The Thin Blue Line

This film was literally a life changing documentary. This documentary saved a man from the potential of the Texas death penalty. For a simple documentary to do that is simpy mind boggling. The two suspects in the case were Randall Adams and David Harris. At the time of the murder Adams was in his late twenties while Harris was 16 years of age. Adams was the man that was convicted of the murder after a long trial, but Harris was the actual one that commited the crime. The reason they did not try to convict Harris was because he could not receive the death penalty, and Texas judges seemed to love the death penalty around this time.

The film used three different types of material for its footage. There would be the reenactments of the murder, the interviews of many of the people involved in the case, and arch able material such as news papers and crime scene photos. The director did a great job of showing both sides of this trial through his footage. He would interview Adams about how he felt the legal system was, and then he would go to Harris who was bragging about all the crimes he commited. If Harris was not talking about the crimes he did then he would talk about the trial. Errol Morris also did a great job of not showing any preferances of the two men that were suspects. He gave each of them a substantial amount of time to fight for their innocence until the end. The ending of this film was what saved Randall Adams' life from receiving the electric chair. The final interview with David Harris was what set Randall's freedom in stone. The astounding part of this documentary was that it was originally supposed to be on Dr. Death, a psychologist that decides if criminals deserve the death penalty. Were it not for Errol Morris stumbling onto this case then we would have one innocent dead man burried beneath us.

Three articles about...the abnormal

We read three separate articles for class at the beginning of the month that were very interesting: The Performance Art is for the Birds: Jackass 'Extreme Sports, and the De(con)struction of Gender, Charmed School, and lastly Guys Gone Wild? Soft-Core Video Profetionalism and New Realities in Television Production.

First I will begin with the Jackass article. Many of us have seen Jackass and the stunts that they pull, all of which are supervised by proffesionals, but yet they seem so "fun" to do. The critisism with this program is that it is all white males and they turn violence (a manly thing) into a laughable matter. Juddith Buttler argues that gender is a performance in itslef. He means that men have to act like men to make it believable to others that they are truly men.

The next article discussed the show Charmed School. In this show, the girls from The Flava of Love that did not win were sent to this school. The objective was to turn them back into "real" women. The article argues that, during the reality show that they were previously on, the girls were morphed into these inhuman ghosts of their former selves. If the girls failed at any of their tasks then they would be forced out of the school and back into society to try and reconfigure their lives on their own.
The last article was about the infamous soft-core videos Girls Gone Wild. The article discusses how men are the only ones filming (obviousy), and that they are somewhat of creeps for hounding drunken teenagers for their breasts. It is for man's entertainment that these videos are shot. Construction of gender is obviousy present with all of these articles in their own way.

Paris is Burning

This documentary was very unique and was very eye opening to me. It covered an issue that had yet to be covered within its time. The film maker (who is a woman) goes into these things called "balls." These balls were where gay men were able to come together and either cross dress or do fashion walks for trophies. These balls' intensity rivaled that of gang wars. I say this because each individual within these balls was a respected member of a house. These houses were named after their founders. Then the members of these houses would do their "walks" and compete with all of their hearts to try and win the judges' hearts and scores. The house with the most trophies was more likely to get more recruits for the future and be prosperous longer.

Walking for the younger gay men was a huge occasion. It is greater than a high schooler graduating from high school in their eyes. There was one man that was already part of a house that the director interviewed. The man was talking about how he was not yet ready, but he was old enough to walk with his fellow people. It is very nerve wrecking for these less experienced men to walk amongst the veterens/legends of the balls.
Another interesting point I found in this movie is, how did this female director get access to these very exclusive balls? It is a question that was never answered throughout the film, but she did a phenomenal job showing the hardships and successes of these gay man. The film was made in the late 80's when gayness was totally unaccepted and frowned upon. The director put herself in danger of anti-gay activists and people like that.

How to Make a Documentary

Last week in class we watched a documentary that taught us how to make documentaries and all of the film techniques that we would use within our films. One thing that was stressed in the segments we watched was Montage editing. Montage editing is juxtapositioning of images to create meaning not found in either individual shot by itself. What this is saying is the film would show a shot of a freezing girl struggling to survive, then it cut to a frozen river, and then back to the girl. The audience can assume that the girl is contemplating suicide by jumping into the river. The film also talked about Kuloshov's Montage Theory. This theory was tested with several subjects. These subjects were asked to simply have a blank stare and look into the camera. Then the film maker went and filmed a dead person, food and another thing. He then used the blank stares and montaged them with every one of these things. The result made the person with the blank stare either seem hungry, terrified or any other emotion just by tying these two shots together. An example of the Kuloshov experiment can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTnUf4QoXo8 this has a girl sitting there as dozens of clips role by. I came to the conclusion the girl was either thinking or high on some substance.

The Feed

The Feed was a very interesting documentary that used alot of cross-cutting to make me laugh a few times. For instance, there was a scene of Jerry Brown campaigning very hard and all of a sudden it cut to Bush Sr. simply sitting in his chair waiting for him to go live. This film was more comical than serious in many ways. The movie was basically a "blooper reel" of the politicians. It is good for us Americans to see that politicians aren't these jugernauts that run the country with no real human qualities.

There was one scene within the film that had no politicians in it. There was a city street with rioters for and against Bush Senior's re-election. Through this scene a fight breaks loose and a girl gets pushed to the ground. This ends the fighting quickly with both sides tempered beyond reasoning. This does not have much to do with the presidents, but it does show a real side to the fight for politics.

This film argues that who is the real president and who is the performer. It is hard to tell becuase this film seems to be a big joke around and makes me think that these people are fake, but when analyzing this closer, I realized that these were human qualities and not those of the politician.

The Checkers Speech

In 1952 Richard Nixon made his famous Checkers speech. This very speech is believed to have saved Nixon's future as a president in America. Throughout his days, Nixon was believed to be behind many conspiracies in America, including the infamous Watergate Scandal. Many people in America hated the thought of Richard Nixon, but this is because of the media "always hating him," as Nixon would say.

Nixon had 6 key points that he would make in many of his speeches: the media hates him, I'm not a quitter, I'm a family man, I am telling the truth, he is the poor man made good and he is a patriot. These motifs were very consistent throughout his campaigning for the presidency in the early 1970's. There was also another thing that Nixon did consitently and this was using his wife as a prop. The scene in the Checkers Speech was mostly of him just sitting and talking directly to a camera while occasionally glancing down to see what he had written. He then addressed his wife, who was just sitting there, and talked about one of his motifs, being a family man. Nixon's figure was reconstructed many years after his resignation. He came and talked one some late night news cast with a interviewer. The man asked him many questions, and by simply watching, you can see how Nixon has changed from a shaky man in front of the camera, to a calm, cool, and collected politician.

LBJ

The strangeness of this documentary rivals that of Sans Soleil. It had many hidden messages that takes a lot of wit and careful viewing to see. This film was a hate film towards Lyndon B Johnson, and it formed a conspiracy that is trying to frame LBJ for the assassination of the Kennedys. The director of this film was a Cuban communist and wanted America to see its president for who he really was. Throughout the film you can tell that the creator had extreme hatred towards his subject.

During the course of this film the viewer may notice an owl that appears in "random" segments. Actually these segments are not random. For instance, there is the scene of MLK giving his "I Have a Dream Speech" and every time Dr. King says "dream" you see a firing squad followed by an image of an owl looking into the camera. I believe that the owl represents LBJ overlooking important deaths throughout the 1960's. It is an astounding conspiracy made by the Cuban director. In another scene that I found interesting there was LBJ in knight's armor, this clip was immediately followed with a crusader with a burning village to his back. This symbolizes LBJ slowly burning down American society with his "ordered" assassinations of MLK, JFK and Bobby Kennedy.