recourse

This class introduces students to pre-cinematic entertainments and technologies with a view to understanding the social function and cultural value of entertainment.
The following material  provides a background on Vaudeville and Early film as well as examples of the types of spectacle each produced.
Throughout the post you will find links to other related sites and at the end of the post links to two contemporary examples of film spectacle, one a Youtube clip of ‘animals dancing’ and another (Jana Sterbak + Stanley) an artistic reflection on the ‘spectatorial’ dynamics of popular representation 


What Is Vaudeville? 
(From Virtual Vaudeville)
Our vaudeville theatres make strong appeals to the public by offering an entertainment that amuses without taxing. To those whose minds are full of business cares and who do not feel up to following the dialogue and situations of a play which demands a certain amount of intellectual effort, vaudeville is a boon.
— New York Herald, September 3, 1893

Vaudeville was the most popular form of American entertainment from its rise in the 1880s through its demise in the 1930s. It played much the same a role in people’s lives that radio and later television would for later generations. Indeed, many early radio, television and film stars began as vaudeville performers: Bob Hope, Edgar Bergen, Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers, Bert Lahr and Ray Bolger (the latter two being best known today as the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz). Every medium-to-large size city had its own vaudeville theatre, and performers on the vaudeville circuit preformed for a national audience by traveling constantly from town to town. With its national circuits, its reliance on train transportation and the telegraph, plus its production of a mode of performance with interchangeable parts, Vaudeville was the first truly modern form of popular entertainment.

Vaudeville was variety entertainment, consist

How many pictures of yourself have you seen? How many people do you know only through pictures? Photographs are so commonplace in today’s society that we can’t imagine a time when there weren’t any, when the only representations of people one encountered were paintings or etchings and these were of famous personage or religious subjects not friends or family.  The invention and industrialization of photography forever changed the way in which individuals comprehended the world and, more importantly, the ways in which they imagined their place within it. The introductory class will discuss the role of the photographic portrait in contemporary culture in relation to changing ideas about self and transformations in social roles and relations.
victorian photographs
cartes de visite
 
Contemporary Self-Portraiture
nan goldin
raymonde april
cindy sherman
 
Homework: (Wednesday class) Please read summaries of mise-en-scène + cinematography following links below. Also, read definition of vaudeville from the September 10/11 class and find an example of what might be called contemporary ‘vaudeville’ on youtube.
Foundations of Mise-en-scène
Foundations of Cinematography

Vaudeville
Jana Sterbak

Jonathan Caouette’s first feature film, Tarnation is made entirely of imagery produced using amateur recording technologies–home movies, snapshots, photo booth pictures, etc.. A ‘tour de force’ of ‘autobiographical’ filmmaking, as well as a heartbreaking documentary on the filmmaker’s mother, the film offers striking testament to the important role amateur recording technologies play in our lives. Mostly self-recorded, Caouette’s material is typical of the non-professonial production: taken ‘on-the-fly’, casually framed, often poorly lit and focused, the pictures seem all the more truthful, certainly more urgent because of their relative ‘rawness’. Additionally, the film’s account of Jonathan’s youth and his mother’s mental illness is made even more affective because the filmmaker is so intimately connected to his subject, he is the film’s key witness and one of principle subjects. However, the film is not without some ‘false notes’. According to Caouette himself, the finished work is not a complete account of his past. Also significant: Caouette’s mother was not aware that her son was making a documentary when she appeared before the camera, nor was she asked permission to use the imagery before the film was released, both situations that give rise to some ethical concerns. Should Jonathan have asked his mother for permission before he filmed or released the finished work? Do the holes in the film’s story make the story less truthful or ‘real’.
Homework: Before next week’s class, please read one of the two reviews linked below and be prepared for a discussion of the film and the social value and ethical considerations of using amateur technologies.
“Cheap, dysfunctional family viewing” Sarah Rowland, The Montreal Mirror
“The man who was raised by a movie camera” Julie Salaman, The New York TImes