Cultures of Vision

Ron Burnett

Description

New approaches to issues of representation, performance, and media analysis examine the rich connections between television, photography, cinema, video, and popular culture.

Visit the author's website

"This is a very strong, thought-provoking [volume] . . . " —George Marcus

As home photographs shift from the print format to digital technology and as video moves from the television screen to multimedia, it is crucial to develop new strategies of interpreting and analyzing these images.

Visit the author's World Wide Web site: (2/19/03: Link is no longer active)
http://www.facl.mcgill.ca/burnett/englishhome.html

Chapter One
Images and Vision

Chapter Two
Camera Lucida: Barthes and Photography

Chapter Three
From Photograph to Film: Textual Analysis

Chapter Four
Projection

Chapter Five
Reinventing the Electronic Image

Chapter Six
Postmodern Media Communities

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Película fotográfica
• Criticism
• History of film
• Cinema
• Anthropology
• Cultural Studies
• Social
• Film
• Culture
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 décembre 1995
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253116413
• Langue: English

Extrait

Cultures of Vision
Cultures of Vision
Images, Media, and the Imaginary
________________
RON BURNETT
________________
Indiana University Press
BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS
© 1995 by Ron Burnett
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any formor by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopyingand recording, or by any information storage and retrievalsystem, without permission in writing from the publisher. TheAssociation of American University Presse’ Resolution onPermissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirementsof American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSIZ39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burnett, Ron, date
Cultures of vision : images, media, and the imaginary /         Ron Burnett.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-32902-7 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-253-20977-3 (pbk.)
1. Motion pictures. 2. Photography. 3. Visual perception.
I. Title.
PN1995.B86   1995
791.43—dc20
94-48674
1   2   3   4   5   00   99   98   97   96   95
for Martha, Maija, and Katie
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Images and Vision
A Video Diary
Boundaries of Seeing and Feeling
The Power to See
The Eye in the Photograph
Death in Bosnia
Out of Focus: David Koresh
Rodney King: Community and Communication
The Eye and the Ear: In Time
The Mirror Can See Forever
2. Camera Lucida: Barthes and Photography
Photographs and Images: The Polaroid
Benjamin/Barthes/Berger
Avedon’s Slave
Photographic Images and the Public Sphere
Performing the Visual
The Photographic Other
Clint Eastwood’s Magnum
Lumière and Méliès
Death of a Cameraman
Sartre’s Memory
Toward Projection
3. From Photograph to Film: Textual Analysis
The Disappearance of the Image: Wavelength
Is There a Medium for the Message? From Photography to Film
Letter to Jane (Fonda)
Celluoid-Time/Performance-Time
Camera/Text/Frame
Wim Wenders and Ozu
The Classical Cinema as Paradigm
The Classical Disguise
The Naturalization of Artifice
Why Science? Why Text?
The Communication of Meaning through Images
Tangled Knots of Yarn
Through the Lens of Montage
4. Projection
A Coup in Thailand
Reading a Wave
Fact Is Always Fiction
Documentary Simulations
Projection
Dreaming the Cinema
The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Germany, Pale Mother
Narrative — Projection
The Topography of Projection
The Documentary as Projection: Shoah, Schindler’s List
Listening to Projections
Listening to Hiroshima
Insignificance
Performance, Projection, and Intention
Memories of Identification: Scream from Silence
Play-Acting
The Body of Projection
Inside the Dome of Images
Nirvana: The Death of Kurt Cobain
5. Reinventing the Electronic Image
Prologue: To Be or Not to Be — Virtual
Video Activism
A Resistance to Theory
Video and the Public Sphere
Media Theory and the Electronic Image
Learning from Video Images
Video Politics and Communication
Dialogues in Image Form
Video Bodies/Video Minds
Screens of Subjectivity
Challenging Change
Community and Communication
6. Postmodern Media Communities
A Community of Identities
Local Travels
Visual Media, Ethnography, and Indigenous Cultures
Images of a Strike
The Marshall Islands
The Ceremony
Michael Jackson, “Seinfeld,” and The Super Bowl
The Reflecting Pool
Waiting for Baudrillard in Sadie Benning’s Living Room
The Virtual Printing Press
Bibliography
Index
  Acknowledgments
T HIS BOOK IS the product of many years of teaching, writing, videomaking,BOOK Is the product of many years of teaching, writing, videomaking,and filmmaking. Through it all I have benefited from the advice and input ofcolleagues, students, friends, and my family. In many respects, the diversity ofissues that I address reflect the context in which I live and work, a place on theborders of America and Canada—Quebec, and within it, McGill University. Asabbatical finally allowed me to bring all of this material together, and financialsupport from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council wascrucial to the research on video. Previous research leaves from LaTrobe Universityin Melbourne, Australia, enabled me to travel to the Marshall Islandsand to develop a more profound understanding of the importance of communityvideo to nonwestern cultures. Lectures at the University of Amsterdamallowed me to articulate some of my ambivalences about alternative media andthe generally negative attitude of video practitioners to popular culture. Asemester-long course, “Television in the Light of Postmodern Theory” in theGraduate Program in Communications, encouraged me to deepen my appreciationof postmodern thought. I am grateful to many of my students for theirinput, including Haidee Wasson, Scott MacKenzie, Michelle Gauthier, AuroraWallace, Stacey Johnson, Chandrabhanu Pattanayak, Lynne Darroch, MurrayForeman, Alain Pericard, Marian Bredin, Anne Beaulieu, Cara Pike, andSuzie Fry.
The Dutch filmmaker Johan van der Keuken has taught me more about thedocumentary cinema and photography than he can imagine. My discussionsand correspondence with him have had an effect beyond words. I am gratefulto and have learned from Peter Ohlin, Peter Harcourt, Hamid Naficy, GeorgeMarcus, Michael Fischer, Will Straw, David Hemsley, Robert Daudelin, GertrudeRobinson, George Szanto, Réal Larochelle, Kass Banning, JanineMarchessault, Kay Armitage, Atom Egoyan, William Routt, Rick Thompson,Tom O’Regan, John Hinkson, John Galaty, Hugh Armstrong, Pat Armstrong,Barbara Creed, Thomas Elsaesser, Merrill Findlay, Patricia Gruben, DenaGleeson, Marc Glassman, Charles Levin, Paisley Livingston, Mette Hjort,Laura Mulvey, Patricia Mellencamp, Teresa de Lauretis, Kaja Silverman, BillNichols, John Richardson, Michael Silverman, Michael Renov, Susan Feldman, Felix de Mendelsohn, Bill Dodge, Lise Ouimet, Brian Morel, FayeGinsburg, Alain Ambrosi, Joe Clark, Ricki Goldman-Segall, and NancyThede.
Before his premature death, anthropologist Roger Keesing and I had manymonths of fruitful discussion which helped shape the ideas in this book. I amgrateful to Hart Cohen, who brought me to the University of Western Sydneyfor a series of lectures and the many years of friendship which we have had. Ayear-long e-mail conversation with Andrew Curry has sharpened my understandingof interactive media and has made six years of tinkering with the Internetvery worthwhile. My deepest thanks to Shirley Daventry-French andDerek French for their support and for their teaching. I would like to thankJoan Catapano and LuAnne Holladay at Indiana University Press for their adviceand support.
Although nearly all of this book is made up of new material, from time totime I have used some parts of the following previously published material:“Video: The Politics of Culture and Community,” in Resolutions: Essays onContemporary Video Practices, ed. Michael Renov and Erika Suderberg (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press); “Video Space/Video Time: The ElectronicImage as Found Object,” in Mirror Machine: Video in the Age of Identity, ed. Janine Marchessault (Toronto: XYZ); “Dreaming the Cinema,” in Responses: In Honour of Peter Harcourt, ed. Michael Dorland, Zuzana M.Pick, Blaine Allan (Ottawa: Responsibility Press); “The Frontiers of ourDreams Are No Longer the Same: Quebec Nationalism from an AnglophonePerspective,” in Boundaries of Identity: A Quebec Reader, ed. William Dodge(Toronto: Malcolm Lester Publishers); “Video/Film: From Communication toCommunity,” in Video in the Changing World, ed. Nancy Thede and AlainAmbrosi (New York and Montreal: Black Rose Books); “Between the Bordersof Cultural Identity: Atom Egoyan’s Calendar,” in CineAction 32; “CameraLucida: Roland Barthes, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Photographic Image,” in Continuum 6.2, ed. John Richardson; “Toward Media Anthropology,” Commissionon Visual Anthropology Review, Spring 1991; “These Images WhichRain Down into the Imaginary,” The Canadian Journal of Film Studies 1.1;“The Eyes Don’t Have It: Video Images and Ethnography,” Continuum 3.2;“Lumiere’s Revenge,” Borderlines 16; “Micro-Chip Video,” Copie Zero 26. Iwould like to thank the editors and publishers of the above for their permissionto use extracts from work which first appeared in their pages.
To my parents, Sophie and Walter Burnett, and my sister Sandy and herhusband, George, thank you for being so understanding and supportive. To mywife, Martha, and our daughters Maija and Katie, my deepest appreciationand thanks for your support and love during the long months of writing andresearch. This book is dedicated to Martha, who never wavered in her belieft