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Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries, written by Sarah Baker and edited by David Hesmondhalgh 

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Angelina Jolie and Humanitarian Communication (word limit: 700)

 Before writing this, I had not even known that Angelina Jolie was a UNHCR ambassador nor what that even meant. All I knew was that she was super famous.

  I think that says something, considering that celebrity humanitarianism is supposed to influence me, a public spectator, to learn about the suffering instead of how famous Jolie is. What are the forces at play here?

Jolie with a child in Ghana. I could not find the background story to this image. Surprised?

 Here, we have a fine specimen of what Janice Nathanson would call the ‘Pornography of Poverty’ (2013). Poverty Porno are images that bank on a spectacle of tragedy in order to elicit humane reaction. Of course, this photo had to be in black-and-white. It makes the darkness of the child’s skin darker while making the fairness of Jolie’s skin fairer—playing along the common rhetoric that darkness is destitution in need of light. We also have a near-naked, emaciated-looking child whose feet appear to be tied down. He or she is gripping weakly onto Jolie, visually alluding to his/her grip onto dear life itself. Next to the child, Jolie is in a receiving posture and looks really… sorry. In other words, ‘guilty’—an emotion that is at the crux of the response towards Poverty Porno. 

 What is wrong with guilt if the goal is to elicit humane reaction? Well, guilt turns people off. It makes people feel helpless and self-defeating, believing that they can’t help since things are already that bad.

 Furthermore, when we look at this image, are we relating more to Jolie’s guilt and painful sympathy, or are we relating to the suffering? Chouliaraki discussed this as Jolie’s persona of being the ‘passionate witness’, pointing out how this displaces the relationship of Spectator and Sufferer as ‘confessional’ while downplaying the political forces chaining down consequential effects on the suffering (2012, pg 12).  

Jolie meeting Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon.

 Let’s switch it up. Here, Jolie looks happy, but not the kind of ‘happy’ you’d get from having a net worth of $160 million. It is more the kind of ‘happy’ you’d get when you realise that life is about doing good and crossing cultures. 

 We might pick up a sense of the ‘utilitarian altruism’ that Chouliaraki refers to (pg 10).  Chouliaraki draws on Jolie’s interview quotes to illustrate how she deems humanitarianism as an enlightening lifestyle choice. Such altruism stemming from the desire for spiritual fulfilment is all the more conveyed as we see Jolie, A-list celebrity, stripped down to plain clothing and hunching forward humbly to relate to a child. Add to that her highly-publicised image of being an adoptive mother, we see Jolie as nurturing and benevolent.  What this potentially communicates is that humanitarianism is a wonderful thing because it helps us find enlightenment and it could even make us glow like Jolie. I personally do not see a problem with that. What is problematic, however, is when it shifts our focus and intent onto our egos instead of the needs of the suffering and the political forces at play. Once again, their voices and agency become overshadowed. 

 In these images, do we even see the faces of the children? Do we even know who they are and what their stories are? No. But we do know about Jolie. That she is super noble and enlightened for being with poor little children, both in spite of and because of being a Hollywood celebrity.   All this reinforces the conception that the suffering is passive and can only find salvation through the superior, benevolent Westerner whose narrative is what we, as the Global North, are a part of.

  However, I still believe that maximum visibility is a ‘given’ in humanitarian communication. Why would we want only a select few people to know about the suffering? Marketing logic should not be rejected outright, but instead maximised wisely and appropriately to educate the masses. Especially since celebrities hold the strongest currency in media and advertising influence, we could still look to them as effective agents for humanitarian communication.

(Edited image.) An imagined future?

 Perhaps they could use their status, wealth and connections to be producers of campaigns, instead of performers in the theatricality of humanitarianism. Could celebrities also assume the role of journalists and mediate a platform for the voices of the suffering to be heard? Especially since they hold massive following on their social media and have power over the content published?

 There are no easy answers, and all these suggestions are subject to examination and critique. My stand is that media and marketing, which celebrities are an integral part of, should be maximised to educate the masses and to mobilise humanitarianism. The question is, how, if not through theatricality?  

Bibliography

           Chouliaraki, Lilie, 2012. The Theatricality of Humanitarianism: A Critique of Celebrity Advocacy
. Abingdon: Routledge.

             Nathanson, Janice, 2013. The Pornography of Poverty: Reframing the Discourse of International Aid's Representations of Starving Children. [Online]. Available through: <http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2587/2359> [Accessed 10 March 2017]. 

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Martin Hollis, The Light of Reason, 1973

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Media Power: Laura Mulvey and Feminist Media Theory (word limit: 2000)

 This essay will look at Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975) in detail. Her arguments will be compared to other theories such as the Frankfurt School’s studies on Critical Theory and the culture industry, as well as Liesbet van Zoonen’s views on the approaches in deconstructing feminist media theory. Lastly, we will see how the reality of Mulvey’s theories are reflected in contemporary cinema.

    Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to analyse the patriarchal structures of cinema. In particular, she looks at Sigmund Freud’s theory of castration anxiety (1924). Males grow up fearing the loss of their penis while females are plagued by ‘penis envy’. Mulvey believes that because women represent the image of castration anxiety, it affects the way men view women.

  The first aspect in understanding how men gaze at women, according to Mulvey, is scopophilia. This is where direct sexual pleasure is gained from looking at a woman’s body. She relates this to Freud, who theorizes that scopophilia begins in childhood development. Children are obsessed with gazing at bodies because of their curiosity in checking for the absence or presence of the penis. According to Freud, this is partly how pleasure is formed in looking upon another person as an object.

   Secondly, there is the narcissistic aspect to the way men see themselves, which in turn affects the way they see women next to them. Here, Mulvey employs the theories of Jacques Lacan (1949). He outlines that a crucial moment in the way children form their ego is when he or she recognises their body the mirror. Thus, they realise that their body is more than their experience of the anatomy. Having formed this ability in recognising self-image, images of others serve as a point of comparison, contrast and emulation for the self. Admiration then takes the form of glamourisation to project upon oneself, especially as the individual finds a likeness in their preferred subject.

    Relating such mechanisms of experiencing pleasure and castration anxiety to cinema, Mulvey explains that castration anxiety compels the male to look at the female figure as a fetish. This is such that their association with her feels more reassuring than threatening. It might also compel him to impart guilt towards her and in turn punish or rescue her. Having then demystified her, he is able to feel in control. Through watching films, such a fetishisation of women manifests itself in scopophilia and voyeurism.

  The male gaze and the pleasure derived through film-watching are marked by the female being a passive image to be looked at, while the man holds the active position of the onlooker. A visually attractive woman thus satisfies scopophiliac desires and allows the male spectator to realise his sexual fetishism of her, rendering her presence enjoyable despite being a castration threat.

   She also has to fit into the narrative of the film that usually serves to satisfy the male ego. This means playing characters who allow him to emerge as the hero, never the leading role nor a character important on her own. For example, on a voyeuristic level, the male protagonist investigates the female character without her knowledge. He then ends up finding something that renders her vulnerable and which is deserving of either punishment or rescue. This is sadistic because it imparts guilt on her. Going back to Lacan’s theory of the mirror image, as the male spectator finds similarities in the film hero, he puts himself in the image of the hero. Thus, by seeing the hero punishing or rescue the female character, he resolves his castration anxiety by ensuring a position of power. The voyeuristic aspect of watching women in film becomes fulfilled.

    Looking at Mulvey’s analysis, we might be reminded of the works of the Frankfurt School. Horkheimer and Adorno criticised the production of media as a ‘culture industry’ that mass-produces everything with ‘sameness’ (1944, p. 120). By seeing the same things over and over, society becomes conditioned into adopting social norms and thereafter submit to a status quo. Going by their analysis of the culture industry, we see that the profit-making system of the media holds the status quo is chains while the audience consumes passively. In Hollywood, the star system is exploited as actresses are marketed for  their sex appeal, as opposed to being weaved into the narrative as a character who adds value to the story. It can be argued that the reason why the culture industry markets female sex appeal in the first place is because of the human psyche. This means that the mass-production of male-gaze centred films originated from the audience and what they want, instead of the other way around. Adorno even mentioned that the industry picks up things in the human psyche to manipulate the audience (1954, p. 213-235). The industry predicts what the audience wants and constantly produces the same things to feed the same desires instead of telling stories with varied characers and storylines. Here, we see how both Mulvey and Adorno recognises psychoanalysis in the way media is produced and consumed. Both also criticise the repetitive content in media. This repetitive structure of media production chains down the status quo and allows the industry to make profit, stifling the progress in media content and conditions the way viewers consume media and the way women are gazed upon.

    Liesbet van Zoonen holds a different approach to psychoanalysis in analysing feminism. While Mulvey uses Freud and Lacan’s theories to look at media’s representation of women, Van Zoonen views their theories as patriarchal in the very first place (1994). Freud’s theory of castration anxiety holds the idea that females lack equilibrium in their psyche due to their awareness of lacking a penis, and that they lead their lives going after this ‘penis envy’ either by competing for male attention or by having a baby. Lacanian symbolic order dictates that submission into the patriarchy allows individuals to navigate society effectively (1968). Both theories center around the absence of the penis, connoting females as lacking. Van Liesbet points out that in contrast, Chodorow’s theory looks into the ‘social process of mothering’ (1978). That is, through the daughter’s identification with her mother as same-sex beings, we analyse the female’s struggle in separating from this relation and becoming an autonomous person.

    Nonetheless, van Liesbet points out that research studies are carried out in a way that male experiences are seen as ‘universal’ while neglecting the experiences of women. This reminds us of Mulvey’s analysis of films being made in the way for viewers to always assume the gaze of a man, rendering the male experience ‘universal’. Van Zoonen referenced Gallagher and also pointed out that women are constantly represented in media as attractive and subservient to men (1980, 1985). Similarly, Mulvey analysed that women are represented in media to be enjoyed by men erotically through visuals, and also to reinforce the male ego through the narrative. Despite differences in approach, both theories recognise the flaws in the media’s representation of women as well as society’s neglect of women as autonomous citizens.

    We can see the reality of Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze through the way it is prevalent in films across most genres. The only genres that seem to subvert from this are those that are known to be specifically made for women. These are mainly romance films and ‘chick flicks’ like The Notebook (Cassavettes, 2004). The narrative centers around the struggles of a female protagonist who falls for an attractive young man—one who is sensitive and attentive to her feelings, yet bold and edgy enough to make unrealistic sacrifices just to win her heart. In The Notebook, Noah (Ryan Gosling) writes letters to Allie (Rachel McAdams) every day for a year and later attempts to build an entire house by hand to impress her. We can see here that instead of the woman being made to be looked at by men, it is the man who has to cater to a female-centric fantasy. However, it can also be argued that these films, despite being made for women, play off of women’s conditioning to the male gaze. That is to say, perhaps women have submitted to the patriarchy so willingly that they, too, play into the idea of being vulnerable and passive while awaiting rescue from a man who can do anything he puts his mind to. It should also be noted that the film centers around the female protagonist’s romantic struggles, connoting that a woman’s preoccupations are mainly that of men. We might link this back to Mulvey’s analysis of castration anxiety, where it is said that females deal with their lack of the penis by competing for male attention.

    In other film genres, the male gaze is employed even though these genres, on their own and unlike romance films and chick flicks, are targetted to a mainstream audience. This includes horror films like Jennifer’s Body (Kusama, 2009), which banks on the trending sex appeal of Megan Fox at the time and plays into the male fantasy of lesbian homoeroticism. In the film, Anita (Amanda Seyfried) tries to stop her best friend, Jennifer (Megan Fox), from killing people and in the process becomes seduced by Jennifer into having a makeout session. It is perhaps telling that the male gaze is prevalent across all genres and in the average film, yet a special category of films has to be set aside just to target a female audience. Moreover, this special category of films focuses on a woman begging for a man’s love and commitment, revealing the way society typesets women as being dependent on men. All in all, all of this reinforces how we are constantly invited to look through the eyes of men. This, in turn, reflects the patriarchy where men and his desires are dominant.

    Films that challenge the status quo of male-centricity do exist, but they are not enough. People reacted negatively to Ghostbusters (Feig, 2016) for casting females in the lead roles of a classic comedy that has always featured male leads. Netizens commented that women were not funny and that the film was trying too hard to put women at the forefront of Hollywood comedy (Merry, 2016). Such a reaction could be attributed to society’s discomfort of seeing something different in the mass-production of the culture industry. It could also once again relate to Mulvey’s analysis of castration anxiety, where male spectators have a need to see females in subservient roles in order to be assured of their masculinity.

    Blue is the Warmest Color (Kechiche, 2013) is a critically-acclaimed film that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (Variety, 2013). Yet even a film featuring female leads and which tells the honest and tragic story of a lesbian relationship, could not escape the subjection of the male gaze. The lead actresses had to put on prosthetic genitalia just to imitate full frontal nudity for the camera (Metro, 2013). The shots where their pseudo-genitalia is seen are also portrayed in slow, panning long takes that do not connect in any way to the scene. The sex scene between the two female characters lasted for approximately 10 minutes, which is unusually long for a sex scene within a narrative film. All of this was directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, a male director. This is reminiscent of Mulvey’s analysis of scopophilia, where the male spectator can realise his fetishisation of the female character onscreen because she was made to be looked at by him. The prevalence of the male gaze becomes even stronger when we consider the fact that this film mainly takes on the style of realism and verisimilitude. Mundane everyday conversations and events of the characters are portrayed almost in the way that real life would unfold. Yet the producers were willing to break this consistency and play out images styled for erotic contemplation just to satisfy the male gaze.

    In conclusion, despite the different approaches to deconstructing media effects or the psychoanalytic mechanisms of different genders, the prevalence of the male gaze remains in cinema. It is also evident that both the patriarchy and the reflection of it has been the status quo, while mass-production of the culture industry mostly serves to reinforce it. However, with more female-centric films emerging in present times, we might look on with optimism and disagree with Mulvey that women ‘cannot view the decline of the traditional film form with anything much more than sentimental regret’.

Bibliography

              Adorno, Theodor W., 1954. The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television. California: University of California Press.

             Adorno, T.W. and Horkheimer, M., 1997. Dialectic of Enlightenment. [Reprint, revised]. London: Verso.

            Chodorow, Nancy, 1999. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. California: University of California Press.

            Freud, S. (1924) ‘The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex’ in Stratchey, J. (edited and translated.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works. London: Hogarth Press.

             Gallagher, Margaret, 1980. The image reflected by mass media: stereotypes: images of women in the mass media. New York: UNESCO.

            Gallagher, Margaret, 1985. Feminism, communication and the politics of knowledge. [Online]. Available through: <http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED267456> [Accessed: 12 December 2016].

           Ghostbusters, 2016. [Film]. United States: Paul Feig.

           Jennifer’s Body, 2009. [Film]. United States: Karyn Kusama.

           Lacan, J., 1949. ‘The Mirror Stage’ in Lemert, C. (edited.) Social Theory: The Multicultural Readings. Philadelphia: Westview Press.

             Lacan, J. 1968. The language of the self: The function of language in psychoanalysis. Baltimore: John Hopkins University.

           Metro, 2013. Léa Seydoux: The sex scenes in Blue Is The Warmest Colour were humiliating to shoot. [Online]. Available through: <http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/19/lea-seydoux-the-sex-scenes-in-blue-is-the-warmest-colour-were-humiliating-to-shoot-4191389/> [Accessed: 12 December 2016].

            Notebook, The, 2004. [Film]. United States: Nick Cassavettes.

             Van Zoonen, Liesbet, 1994. Feminist Media Studies. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.  

            Variety, 2013. CANNES: ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ Wins Palme d’ Or. [Online]. Available through: <http://variety.com/2013/film/news/cannes-blue-is-the-warmest-color-wins-palme-d-or-1200488202/> [Accessed: 12 December 2016].

                  Washington Post, 2016.  People hate the ‘Ghostbusters’ trailer, and yes, it’s because it stars women. [Online]. Available through: <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/03/04/people-are-hating-the-ghostbusters-trailer-guess-why/?utm_term=.22586e4b4c39> [Accessed: 12 December 2016].

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Social and Political Theory: Comparing Marx, Mill, Rousseau and Durkheim on Liberty (word limit: 2500)

‘Was Durkheim correct to think that too much liberty is as bad as too little? If so, does his criticism apply only to liberal, individualist theories like Mill’s, or does it also apply to Rousseau and Marx?’

    I argue that Durkheim is correct in believing that having too much liberty alienates individuals and causes instability while having too little liberty robs people of their will for self-protection and for progress. Mill’s works argue for individuality and the breakdown of traditions and norms, especially for achieving human flourishing and ingenuity. However, having too much liberty to express individualism could lead to a breakdown in discipline, rendering it counterintuitive in achieving this ideal. In the case of Marx, he focused on liberating the working class from a Capitalist state through diminishing the class system and allowing self-sustenance. However, uprooting a familiar economic system threatens to bring forth Durkheim’s theory of anomie. As for Rousseau, he perceived liberty to be achieved through individuals surrendering themselves to the Social Contract where everyone is committed to mutual preservation and thereby have their natural liberty protected. This reinforces Durkheim’s argument of striking a balance between too much and too little liberty. We should be able to see, then, that Durkheim’s views, as with Rousseau’s, offers a more thorough perspective on liberty while Mill and Marx argue for liberty in certain dimensions that could potentially give rise to oppression or alienation in others. Additionally, I will look at liberty as a paradoxical ideal, and offer to explain how Durkheim’s views could be effective despite this paradox. 

  Durkheim outlines how too little liberty can be detrimental in ‘Suicide’ (2002). He explains how excessive societal integration can lead to altruistic suicide (p. 175-201). When individuals are tightly-knitted to each other in a community of shared beliefs and goals, ideas of honour, duty and sacrifice arise. As this manifests itself to an extreme end, individuals could completely lose their individual sense of identity, making them willing to sacrifice their mortality. Such an individual would only be concerned with upholding the shared vision of their community, often at the expense of what can protect and benefit them personally. We see this happening with suicide terrorism, where terrorists sacrifice themselves for the sake of the community (Pape, 2006). Pape argues that suicide terrorism, although often associated with religious ideologies, is part of a wider problem concerning shared ideologies and the idea of sacrificing for honour. These are all traits outlining Durkheim’s theory of societal integration, where the individual identifies himself with the collective he belongs to. When that identification grows to an excessive level, the power of unified passion can compel the individual to see himself as less important than the goal of the collective gaining power. Thus, to achieve that, the individual carries out acts of violence with an expectation of death. The public spectacle of suicide terrorism helps to draw attention to the ideological cause of the attacker. We can thus see how individuals who, in being excessively integrated into their community, lose their sense of individual liberty and thus fall into harm as they seek to uphold the interests of their community over their personal ones.  

 The lack of liberty as a result of excessive societal regulation could also lead to fatalistic suicide. In such a society, individuals are compelled to live in a certain way. This could create a sense of despair and helplessness for those with aspirations not endorsed by their community. This could explain the directly proportional relationship between the social control and the suicide rate of women in Iran (Aliverdinia and Pridemore, 2009). The social control of women in a patriarchal society,  including being confined to her domestic role in a marriage and facing restrictions on her educational and employment opportunities, could generate feelings of dysphoria. As such, women may feel that they are doomed to lead an unfulfilling life which they have no control or say over and suicide becomes an attractive alternative. Thus, too little liberty harms by contributing to the possibility of fatalistic suicides. 

 However, Durkheim recognises the detrimental effects of too much liberty as well. A lack of societal integration where a person is free to be on his or her own is what Durkheim believes to be the cause of ‘egoistic suicide’ (p. 105-175). This individual loses a sense of belonging and meaning in being connected with the rest of society, causing a sense of depressive ennui. Findings show that depressed patients are more likely to lack a religious affiliation (American Journal of Psychiatry, 2004). People who are part of a religious group can rely on a community of peers who practise and share the same beliefs collectively. This communal bond helps to provide a reassuring sense of belonging and meaning. Those without a religion are deprived of this bond, thus finding life to be a lonely and bleak existence. Therefore, too much liberty can harm: without the attachment to and meaning provided by community, people may see life not worth living.

 Additionally, during periods of social upheavals and transitions, societal regulation grows weaker and the increased liberty for individuals can lead to anomic suicide. As discussed by Durkheim, in a society where systematic flow and normative regulation are broken, people are unable to properly regulate their desires (p. 207-208). People in these societies tend to fight for goals with no end in sight, or might be unclear about their societal role in the first place. This results in a kind of existential anxiety where individuals start to question who they are, what they should be doing and what the meaning of their actions in society is. This, in turn, relates to what Durkheim terms ‘anomie’ (p. 219), where social norms are broken down and citizens become unclear about the way they should behave. This is since society is under change and the tacit agreement on what is considered acceptable has come undone. We might look to China in the 1990s, where suicide rates and mental health issues showed a great increase (Graham, 2015). At the same time, China was met with rapid and unprecedented rates of economic growth, partly owed to the free market taking over. This, in turn, opened up job opportunities for people in the rural areas who migrated to the urban areas, causing changes in social welfare structures and inequality pertaining to skillset demands and rewards. These unregulated changes all point towards insecurity. We might imagine that people from urban areas became anxious about losing job opportunities while people from rural areas worried about the many others vying for the same opportunities. This is in contrast to a society where people are sure of what rewards to expect in exchange for whatever skills or services they are expected to provide, even if it keeps them confined to certain classes. Additionally, such competition in an economically booming market led to longer working hours and increase in the pressure to succeed. Thus, we see how being left with too many unregulated and liberated possibilities in society lead to anxiety and low life satisfaction.

 Here, we see how Durkheim deconstructs liberty as having different effects under different dimensions, as opposed to it being a single, unifying idea.

 Mill is particularly concerned about how too little liberty can stifle human flourishing, which in turn stifles the progress of society (1869). With the oppressive presence of social norms, new research, experimentation and theories cannot be easily presented, devised, challenged and studied. Individuals are expected to act in certain ways that are appropriate to tradition, discouraging the flow of new ideas and thus, ingenuity and progress. For Mill, allowing more liberty promotes intellectual autonomy and enhances diversity of thought. Here, we see how Mill’s argument reinforces Durkheim’s view that having too much societal regulation and integration would constrain an individual from pursuing progress, since they are pressurised to act in a way that fits a familiar pattern of social conformity.

 However, Mill seems to lack a wider perspective on liberty. Having too much freedom might deprive an individual of the discipline he or she needs to formulate their ideas, and having an amount of pressure from the community could in fact aid in the progress of innovation. In order for Mill’s argument to work, an individual must be trusted with the sense and ability to utilise his or her liberty in appropriate ways that can keep them focused on their work. However, self-discipline is a volatile ideal that usually works better with external factors to keep the individual accountable. 

 As opposed to being isolated, an individual who is connected to a larger community would feel a sense of responsibility for its progress. Even though identifying oneself as a member of a community would require attachment and thus a certain level of confinement to its shared norms and beliefs, the aforementioned sense of purpose could motivate a genius to realise his or her ideas for the betterment of mankind. We have seen prominent thinkers coming together to formulate their theories in schools, such as in the case of the Frankfurt School (Held, 1980). Thinkers such as Horkheimer, Adorno and several others gathered together in a singular, regulated setting with a common interest in Marxist studies and shared goals. From there, they shared and developed ideas that led to Critical Theory, an influential school of thought. With their will to gather and to be integrated into a regulated environment, they were able to develop, compile and publish their idea successfully. Coming together as the Frankfurt school evidently created a space for diversity, social bonding and progress as the thinkers shared their ideas with one another. These are ideals desired by Mill himself, which shows that liberty, unlike what Mill proposed, does not necessarily have to be absolute for achieving these very goals. One might also say that the Frankfurt School theorists had the liberty in the first place to gather in such a space. This brings us back to Durkheim’s argument that a balance of liberty and constraint is crucial for individuals to find their place in society. 

  Here, we might start to see the inklings of liberty being a complex ideal that can be counterintuitive if not administered in the appropriate dimensions at right levels. According to Bertram (2004), there has been debate surrounding the distinction between ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ freedom. Negative libertarianism defines liberty as ‘an absence of constraint’, while positive libertarianism ‘focuses on an agent’s achievement of self-rule or autonomy’ (p. 83). We might then classify Mill’s brand of liberty as ‘negative’ liberty, since it focuses on dissolving the bearings that social norms have on creative thought. 

 Marx’s works revolve around the idea that the way one is bound to the economic state dictates their social and private lifestyles, as well as people’s relations with one another (Marx and Engels, 1848). Thus, under a Capitalist state where profit is made off of the labour of the working class (Marx, 1867), Marx believes it leaves the working class oppressed under the ruling classes. As such, he seems to be an advocate for liberty, but with a clear emphasis on liberating the working class. He sees this mainly through dissolving the Capitalist system and achieving a classless state (1867). This might remind us of Durkheim’s views on the way excessive societal regulation could interfere with the aspirations and hopes of individuals. We might look to radical political uprisings that have occurred in history, for example, the Cultural Revolution in China. Although the more immediate cause of this event would arguably be Mao Ze Dong’s intention of eradicating his enemies (1999), we might argue that the reason why anybody had interest in forming or supporting the Chinese Communist Party in the first place stemmed from dissatisfaction of the societal regulation dictated by class struggle. Together with other factors, it eventually culminated in the aggression that the Chinese Communist Party carried out in the Cultural Revolution (Yang, 2011). Thus, we see how a lack of liberty to live outside the confinements of societal regulation is detrimental. 

  Here, I would argue that Marx’s brand of liberty would qualify as ‘positive’ liberty. This is because it does not simply fight for the working class to be free from oppression. More than that, it stands that a revolution would be achieved by the collective will of the proletariat (1848) and naturally, by association of changing the entire economic system, the rest of society would follow suit. In the case of the Cultural Revolution, we might consider that there could have been people from the working class who wanted to be part of the status quo but who were forced to submit to Mao’s idea of liberty, contradicting the general idea of liberty, that is, to be free from constraint. Thus, the Cultural Revolution could also be used as an example of how an excess of positive libertarianism could backfire and contradict the ideal of liberty in itself.

  Dissolving the class system might also have potential bearings of Durkheim’s theory of anomie. Capitalism is a system that is familiar in most states and affects the ebb and flow of jobs and the economy. Uprooting this would be a drastic change for society, resulting in unrest as predicted by Durkheim and as we have previously explored. We would imagine that as social norms break down in a classless state and people lose their foothold in society as labourers and capitalists, desires and ambitions get lost in a state of confusion and chaos. All in all, with Marx’s theories, we might conclude that too much liberty in one area could cause too little liberty in another, and through the examples, we see that too much liberty is just as bad as too little.   

  Rousseau stood for individuals to submit to the General Will and in turn, receive civil liberty (1762). By being committed to this Social Contract, individuals would protect the interests of the group, since they are a part of it and would be affected by whatever benefit or harm that fall upon it. This was Rousseau’s way of mediating inequality amongst individuals, which was causing competition and destruction in the name of self-interest. We can see here that Rousseau’s argument stands with Durkheim’s theory that the right amount of societal integration could serve the interests of the individual and protect him or her from alienation in the form of isolation or, in this case, external harm. More importantly, I contend that Rousseau’s theories best reflect Durkheim’s idea that the right amount of both liberty and constraint is crucial. To be integrated into the Social Contract, one has to allow themselves to adhere to the regulations of the group—this acts as a constraint. However, without such constraint, the individual might fall to harm as they face external forces of antagonism without protection from collective power. These external forces would have worked for, instead of against, the individual should all citizens have been part of the Social Contract. Having been harmed, the individual would then be robbed of a larger portion of his or her natural liberty than if they had submitted to the Social Contract. Therefore, by requesting people to give up a portion of their natural liberty to gain civil liberty and in turn, be guaranteed of the security to practise their remaining natural liberty, Rosseau’s views reinforce Durkheim’s stand that both society’s constraint and an individual’s liberty should be equally important in considering the bearings of liberty. 

  We thus see that liberty is a complex paradox that does not work in an absolute way. Thus, I reinstate that Durkheim’s views provide a more thorough perspective of liberty than that of Mill’s and Marx’s. Durkheim does this firstly by recognising the distinctions in the different ways liberty can take effect in different dimensions of an individual’s social and private lives. However, for Mill and Marx, they focused on either how ‘negative’ libertarianism benefits ingenuity or how ‘positive’ libertarianism liberates the working class. As with Rousseau’s theory of liberating civilians as a collective in part of protecting their natural liberty, we might look to Durkheim’s views on how ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ liberty work hand in hand, with an excess of either causing detriment. If we consider how ‘positive’ liberty can contradict the basic ideal of liberty by extending to a level of constraint, we might then agree with Durkheim that too much liberty is just as bad as too little, and thus constraint and freedom should work hand in hand.

Bibliography

            Aliverdinia, A and Pridemore, W.A., 2009. Women's fatalistic suicide in Iran: a partial test of Durkheim in an Islamic Republic. [Online]. Available through: <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19139492> [Accessed 14 December 2016]. 

           American Journal of Psychiatry, 2014. Religious Affiliation and Suicide Attempt. [Online]. Available through: <http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.161.12.2303> [Accessed 20 November 2016].   Bertram, Christopher, 2004.

           Rousseau and The Social Contract. New York: Routledge. Durkheim, Émile, 2002. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. [Ebook]. Taylor & Francis. Available through: <http://www.myilibrary.com?ID=14859> [Accessed 20 November 2016].            

          Graham, Carol, 2015. Why did the Chinese become less happy during their growth boom? [Online]. Available through: <https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2015/06/16/why-did-the-chinese-become-less-happy-during-their-growth-boom/> [Accessed: 14 December 2016]   Held, David, 1980.

           Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. California: University of California Press.   

           Marx, Karl, 1867. Capital, Volume 1: The Process of Production of Capital. Reprint 1946. London: J M Dent & Sons Ltd.   

           Marx, K. and Engels, F., 1848 in Moore, S. and McLellan, D. (eds.) The Communist Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

           Mill, John Stuart, 1869. On liberty. London: Longman, Roberts & Green.

           Pape, Robert Anthony, 2006. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Manhattan: Random House.

           Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1762. The Social Contract. [Online]. Available through: <https://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/jean-jacques-rousseau-the-social-contract/text> [Accessed 20 November 2016].

            Tang, Tsou, 1999. The Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao Reforms: A Historical Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago.

            Yang, Su, 2011. Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[linglingwrites]

Film analysis: Spring Breakers (word limit: 1500)

Film: Spring Breakers

Sequence runtime: 1:03:04 – 1:08:11

     This essay will explore a sequence from Spring Breakers (2013), where Alien (James Franco), Cotty (Rachel Korine), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Candy (Vanessa Hudgens) are musing about their friendship in a world of crime. We will look at the use of cinematography, mise-en-scene and editing that creates a unique albeit unlikely world of dreamy spirituality and danger. As we explore how these forms fit into the plot, themes and design, we will also see how this film creates its own genre that hints at neo-noir.

Mise-en-scene

  When we look at the design in this sequence, we notice the frequent use of pink tones and sunsets. This creates a tender feeling of spirituality and camaraderie. In the slow-motion shots where they are committing crimes, the colours grow cooler, contrasted and saturated. The brightness of the exposure, coupled with the cooler colours, bring forth a feeling of disorientation and danger. Especially for the girls, it also hints at their descent into deeper levels of crime and the conflict between the sentimentality in their friendships and the violence of their crimes.

 The girls are dressed in pink monokinis and ski-masks with unicorn emblems, a ‘cute’ and ‘pretty’ style that might be ironic to the guns they carry. The viewers’ expectations are played with as we usually associate criminals with dark-coloured, discreet clothing with layers. Thus, through props and costumes, we see how Korine creates a unique aesthetic that connotes both tenderness and ruggedness.

     Korine used actresses who had previously been known as teen idols, such as Hudgens and Benson. Cotty and Candy were one of their first risque roles (Daily Mail). When we consider how their characters became embroiled in a world of gangsterism, we might see how the juxtaposition of their career background, with their performance as sultry outlaws, outlines the loss of innocence. When Alien is toying with the piano keys, we see him in a rare moment of quiet musing as he himself admits to the girls that he is showing his “sensitive side”. It is all the more surprising when he starts playing and singing a Britney Spears ballad from the days when Spears was known as a pop princess. This is a huge contrast to Alien’s image of tattoos, grills, gold chains and dreads—typical of hard-hitting gangsters. The contrast becomes even more apparent as we watch shots of Alien and the girls committing violence with relentless enthusiasm. At the same time, we see intermittent shots of the girls dancing around the piano with their guns. This image reinforces their attitude of reckless abandon in a world of crime and how violence has brought them together in the circle of friendship.

    Through such harmony of contrasting visuals within the mise-en-scene, Korine successfully sets the world of two unlikely moods—sentimentality and violence.

Cinematography

 The camera frequently employs the rule of thirds, symmetry and negative space to frame the four characters together. This creates aesthetically pleasing images that induces a feeling of harmony. For example, in a shot of the piano scene, the setting sun sits in the negative space while our four characters and their grand piano reside in the other, creating balance. Everything seems to be in the right place at the right time. The way these characters are frequently seen together in a single, well-composed shot, helps us we see how the characters have grown to be as close as family while they go through life as literal partners in crime. When they are not framed together, close-ups are employed to portray the emotions of the characters.

      Handheld camera movement is constantly used as well. It lets us in on the feeling of constantly being in motion with the characters as they roam the streets, always ready to commit crime. This also connotes their loyalty to each other and how they are always ready to work together as a team, even in dangerous and criminal situations. Nobody gets left behind and no one works alone. At the same time, this handheld camera movement works with the tender, natural and honest feeling of camaraderie. Enhanced by their frequent use of marijuana, it creates this feeling of being intoxicated, joyful and free-spirited.  

Editing

 An editing style that we see frequently in Spring Breakers is the jump cut. In the piano scene, we see the 180-degree rule broken between shots. Shots that do not differ much in size are also occasionally cut next to each other. Instead of looking like technical errors, the jump cuts create a style that fits in with the mise-en-scene and the style of the dialogue. The dialogue has an organic tone, with lines repeated at random in sleepy voices. Coupled with the handheld camera movement, the fragmentation from these jump cuts create a stream-of-consciousness style, enhancing the free-spiritedness of the characters.

 There is also the prominent use of montage editing. We might think of Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of the montage of attractions. According to him, the audience can be brought into a particular set of emotions by seeing a series of images in bursts of movement (Taylor, 1998). Here, the montages are more than a compression of time where we watch the characters spend their days travelling and committing crimes. In the first montage, we see a collision of their different joyful moments, a flashback and worried expressions strung together by a voiceover of Alien’s poetic musing. It evokes a moving sense of inspiration in us as we see how much they go through together and how close they have become. However, it has a melancholic hint of anxiety as we listen to Alien saying, “Let’s cause some trouble now. Live life to the fullest,” while we see disconnected shots of them staring into the horizon with concerned looks. It might be reflective of them being unsure of where a life of crime and reckless abandon would eventually take them, perhaps a foreboding of the trouble that is about to ensue. With the collision of these images evoking such emotions in us, we become more invested in their friendships, which creates suspense on whether danger would break them apart.

   In the second montage, shots of the girls dancing with their guns, Alien playing the piano and all of them committing crimes are juxtaposed with ‘Everytime’ (2004)—a sweet ballad. Even though the crime scenes are explicitly violent, the juxtaposition of sight and sounds allows us to see how they have bonded over all these stints. At the same time, it creates an odd sense of collision between spirituality and violence, a theme central to this film. The use of slow-motion in this montage makes us contemplate on their actions and observe how violent they are. Additionally, it creates a sense of surrealism which perhaps reflect the disorientation that they experience from their overindulgence in crime. Matching the changing tempo of the song, the montage of attractions builds up a crescendo that culminates in them firing gunshots into the sky, reinforcing for once and for all that fate and crime have rendered them inseparable.

Genre 

 As much as Spring Breakers seems like a genre-defying film, it shares many common elements with the gangster and film noir genres. According to Barsam and Monahan (2016), the gangster film is ‘rooted in the concept of the American dream’ (p. 91), where one can succeed through grit. The “American dream” is something that the character, Alien, himself refers to while bragging about his gun and cash collection. This concept runs from the start, where the girls lament about not having enough money for Spring break and needing to break out of ennui. This also fits into the ‘rags-to-riches-to-destruction formula’ (p. 91),  where the girls finally get their big break committing crimes with Alien and having the money to enjoy themselves, until Alien dies in a gunfight with a rival gang. On that note, the gangster genre also features the antagonist in the form of a fellow gangster.

 In the end, the girls avenge Alien by fighting the rival gang. As outlaws who have redeeming qualities of loyalty and illegal justice, we see that our protagonists are anti-heroes. This is where the genre overlaps into film noir, which also features the anti-hero. Additionally, Cotty, Brit and Candy are attractive women who are seen in fashionable swimsuits and erotic situations. They are also fully capable of crime and violence to get what they want, rendering them femme fatales—a prominent element in film noir. As discussed, the film also creates a world of disorientation and complexity. Oftentimes, the mood is suspenseful and the characters intoxicate us with their poetic and sleepy musings.

  There are a few things that make this film stand out from classic film noir, or even neo-noir. In neo-noir, deep colours of blue, red and black are featured. In this film, however, there is frequent use of bright, ‘pop’ colours. The quintessential film noir characteristic is the use of chiaroscuro lighting, where there is a high contrast of light and shadow (Smith et al., 2004). This film features such low-key lighting as well, except that it is always marked by neon lighting or the kind of lens-flare typical of music videos. Together with its use of ex-teen idols, dubstep music, rappers and the Spring break motif, these characteristics render the film exceptionally reflexive of contemporary mass pop culture—something not frequently seen in noir films. Additionally, the film takes on a strong aesthetic of femininity with the elaborately colourful and ‘girly’ costumes of the protagonists, as well as the running theme of sisterhood. This is unlike most noir films, which focus on the brooding masculinity of their anti-heroes.

 In conclusion, Spring Breakers is a blend of several unlikely elements that come together to create a perfectly unique world where one finds self-actualization and spiritual love through massive destruction.

   Bibliography

               Barsam, R. and Monahan, D., 2016. Looking at movies: an introduction to film. [5th Edition]. W.W. Norton & Company: New York.

               Daily Mail, 2016. 'It was out of my comfort zone': Ashley Benson reveals that wearing a bikini on screen for Spring Breakers was intimidating. [Online]. Available through: <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3454116/Ashley-Benson-reveals-wearing-bathing-suit-Spring-Breakers-intimidating.html> [Accessed 12 December 2016]. 

           Daily Mail, 2012. 'I never want to do it ever again': Vanessa Hudgens opens up about her first sex scene - a threesome with Ashley Benson and James Franco. [Online]. Available through: <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2233556/Vanessa-Hudgens-opens-sex-scene--threesome-Ashley-Benson-James-Franco.html> [Accessed 12 December 2016].

             Eisenstein, S. (1998) ‘The Montage of Film Attractions’ in Taylor, R. (eds.) The Eisenstein Reader. British Film Institute: London.

            Everytime, 2004. [CD Single]. Jive: New York.

           Spring Breakers, 2013. [Film]. Harmony Korine: United States.

             Smith, K. L., Moriarty, S., Kenney, K. and Barbatsis, G, 2004. Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. Routledge: London.