Cinema and social theories

Cinema and social theories

Introduction on film studies

Michaela Santulli

Parte I

CLEACC

Introduction to social theories

Why do you think you go to university? To help you think. This course is about you and understanding your identity. Life is about who am I? How do I fit in this crazy world?

Everything in the world is relative. There is no absolute anything. We appertain to one kind of culture, we feel things in western culture. We all live in a western culture: Jewish, Christian, Roman, Greeks.

Other people are different, they are all human, they have something anthropological, they appertain to a kind of human race and other human aspects, but our culture is what really decides what we understand and what we really see. This course is about why cinema is one way to understand ourselves and social theories are one way to approach these things. Why do we like going to the movies, why do we like them?

Culture and identity

Culture is not something for the elite, culture is the thing that we understand. The culture is very important to us, we give it a certain value. We all agree that all those things for us are very important and they can be very unimportant for others. We have to enlarge our way of thinking, so when we look again, we see things that we haven’t seen before.

Renaissance and egocentrism

Renaissance: the man in the center of the world. That’s why we are egocentric, the first thing you think about is what you want. You don’t think about what is good for your group, but what is best for you, that’s narcissistic. Easterns are not really like that. They are less important, the person is unimportant there, the only thing that is important is your group, your family. Tribal cultures don’t have individuals. You were part of something so much bigger.

Western culture and power

For the first time, the man could speak with the creator with the Jewish. Before that, there was another guy. Maximum of power: talking directly to the creator. So we became more narcissistic. From that moment on, western culture became like that. That’s why we are in a period of consumerism. Everything has roots, and it will help us understand why we do what we do. We’ll become more tolerant of things that we don’t understand, otherwise, we’ll become people who just try to stop revolution. It’s very important to have progressive (that try to eliminate history, and that’s bad) and conservatives (that try to stop the progress, and that’s bad). That’s why we need both.

Cultural evolution in Italy

Things are changing and you need the right instruments. After a certain period, Italy became more conservative. Now Italy is paralyzed by conservatives, it has a really low culture, but Italians don’t know. You realize it when you’re out of Italy. Italy doesn’t prepare you to have a visual culture. And that’s what this class is trying to do.

Dispensa: understanding visual culture

First chapter of the “dispensa”: Everything you see is more than you think. Everything you see in a film is there for a reason. If you put a shotgun in the screen, there’s going to be a shot. Everything is there for a reason. In the real world, everything has a reason.

Education and perception

What do they teach you in school? Why, where, what, when, how? But it’s not the why it is, you have to understand it, it’s not just in a row. You don’t forget your family and your sex when you’re walking in a street, you are a complex individual. The first thing you do is think: what is it? What does it mean?

The only thing you understand is the only thing you already know. If there are no words for things, you don’t understand them. There’s no way to capture them, you feel them, but you don’t recognize them. There is a social theory that says that we live our lives just through our language. That’s a country based on things you say and the world you use. All Italians are excellent at using the language. There’s all this other thing called visual culture that is completely ignored.

Visual culture in Italy

If you look at every newspaper in Italy, everyone is very descriptive and easy, so Italians can easily understand what they are talking about. If you go to La Repubblica online, you see so many useless videos, but they don’t think they are relevant, because everyone in the world is investing in videos.

Thinking, speaking, feeling

• Thinking
• Speaking
• Feeling

The first thing is: how does it make you feel? We are Italian and we live in a system that never asked us what we are feeling. Then there is a thinking process and then we end up speaking.

Stories we tell

What kind of stories do we tell ourselves? How do we construct our identities? We tell ourselves a story of ourselves. You are narrating to yourself things. When you buy a sweater: that’s really me. You identify with a process. You were born in a certain place and that’s your identity. People came to you and they said who you are and where you came from and other associations that come from your roots. But you no longer feel bound to your parents’ job. Your children do what they like to do. You have to recognize what you do well and use it, but you have to recognize what you like to do, which is different.

Talent and identity

If you always listen to music, that doesn’t make you a musician. It’s really easy to confuse the two. Your talent could be something that you do really easily. You’ve got to really look at those things and find a place in society where you can do it.

Visual analysis: Antonello da Messina painting

We can start looking at things: Antonello da Messina painting: What does that mean? You don’t have to study art to understand what that means. You don’t need to study music to listen to it, you can have feelings. What would you say what the painting is about? It shows that Jesus is suffering. Why is that so important? Because everyone suffers. Seeing a god figure suffering like us. And Christ is the figure we would have to feel empathetic about.

2000 years ago and visual semantics

2000 years ago, daily life was really different. When we look at this painting, there is a semantic language, there is a structure. It’s not easy, it takes time to learn the visual semantics. Your eyes usually go to the brightest part of everything. Why? Everything in life has a meaning.

Eyes physically work better with more life. You were born through the light. You are born because you go straight to the light, that is so physiological. We go toward the light physically, it’s an effort. Generally speaking, you can see how the painters use the chromatic colors to bring you to the center of the painting. The painter knows that you have to close off the other areas of the image. They make you feel what they want.

Cultural perspectives on art

If you were born in Mongolia, how would you see that painting? It would be just a guy suffering. But who is that little guy on the corner? That would be a strange thing outside our culture, it’s just an angel.

Second image: Muslim calligraphy

You can’t read it. You have no way of judging what it is about. You don’t know if it’s beautiful or ugly, you have no idea. Simple question about how you live visual things. After having seen them many times, you really figure out what they are. Here I would have to learn something about the Muslim religion, about calligraphy and then understand what it’s written. It’s written that way and that’s the equivalent of Antonello da Messina.

Third picture: Luis Vuitton advertisement

Our culture. It’s an advertisement of Luis Vuitton. What is the image about? It’s about being beautiful: she’s skinny and society loves skinny. Why are skinny women theoretically attractive? Why not being feminine is attractive? Generally speaking, a woman has some attributes. Since you have wide hips to have children, why is it supposed to be bad? Skinny became a value. In the 60s there was this model: Twiggy. She was completely flat and she was the ideal. Everything expressed a social anxiety. That’s the key to understanding culture. Things that are popular solve anxiety.

Image analysis

Where are her breasts? Why did they choose her for that advertisement? Why a woman for Luis Vuitton has been chosen with no breasts? Then, there is the water. What does that mean? It’s sparkly. It reminds the gold of the bag. Diamonds spark. Even the stars in the night sky. They are telling us something.

What about the way she’s dressed? It’s not a dress. It looks like a toga. Who were they? The Greeks. She is a goddess. What is it about gold that makes it precious? It’s very little gold in the world. Gold has been associated with wealth. It reflects things. Bright: life, sun, sky, god. The sky is the home of the celestial sphere and god is there. Light is connected with purity, divinities, presence.

Image: the store front in Paris: Lanvin

This is abstract. It does not make literary sense, but visual sense. What it is about? 2 arms. They kind of hold the light. They are women’s arms. The feminine arms are holding the light and those people sold perfumes. A light you can feel it, but you can’t smell perfume through a mirror. Then, we have a color. It’s pink. One of the things is great for it is that it is defined. Italian culture doesn’t change anything, they just do it slowly better. They don’t do things like that in other parts of the world. Fashion is so popular because it doesn’t go to crazy things, it slowly changes and it’s very defined.

Image: photo taken from the prison in Cuba

This image is from a prison where the men had been captured in Cuba. They torture them and they take pictures. This is a prisoner being shocked by the electrical shock and she’s on a box. Then, there is a typical American. This caused the great scandal. What kind of story is that? It’s a story about me being in power. Let’s make fun of the enemy, he’s no longer human, he’s shit. That’s a bad story but you have to be careful about it.

Image: Marlboro

It’s a story to sell Cigarettes. If you smoke you are a real man. It’s one cowboy, not a group. With two beautiful wild horses. It’s full of symbolism. What do horses represent? Freedom, strength, beauty. But the man controlled the situation.

Image: CBS evening news

What is it about? A news, what happens in the world. What is the news? A selected series of events that the media selects and wants you to watch. This woman has to tell us about really terrible stories. She is smiling, feminine but not too much, with the American flag. It’s a story they are telling us.

News narratives in Italy

In Italy, who is telling the news? What kind of person is talking to you? That’s a story.

Semiotics

They help you understand what things mean. Everything we look at is simply a representation of something else. Nothing you look at is the end of what you see. This man from Geneva analyzes that the written language is really close to the oral one. If we see the word D O G we always think about the pet. We see the world and we immediately think about what it stands for. We see a signifier: it stands for the meaning, but not for what I see.

Understanding symbols

This woman (the Luis Vuitton one) has some signifier. You realize that it stands for so many things. The blue sea stands for the Giotto’s paintings. Red dress- red stands for love, sex, power, passion. Why did the society choose red for passion? When you get an orgasm you get red, when you blush you get red. When people die on the battlefield. Red: death, life, real bases, real stuff. Red is very important here: magenta dress, red lips, red thing she’s standing on. She looks like a goddess.

You see what is semiotic about.

The meaning of a tie

What does a tie mean? We are in Bocconi, you are a professor, so you have to wear a tie. It has a meaning to our society. It’s culture. That’s another way to look at things.

Erving Panofsky and iconology

Erving Panofsky was an expert in renaissance art. He thought that it must be a way of teaching people, of structuring how to understand renaissance art. So he invented iconology: you see only what you recognize and understand.

Levels of understanding in art

When you look at this painting, you see the subject, you identify it. It’s a couple. So you look at something that you identify (first level). You have to look at the symbols (second level). Do I understand them or do I have to study what they meant when they had been used?

Third level: we put it in a historical context. Christianity, bourgeois power were big elements there. There are a series of Christian symbols, because they are married.

Italian cultural fears

Biggest fear for Italians: fare brutta figura. Italians are terrorized to learn a new language. Fare brutta figura is necessary to risk, Italians don’t want to risk.

Smoothness and industrial revolution

Why is it so smooth? What about smoothness that attracts everyone? Seems professional. We live in a world where everything has to be rational. It’s not a great idea, but we’ve been running on it for millions of years. Smoothness is not a natural thing. That’s why we privilege it, because there is little in the world. It comes out from another historical condition.

Think about the end of the 1700s: the industrial revolution. What happened? The economy changed. How was life before? It was agriculture. How did they live? Families, little towns, little fields. For hundreds of years, people have lived that way. It was a really different period, life was all about working. The industrial revolution changed everything. People figured out that life sucked and that they didn’t want to work every day all day. It was a tough life. People ran to the cities to have a better life. All the countryside moves into the cities. You found yourself in the cities and you don’t know anybody. How are you gonna judge them? By the surface, that became much important in the French revolution. In the French revolution how you looked became more important than who you were.

Painting by Readlles

The school system keeps you to memorize. You feel more than you think, so you have to get used to it. Trusting yourself, your own instinct. You have to learn to pay attention to the changes in what you feel. You are a victim of the changes.

If you look at this painting, you don’t know anything about it for sure. What is that painting about? A man reading. Why would someone choose a man reading a tiny book as a subject? Books weren’t that common, they showed your wealth. If you own the book, it gives something you knowledge and the 1700s. What else can we see about the man? he is self-centered, he’s pleasing himself. He has velvet in the background. They are meaning. He has valuable clothes. He is showing off his wealth. He has a ring too. Red is an expensive color. That’s why kings are dressed in red, it is expensive. It illuminated his stomach because it is still a sign of his wealth.

Strange image analysis

He has a very strange image. The subject doesn’t want to be photographed. The painters draw whatever they want in their space, but the photograph has a frame because they leave out something. It creates interesting visual signs, like a man’s arm, with no man. it creates a complex reading of reality. It creates new meaning, new textures. It’s very interesting, it’s a fragment. Just like society became more fragmented so images. In reality, it’s a murderer, he just killed a police officer and he is arrested. It looks like a famous person who doesn’t want to be photographed. It looks like something on the stage. We have these dramatic elements, lighting. We have overexposed lights. The lights make it seem like a Greek tragedy.

Famous American photographer

It’s a very famous American photographer. He documented the great crash. What is this about? Feelings: fear, decay. Looking at it, it’s not a real person, but it’s a poster. He eliminated the context, the world had been reduced to a couple of letters. Ripping the poster is like someone hitting the woman. It looks like tears/blood. The image is very strong and interesting.

Confusing photo analysis

People usually don’t know what it is about. What’s interesting about here? It’s really confusing. You notice a woman suffering, a woman who is looking into the camera, a woman excited and a man laughing. These people just saw a man shot down in front of them. That’s a really interesting social event because we see the human reactions. The public is the subject, not the murderer. People started realizing that crowds acted differently. The light is done with a flash, too exposed. And then we have the darkness. This photo represents very strongly the photo’s language.

Complex narrative photo

This image is really complex, but really narrative. They are narrating something. What is this about? 1955 in America. The subject is a jukebox. 1955 was the birth of rock and roll, it was the beginning of everything. Black music became mainstream music. What does it look like? It looks like a spaceship. There is a person in movement. We don’t know anything about him. The arm gives information, but we still don’t really know anything about him. We have this couple, the guy looking at the photographer and the lady looking at him. We see how it really represents the intrusion of rock and roll music. It is complex and that’s what makes it interesting.

Film: Great Expectations

1948, David Leen, from a book of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens wrote several books. The was writing in the 1800s. It’s important to understand the context. What did happen politically, economically and socially? Dickens wrote during the industrial revolution. Everyone was cut off by his roots. Everyone felt like an orphan. In every book, there was an orphan that re-finds their parents, success or somehow integrates into the society.

First scene analysis

This is Great Expectations. What happened in the first scene? The boy is a loner, is solitary. We have a huge landscape and a tiny little boy. The wind and its sound. The wind is howling and that’s really scary. It’s not a sunny day. We have a really harsh landscape. We hear those lonely birds singing. Difficulties in fighting nature. He is afraid but he is still going.

Feeling of death, the gallows, people are hung there. We have this boy running by himself, it’s windy, it’s cold, it’s death. All these elements are given to you right away.
Nothing is regular, nothing is taken care of. The visual distortion is something.