In the end, there has been an achievement in a greater understanding of Godard, as well as appreciation for his work. My research took me to many places, some of which, could not really have been included, as time was short, and I didn’t want to just include posts and subjects to show brief research which didn’t really connect to the rest. I feel if connections between the posts/subjects are not made then there is’t a real understanding of research, or at least on a deeper scale. I mean all people know these day are words, brief words used to have brief conversation (small talk), nobody understands depth like Godard did, his view of a flattened society in Weekend has in way, I believe come true.
I wanted the blog to flow from scene to scene with density and structure, where each topic is somehow connected. This is a form of association where, we associate one topic to another in some way subjectively, then with a shift to linearity, we explore the topic in depth objectively. This is shown more clearly in the first part of the blog, where instead of giving a detailed description of Godard, in the second or third post as most people did, I let him build up slowly, through out and when the time is right reveal his background. To me the whole blog is within Godard, the topics are images within in his mind.
Like that of weekend, it has one master shot, with the idea of wholeness, rather than fragmentation. However some posts, such as ‘European Maoism’ do feel unconnected, I also wish there was more time to explore other subject matters surrounding the topic. Overall I’m happy with the style, though for some it will be hard to consume and digest, it definitely wont become a commodity thats for sure… or maybe not, but i enjoyed working on it… well kind of.
In my first study diary, I talk about Kubrick.. which even intrigued me, as to why I would mention him in a blog about Godard and how these two very different film-makers would have anything in common? So later So I later formed some random text on how they are in some way interlinked in the context of Nietzsche. However this was cut out of the blog, as it didn’t really have a place, it wasnt backed by enuff research, and I didn’t want the blog to seem random or too abstract. anyway I may aswell show my comparison here un-edited and maybe it will be included it in the directors cut.
In an earlier post I mentioned ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ in comparison to Week End Now having time to think about it, these are more similarities than I thought. Kubrick is showing us the past and future of man, , Kubrick is bringing order to chaos, the chaos of space, evolution life and randomness, where he shows man rise from to being to their dominance in space. Giving us a totally apollonian take on it, where man is totally scientific and logical, from which they have ascended, progressed and in the end of space odyssey we see the next evolutionary step,as Nietzsche states after the man is the over-man or Ubermensch.
On the other hand in Weekend, Godard analysing the present state of humanity at that time, is brining chaos to order, or the so called order of bourgeois society and is a Dionysian outlook, showing Apollonian upper classes in chaos, with their own self interests, greed and immorality, humanity is stuck in a ditch heading to its own demise. Due to the oppressive qualities and its lack of oneness with nature, we will slowly be dragged back to primitivism, and in the end we will come in full circle, by becoming beasts again (cannibals).
2001: A Space Odyssey is very optimistic while Weekend is very pessimistic, but both show that a society cannot be wholly Apollonian or wholly Dionysian. This is very easy to see in Weekend where there are two extremities presented at the beginning and then at the end. While in 2001 the big bad guy is HAL, the Artificial Intelligence unit, which is a wholly Apollonian construct and is the possible downfall of an their society, as their need for constant advancement in technology can be negative, when technology begins to overtake humanity.
Both directors are smimilar in that they give in depth studies of humans, humanity and where humanity is going, in thier works , both were probably inspired by the spirit of the age.
Then I would go on to defend how Godard isn’t nihilistic and so on… I mean WTF there wasn’t one book that really compared these two directors.
Group Discussion:
If I was to be honest, the group discussions had very rarely anything to do with Godard and bordered more on just social chit chat. When discussion did break out it normally ended with me talking for ages about how much of genius he was, and why he is like better than anyone else. However the semiotics session did give me new ideas, with good feedback on Godard and how he denatarualizes common cultural myths. This opened up new doors in my studying and thaughts. Godard was more aware than I first thought: in the way he demystifies Capitalism, Gender Myths and Myths related to Cars.
I missed the Lecture on Narrative theory, though I feel my blog covers quite a good amount of this.
Intertextuality on the other hand is something I feel my blog is driven by and built upon. Since Godard was a language enthusiast, I wanted to mainly reference books, novels and philosophy. Though I do feel I could have done more on this part in relation to other Films.
Yea I kind of found it hard to focus in the initial stage and weeks following, I mean… I kept Getting dragged in and out of Wikipedia articles, some of which had no clarity of words of which could be perceived and understood. Just a total mess of thoughts really. Then the endless array of Youtube streams… I mean imagine if I had Facebook at that time. How anyone get any research done in the modern age is unknown to me, the amount of distractions available is infinite.
My views became more extreme of this matter after watching a documentary called the ‘Virtual Revolution’ which aired on the BBC (watch it now). After which I decided, there had to be a change in my way of way of thinking, if I was to get any research actually done. A problem of my Generation is its reliance on associative thinking, embedded in them by the digital age and free flow of information. we are becoming less able to think in the old ways of linear motion. This brings about our hatred for studying using books, we jump straight the index, picking out the briefest, terms, words, phrases, paragraphs possible, with out contemplating the whole article or chapter. And then we wonder why we don’t fully understand a text.
We fail to see the wholeness of anything, instead picking out fragments and forming a collage. A produce of the digital age, post-modernism and late capitalism. we only cover subjects briefly with out the need to to go in to detail, ending up in making smaller associative connections with these brief phrases, texts, videos.
A total lack of consideration for detail. well this had to change…back to the books I say, start of associatively but all ways move back in to linearity.
GROUP DISCUSSIONS
As it is probably clear now, that these so called diaries were written last minute, its hard to find the style my first initial one was written in, which for some reason I was quite impressed with in all its glory, it came out like a blast of a rifle. It also felt quite relieving, due to feeling quite pressured by the subject matter at first , then finding out I already had alot of thoughts, which I could connect it to. My own interests seemed to veer and hover just over and around the film.
After this we were asked to present our blogs in class, while in our groups. Initially I was quite indecisive about whether to show mine or not, also admittedly a little paranoid . However the night before in my boredom, I had created quite a brilliant and epic background via photo shop, which boosted my ego trip.
The background showed the deconstruction of Godard which would slowly happen through out blog, done in a kind of pop art aesthetic, with the key colour red, to show his extremity and so called marxist ideology. Then a flashing image of the ‘end of cinema’ in front of his eyes, which were dicombobulating out of his head. however most importantly the blog is not going to have any images of Godard included in its posts, only the outer image will serve as as Godard, the smaller images limited to one per post, will serve to reveal more about what goes on inside him.
So in my moment of ego driven madness, I volunteered to show my blog, but only after somebody had shown theirs first, I thought to myself it cant be that shit. and it wasn’t really, if anything it was quite well received.
After this I went to the library and rented out Band’e Apart or Band of Outsiders. Not sure why as I still had not watched Weekend, anyway I failed to get time to watch it , and further failed to return it on time, getting banned from taking books out, in the process of my forgetfulness.
ACADEMIC WRITING:
In the our first session, we got schooled on, academic writing. Something I felt I had alot of experience with during my time doing history at college. In history our essays had to be structured and written quite well, presenting multiple factors, and set in a very dialectic way. However, I also felt as if I had lost my way in doing this, as I found it hard to form a conclusion, forming solid conclusions has always been difficult for me, and probably explains my D grade for the subject.
After the session, I felt the need to make my Blog as academic as possible, with using mainly academic resources, such as the libary and e-journals. However I found that its is hard to not be veered towards the internet, in this information age we live in. But My Blog will mostly have information from books with little referencing to the internet. I felt this more so due to the fact that, I wanted my writing style to be very approachable and my study diaries would be a sort of, stream of conciousness, where by all the other interconnecting thoughts would link in to the subject matter.
This was not the case of how things panned out, as I left my self behind in my studying, due to a mixture of procrastination and self destructiveness.
- Audio Commentary by critic David Sterritt, WEEKEND (1967) A FILM BY JEAN-LUC GODARD, DVD Release Date: August 23 2005, New Yorker Video, 00:15:15-00:22:53
- Bazin, André. (1967-71). What is cinema? Vol. 1 & 2 (Hugh Gray, Trans., Ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. 23
- Centuary of the Self, Dir. Adam Curtis, 2002, BBC, United Kingdom: Documentary
- DVD Interview with director Mike Figgis WEEKEND (1967) A FILM BY JEAN-LUC GODARD, DVD Release Date: August 23 2005, New Yorker Video,
- French Film directors – Jean-Luc Godard, Douglas Morrey, Manchester University Press 2005,78
- Godard on Godard: critical writings by Jean-Luc Godard, Translation and Commentary by Tom Milne, 1972, De Capo Paperback, Cinema Two
- GODARD: IMAGES, SOUNDS, POLITCS, COLIN MacCABE, 1980 THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD LONDON, P – 10 – 70
- http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/’breathless’-jean-luc-godard-movie/ by Dan Hoffman, 14/07/2010: Accessed 29/10/2010
- http://www.dvdjournal.com/reviews/s/sunrise_fsc.shtml: Sunrise Review, Accessed 15/10/2010
- http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/9805/offscreen_essays/may68.html: May 1968 article
- http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odmcontents.html: One Dimentional Man, full online text by Herbert Marcuse: accessed 18/10/2010
- http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue3/ganis.htm: Essay on Warhol
- http://www.shmoop.com/portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/identity-theme.html: Identity
- http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0013.html: Essay on Apollo and Dionysus in 2001: Space Odyssey
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ScGLdfqdYo&feature=related: weekend traffic jam scene: accessed on 02.10.2009
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxESwPAKrw0&feature=related: 1980, Dick Cavett Interview Godard: accessed 29/10/2010
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEzrvHC6e2o
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQW_dcTQFJ0: Source, Weekend, Sandwich scene
- Hugh Gray (1967). Evolution of the language of cinema, What is cinema? Berkeley. 23
- James Joyce (2000). A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ,.
- James Monaco (1976).THE NEW WAVE. New York: Harbor Electronic publishing. 207, intro, 109-
- Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews, Edited by David Sterritt, University Press Mississippi 1998, Gene Youngblood 1968, 9-49
- Jean-paul Sartre, Nausea 1938, Penguin classic paperback: mild refrence
- Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki (1998). Speaking about Godard. New York: New York University. 83-113.
- Margaret Attack (1999). MAY 68 IN FRENCH FICTION & FILM. USA: Oxford University Press. 9-11.
- Martin Scorsese (2005). Im Not There. USA: Paramount Pictures. -.
- .MOVIES AND METHODS Volume 1, Edited by Bill Nichols, University of California press, 1976, Brian Henderson: Non bourgeois camera style, 423,
- Nietzsche, Friedrich (1883). Thus Spoke Zarathustra. pp. Prologue section 3.
- Richard Brody (2008). Everything is Cinema The working life of JEAN LUC GODARD. London: Faber and Faber Limited. 313-314, 53-57
- The films of Jean-Luc Godard – Seeing the Invisible, David Sterritt, Cambridge University Press 1999, p 89-126
- The Power of Nightmares: A politics of Fear, Dir. Adama Curtis , 2004, BBC, United Kingdom: A documentary
- Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1982, p 124.
- Wheeler Winston Dixon (1997). The films of Jean – Luc Godard. New York: State University. 90-99.
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062480/: for film details, budget ect.
Weekend Title
“That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art” is a quote from Walter Benjamin’s artwork essay ‘The Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ published in 1936. In which he discusses how human perception changes with the continual existence of humanity and with these changes comes the decaying of the aura of art and how we experience it. Goddard acknowledges this, in to ways in Weekend.
First is the use of Brechtian theatrical devices, in which he is acknowledging that film is essentially just a reproduction of theatre, where due to the transition the aura of the true stage actor has withered, cinema is just an illusion of the real thing. “I see no difference between the theatre and movies. It is all theatre. It is simply a matter of understanding what theatre means. That is not generally understood. I mean, what you call the place where a movie is made if not a theatre”, The second way in which Goddard acknowledges Benjamin view is, with the use of pop art imagery in his inter-titles, which we are regularly shown through out the film. he uses these as an innovation on the breachtian distancing device. By introducing language, in to the equation, Godard is using the tool of language to further distance the audience from the action and show them, they are actually watching a move. Godard is also telling us that Film is just a reproduction of language and both are the same.
“If anything his obsession with language became more pronounced than ever as he pioneered new forms of grammar in feature filmmaking, most the characters in his movies are endlessly talking, and his camera flashes to full screen inter-titles or snippets from books, periodicals, combating the lure of the materialistic often dehumanizing spectacles peddled by the mass market culture industry.”
Like Benjamin, Godard is also a Modernist and Marxist. He seems to be in favour of Benjamin view, as he understands film is not really a visual medium, and is one of the few artists of cinema who has understood the power of text. By using this technique of text in film, he engages different parts of the viewers brain. like a good painting that is almost a cartoon there is somehow more truth in it, because what is interesting to Godard, especially in Weekend is the artists interpretation, rather than the attempt to impersonate.
Weekend doesn’t have a predictable story; it’s more like a portrait, an impressionistic portrait of the period of time and the political ideas. The inter-titles are satirising bourgeois society, who just absorb ideas and turn them in to fashion statements, continually being reproduced to satisfy the culture industry. The whole of Weekend in this view can be seen as apart of this satire.
the inter-titles Goddard uses, say “A film found on the scrap heap“, A film adrift in the cosmos“, the first inter-title relates to the produce and art which comes from modern bourgeois society. Where every thing is reproduced from the same heap of dirt, same waste-basket. Godard is foreshadowing what will happen to Weekend after we have finished watching it, and consumed it. It will be thrown in to the ‘waste basket’, where all commodities end up in a consumerist society, from where capitalist media reproduces endless garbage for the masses. The latter inter-title is the film being , self conscious of its own madness, pessimism, and self aware of that fact that it is a hard film to consume and take in. This is apart of Godard’s aims with weekend, which is to make a film which is un-consumable, but can be digested, “a marijuana brownie, rather than a three-course bourgeois meal”. However as he finds out later in his career that nothing really can “remain untouched by commodification.”
However, the title frame seen above, with Weekend repeated over and over, is more closely related to Andy Warhol, who Godard was influenced by. It evokes the assembly line aesthetic of pop, which rejects Benjamin’s notion that art should have “unique” or “special” properties – a sort of “aura”, If not then it is neither genuine or authentic. Andy Warhol characterised the mechanised processes that produced pop in the 1960’s, his artwork was not to hide the “mass manufactured origin”. The title frame also shows its pop relations, with its use, use of red, white and blue as its primary colours.
“He makes language out of the images, integrating visual material into a language like a structure with recognizable grammar. The weekend title card turns language in to image since its verbal meaning is considerably less striking than its shape, color, and overall visual impact”.
It could be argues that, title merely reflects an important aspect of Godard’s artistic method, which is his habit of putting words and pictures into “productive competition” with each other. However the image captures the zeitgeist of the twentieth and twenty first century, where quantity slowly becomes more valued than quality.
Even though Godard uses Andy Warhols’s techniques of pop art, his affirmation and aims are radically different, and are more in line with those of Benjamin’s. He would later go on to renounce, commercial film and cinema altogether. Instead searching for other ways to distribute and exhibit his films, this would be his venture in to the ultra political, in a way the weekend title, stamped repeatedly is a parody of the industry Godard is going to abandon, and move away from, it is his last tribute to the, industry he has slowly fallen out with over the years. To him Hollywood and the underground were one and the same industry, “Hollywood filmmaker and Underground Filmmaker live in the same house but work in different rooms; one works at the top floor the other in the cellar”.
“Cinema is not a dream or fantasy. It is life. I see no difference between movies and life. They are the same.”
REFERENCES:
- Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki (1998). Speaking about Godard. New York: New York University. 83-113.
- Jean luc Godard Interviews, Edited by David Sterritt, University Press Mississippi, 1998, p20-47
- DVD Interview with director Mike Figgis WEEKEND (1967) A FILM BY JEAN-LUC GODARD, DVD Release Date: August 23 2005, New Yorker Video,
- French Film directors – Jean-Luc Godard, Douglas Morrey, Manchester University Press 2005, and p78
- The films of Jean-Luc Godard – Seeing the Invisible, David Sterritt, Cambridge University Press 1999, p 89-125
- http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue3/ganis.htm: Essay on Warhol
A SHORT ESSAY:
Godard’s use of pop-art imagery in weekend is an argument in favour of Walter Benjamins view in the ‘Age of mechanical reproduction’, And relates to Andy Warhol’s use of Pop Art. Discuss this view.
Is Godard using the effect for satire or just to be cool?
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