In Defense of the Poor Image – Hito Steyerl
.In the beginning of the article, the concept of a “poor image” is explored. The poor image is described as something abstract. It is explaining that a poor image is something that is worn out by describing It as something defined as an “illicit fifth-generation bastard of an original image”. Poor images are popular because anyone is able to make them and they have a lot a lot of viewers. I never thought of a poor image as being a “poor image”. Everything has it`s own beauty. Avant Garde, essays, and non commercial cinema are often examples that are regarded as “poor images”, but have a lot of fans. I think about poor images now in a lot of things that are presented to me everyday. Resolution is often fetishized by the audiences. The more resolution the film has and the more advanced an image or film is, the more someone Is able to make it different in their own creative matters. With the advanced resolutions now in phones today, can they be considered not a “poor Image” now? Wouldn’t it be considered a “good image” that people deteriorate and have fun with in their own terms?
An Outline of Psychoanalysis- Lucian Freud
Does Freud contradict himself by talking about what we are naturally inherent with due to how much we are influenced by our environment if the id never goes away? The entire paper, he sides with how our nurturing deals with who we are, but says some phases that contradict it. It is questionable how our id comes along since it is also based on our ego, but how does our ego come along since we develop it early in childhood? Can our ego change if we develop it at a young age? Freud says “The power of the id expresses the true purpose of the individual organism’s life. This consists in the satisfaction of its innate needs. No such purpose as that of keeping itself alive or of protecting itself from dangers by means of anxiety can be attributed to the id.” (page 30).The id doesn’t change from when we are born. It is our instinctual drives. Our ego is driven by our id but also our sense of self that develops.We are more realistic with ego and more conscious. Super ego is what we get instilled in us from our parents and how it affects our development. I feel that we are born with already a personality, but the way we are raised during childhood molds the way we think when we are older.
Documentary Is/Not A Same. Trinh T Minh- Ha
Documentaries are important because they are a source to inform the people. It served as another purpose besides entertainment. Documentaries show the reality of the world and what
struggles people deal with. Documentaries are raw, you can’t re film them. They are honest. There is no script or set, only people`s lives that we get to witness. It is described that reality
is”more fabulous, more maddening, more strangely manipulative than fiction” (page 88). It has all the qualities that intrigue people. Although documentaries don’t have an aesthetic such as
films do, they are more of interest to people because of the relevancy it can have to people. We are able to connect more to documentaries rather than films.
Reality isn’t what it seems like it actually is in film. The “reality” that is portrayed in films are part of an ideology. “Filmmaking is after all a question of “framing” reality in its course.
However, it can also be the very place where the referential function of the film image/sound is not simply negated, but reflected upon in its own operative principles and questioned in its
authoritative identification with the phenomenal world.” We are seeing the reality of how the producer wants to see it. We can’t trust that the film is actually capturing what seems to be
reality. The film goes into a world of its own of what they want us to see. We may never know what the actual “reality” was or is. We are going on what the person`s fact is. Reality is
individualistic and subjective.
Although documentaries portray the reality of people`s lives, the producer is still able to enhance what is interesting to the viewer by camera angles and the type of stuff that is being
filmed. They know what people are drawn to and will make the documentary more appealing. “Reality is more fabulous, more maddening, more strangely manipulative than fiction. To
understand this is to recognize the aivete of a development of cinematic technology that promotes increasingly unmediated access to reality.” (page 88). The documentary is being more
emphasized and focused on what would be more interesting to the viewer. There is manipulation done to camera angles, lights, and frames that can make the person think differently. The point of
even making a documentary is to prove your point; it is already starting subjective because it is your view. A documentary can give evidence and fact, but truth will always be taken into
different perspectives. The people in the documentaries give their truth but it doesn’t necessarily mean it is right. Documentaries are subjective because there is never going to be a universal
answer that everyone will agree on; we take what we see and apply it to our own imagination.
