new wave was about highlighting Australian stories and aspects of the country which included the previously mentioned social differences, whilst these differences were still an important part of the movement and were highlighted in many films it wasn’t the central part of the Australian new wave. The Australian new wave was born from Australian’s desire to have a film industry but until later I did not realise that the reason why was so important, after this realisation I was able to link that fact to how the films themselves linked to Australian culture and then further link it to sources that supported the idea that Australians wanted films that represented their culture. Overall, I believe I have a good argument to support the idea that Australian new wave films were made from a desire for Australians to tell their own stories, furthermore I believe it allowed me to chose films to discuss that support all aspects of my argument I was able to utilise my own connection to Australia in order to support my claims My actual presentation could have been improved and more focused, this was partially because of the extended period between making the presentation and presenting but I also believe it would have been better if I had more clips to analyse with more focused analysis. What my presentation lacked was made up for by question time though if I were to do this again, I would aim to have more of those questions answered in the presentation itself

Mulvey

mulvey's theory focuses on the male gaze and specifically how its used to demistify women. the way mainstream hollywood worked at the time of mulvey was very male dominated, in fact you could argue the men were actually scarred of the women and used films as a way to keep women depowered in society, whilst the lack of women in important roles was one way hollywood attempeted to lessen them another main method they used was turning women into objects, the camera was being pointed from a straight mans perspective and thus would fetishise the women, this was to expose and demistify the woman, the idea of a woman in power was scary to the men so by either objectifying them or exposing every aspect of them phsyically it would show the audience who were meant to share the view point of the straight males in charge of the film that there was nothing to fear we can see a somewhat modern example of this theory in practise in the 2007 film transformers by micheal bay a man who likes barely clothed women almost as much as he likes explosions

megan foxes outfit here reveals most of her body, this links to the idea of physically exposing women to demistify them. the way the camera is postioned hides her face as that would humanise her and instead focuses on her boobs as a way to objectify her character.