Reading Review 2: “between rocks and hard places,” Hamid Naficy
This reading remarks on the difficulties of filmmaking but also new opportunities in the era of new media. It seems as though things are presented in pretty Marxist terms. In her world production answers to people who consume media…
The product of cinema is film, a commodity that in capitalist regimes
must return a profit to its investors at the box office, video stores,
Television outlets and cash registers (for tie-in products). Thus mode of
Production also specifies a social rela-fluence of these twin centripetal
developments. It is being applied here to the work of exile, émigré,
refugee, and displaced filmmakers working in the West since the 1960.
This is a very problematic interpretation of things. First of all it is all too unclear (especially after the time in which it was written) which is East and which is West. A lot of scholars studying Middle Eastern matters have tried to move away from this sort of speech which essentializes both East and West.
Just after the time in which this was written, a host of new opportunities for filmmakers has presented itself. There still are very valid points that the essay presents however. One of these is that ‘alternative’ filmmakers have been relegated to making unpopular films. This is still very much the case. As a result of making unpopular films, unpopular filmmakers become minor, and in turn irrelevant when they discourses they present prove to be anything but. So many films fit this criteria.
This reading remarks on the difficulties of filmmaking but also new opportunities in the era of new media. It seems as though things are presented in pretty Marxist terms. In her world production answers to people who consume media…
The product of cinema is film, a commodity that in capitalist regimes
must return a profit to its investors at the box office, video stores,
Television outlets and cash registers (for tie-in products). Thus mode of
Production also specifies a social rela-fluence of these twin centripetal
developments. It is being applied here to the work of exile, émigré,
refugee, and displaced filmmakers working in the West since the 1960.
This is a very problematic interpretation of things. First of all it is all too unclear (especially after the time in which it was written) which is East and which is West. A lot of scholars studying Middle Eastern matters have tried to move away from this sort of speech which essentializes both East and West.
Just after the time in which this was written, a host of new opportunities for filmmakers has presented itself. There still are very valid points that the essay presents however. One of these is that ‘alternative’ filmmakers have been relegated to making unpopular films. This is still very much the case. As a result of making unpopular films, unpopular filmmakers become minor, and in turn irrelevant when they discourses they present prove to be anything but. So many films fit this criteria.
Reading Critique: by the bitstream of Babylon, -Ella Shohat In this reading Ella shohat-well known for her assessments and analysis of Israeli and Middle Eastern cinema, assesses the experience evoked from two 1990s Hollywood blockbusters and their implications for geography and nationalism in general terms. These two films are Congo and Pocahontas. They share many similarities but also many differences. One is about a western-ish experience in central Africa with gorillas and one is about a Native American experiencing outsiders in the form of 'western' (European) settlers to the 'new world.' Both of these raise a host of issues but also in Shoat’s words, paradoxes. The two movies elucidate the hybridity of identity and the perceived new world order which is the emerging irrelevance of physical geographical place. Either can be interpreted as modern allegories for emerging cyberland. Shohat contextualizes this in terms of the 'futurist euphoria' presented by the internet. This is a world in which one can travel inordinately rapidly wherever one desires. Unfortunately for the characters depicted in these films is the fact that this presents a new world of issues. These issues ironically are the same issues that humans have faced for centuries.They include, but are not limited to, eroticicizing a foreign land and learning the true reality of that land, finding out that 'old world' problems persist-humans dealing with each other, and Diaspora in a world in which even the Jews have their own nation. 'New media' as it is called acknowledge latent contradictions in the new world but 'have significant implications for charting diasporic movements across national borders, and perhaps for envisioning a creative navigation of diverse cultures and historical points of view, and of conflictual claims to homes.' This, the conclusion of the essay, puts it very nicely. It is now up to the consumers of this new media to decide how it is to be used (or abused).
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