- Addings made 29.5 2007 12.44
(Sorry, I think that my english is on its limits in this text. Some thoughts might be a bit short or badly written)
When people are watching a movie, what do they think about the characters, I mean, why are the characters there, what is the motive for their actions...? Does anyone think this? Yes or no, either way things aren´t that simple.
Cause I´ve confronted some very scary people, and a lot of them, who seem to watch movies in a way which is totally odd to me. If a character is in a movie, Someone has written the part, and an actor has acted him/her in a way which supports the characters role in the movie. So, am I wrong by thinking that a character represents a certain thought, feel or "way of looking" or a "view point" to the subject of the film, or has a function in it to get the plot and message where it is going? This is ofcourse a bit shallow interpretation. A character must rise out of the text to be recognized as a human, not only work as a mathematical factor. But that is a big part of character. Think about the Aristothelic way of telling a story. There is the hero, the protagonist and the antagonist and many others, all have their specific part in the story to keep moving..
Now follows an example full of cliché ->
If we see a film made in the 50´s where the lead character is a man and an anti-hero who gets in situations where he must rise above his own powers compared to his life before, and the reason for this is a woman, who has a smaller part and is more shallowly presented, a troubled woman, who likes lilies but has no boyfriend and is in some kind of danger, possibly because his father is some evil nazi officer.
So, does this story present us an image of all men whit the expection for them to overcome their obstacles and stand up as men? and do you think that this storyline gives us the impression that women in general like lilies and need to be rescued?
My answer is absolutely no!
( yes, this arrangement is really stereotypical, but there is also the "era"-issue. Which is a totally different issue, but important also, interpretation must recognize the time and place where the piece was made, eventhough this isn´t an escape route or justification for anything).
Its more like a tale about overcoming obstacles in general and finding love and exitement in life or something..but not about what men and women are like!
Of course there is that interpretation, and it is true also, but it is very very dangerous to think that it could be the only way on interpretating it! Movies are art and if someone thinks that he can give a full and thorough analysis of a movie he or she should stop watching films and go out and live.
People can choose what they see. That is relevant in watching films too.
Every time someone shows us an image of a person or something, it is presenting somekind of characteristics that the presentator finds important or likable.
Every image is a statement!
But in order to make stories and movies, one must use images and characters and their characteristics and sometimes characters evolve in a direction which is not the must likable or not the most thorough presentation of the group that that specific character is a part of. Should every movie have in them a complete range of every characteristic a human could have to make them acceptable?
If the audience can not understand the connection between the different statements or images, what is the synthesis that they produce together, because that is what film is about, either the storytelling of a film is bad, or the audience doesn´t want to recieve the point, or is not ready to understand it.
Of course he/she who makes these images must be aware what kind of vision of world he/she is representing. And if the images are somehow questionable, one should maybe take the story and message under closer look.
I am not saying that portraying stereotypical images is OK or could always be justified. No. But if someone does decide to create some characters who are somehow stereotypical or something, there could be a reason for it? Maybe, maybe not.
My point in short is, that movies are small tales about life, they tell us things by presenting them through selected sort of characters and events, which are not to be taken literally in any situation. Movies are not telling us how we should live or how we should observe life.
movies affect our life, but I guess that real people have much greater impact on us than movies
Psychoanalysis is especially dangerous way of interpretating films. Being my self a big "fan" of Freud and Jung, It is the way of looking things, not the specific symbols or connections that those guys, especially Freud made. For example, ever though about the precious world-wide-famous award winning trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, in a point of view of traditional psychoanalysis.. some really funny stuff can be seen.
Or look at the same films keeping in mind the man-woman matter. Not so funny anymore.
You could say "Those films are fantasy films". But it might be just me, but films are films. In my eyes they are all fantasies. And how far of everyday life a film is, more exact it can be in telling us about our life. I dont make such direct segregation between films, just by in what genre they happen to be.
Connecting the same interpretations for symbols and characteristics from one artwork to another is not so right thing to do as one might think. I mean, that one must learn the system in whit a specific artwork works in, in order to analyse it and make connections from it to the real world:
"On a traffic light red means stop, yellow means slow down, and green means go. But on a banana it's the opposite. Green means hold on, yellow means go ahead and red means "Where the fuck did you get that banana at?""
-Mitch Hedberg
So, Im just warning everyone to think again. Was the interpretation you just made, out of the film or out of your own way of seeing and thinking life, and your own wants and desires was just unjustily placed on the shoulders of an innocent movie?
