Abstracts
Abstracts and Extracts from forthcoming editions of JMP
Title: Making One Blood; A journey through participatory radio documentary production
Author: Jessica Noske-Turner, RMIT University
Introduction
One Blood tells the story of William Cooper, an Aboriginal Rights activist throughout the early 20th century. In particular it focuses on his act of protest against Jewish persecution following Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass). This little known piece of history has served to foster understanding between Jewish Holocaust survivors and Indigenous people. In this way it involves stories owned by Indigenous people and by Holocaust survivors. The questions driving this practice-led-research project were of an ethical nature, interrogating the position of documentary producers in relation to power and representation. Using a participatory framework I explored ways that producers can redistribute power through their practice so that those connected to the story are involved as participants, rather than as subjects. The article focuses on the production experience from pre-production, production and editing up to the point where negotiations with a broadcaster can begin. I begin by identifying and reviewing some of the significant texts on representation and power in orthodox documentary practices. This is followed by an exploration of Florencia Enghel’s use of participatory methodologies, which served as both a guiding and a comparative framework. This is followed by an analysis of some of the key elements of my experimentation with and development of this practice. This research found that participatory practice places a number of limitations on production including adherence to deadlines, and is most suited to contexts where participants feel positive about the story being told. The practice did, however, enable the achievement of the shared goals; (1) to produce a radio feature with potential to reach a wide audience to serve social and political aims, (2) that the radio feature is content-rich, technically sound and structurally strong, (3) that participants feel comfortable and connected to their mediated representations.
Framing Participatory Practice
There are two main works that suggest a framework for the participatory practice undertaken in this project. The first is Enghel’s retrospective analysis of her documentary project involving Indigenous peoples in Argentina. Enghel (2005) provides a model of participatory communication and production. Her work is situated within communication for development paradigms in order to investigate alternative approaches to documentary production.
Michaels (1994) offers a second perspective on representation and collaborative practice. In order to move the subject towards a centralized participant Michaels puts forward questions to communities; ‘What do you want photographed?’ and ‘How?’ (1994: 16). In participatory practice these questions are pervading themes throughout the process. Here, then, the producer becomes a collaborator or even an employee in the process of facilitating the subject’s objectives in creating a representation of themselves (Michaels 1994: 16).
In Practice
Throughout the making of One Blood I sought to define a radio documentary production practice which was inclusive, collaborative and consultative. The example of producing One Blood is presented as a model for ways to integrate participatory practices into documentary production. A few key examples of the application of these theories into practice are analysed here, as well as a discussion of the issues, challenges and usefulness.
A key example of this process in practice was the selection of a Jewish Holocaust survivor who could be interviewed. The Jewish Holocaust Centre arranged the interviewee based on a phone discussion about what aspects of Holocaust experience were relevant to the William Cooper narrative. The Holocaust Centre chose a participant who was particularly interested in Indigenous issues, William Cooper and the similarities of experiences between Jewish and Indigenous struggles against racism and persecution. These additional areas of interest were unexpected but were certainly a valuable addition to the content of the feature. This is a direct consequence of the community’s direction of content over who should be interviewed, and therefore, a positive result of the use of the practice under investigation.
In another instance, I had suggested interviewing a Koorie historian, an idea that was quickly rejected by the Indigenous community producer as inappropriate in a culture which values oral history over written history. This example illustrates how participatory practice helps ensure that the piece is told in accordance with the authorities within the community in order that a sense of connection to the representation is achieved.
During the production process the interviews themselves also became an opportunity to incorporate community driven content, which contributed to the participatory practice. Using the technique of walking through spaces of belonging while interviewing, originally discussed as a stylistic choice, proved valuable on several other levels as well. For example, Jewish interviewees not only appeared to be a more comfortable, but by responding to objects within their space of the museum they formulated and directed their own questions by being drawn from place to place. They were able to navigate their own stories within their comfort zone, reducing the risk of triggering traumatic memories of survival. Similarly, Cooper family members were able to lead me through the cemetery to William Cooper's grave at their own pace. When one participant felt overwhelmed during this experience he was able to simply walk away without feeling pressured to explain why, and returned in his own time. From a production perspective this self-direction led to the most personal and heart-felt parts of storytelling captured on tape. Crucially, though, this process resonates strongly with participatory practice in that it gave agency to participants to lead me towards the topics they felt were most important, demonstrating a self-determining process. Though the interviews were deeply personal and at times delved into areas of trauma and emotion, this was entirely directed by the participants themselves for whom the walk was a way of taking agency and direction over content.
On final reflection of this process there are a number of key points to make about the limitations of participatory practice as it is proposed here.
Firstly, this practice is only suitable for stories where participants have an interest in the story being told. In this case, the communities were actively seeking a way for the story to be told to a mainstream audience, which enabled a collaborative partnership to proceed. Unless all participants and the producer share the same kinds of goals this process won’t work.
Secondly, the producer must be flexible with time frames when operating in a participatory framework.
Thirdly, the producer, in particular needs to be prepared to relinquish the status of authority and authorship in place of the value of community expertise.
And finally, and relatedly, this process can make it difficult to negotiate a broadcast where editorial policies often favour the editorial authorship of traditional documentaries. One Blood was produced independently of a commission with negotiations occurring post-production.
Acknowledgements:
Many thanks to Julian Silverman, Koora Cooper, Kevin Russell, Uncle Boydie Turner, Bernard Korbman, Maria Lewitt, Daniel Browning and all the other people involved in co-producing One Blood. Thank you for teaching me how. Also thanks to Kyla Brettle for sharing your wisdom and for your endless support throughout the research and production project.
References
Enghel, F. (2005), ‘Indigenous, Yes: Participatory Documentary-Making Revisited (an Argentine case-study)’, Masters thesis, Malmö: Malmö University. http://dspace.mah.se/dspace/bitstream/2043/1813/1/indigenous%20EMAIL%20VERSION.pdf. Accessed 20 April 2008
Michaels, E. (1994) Bad Aboriginal Art; Tradition, Media and Technological Horizons Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press
Author Bio:
Jessica Noske-Turner is a freelance radio documentary producer and academic at RMIT University. This practice as research project was completed in 2009 for an Honours degree in Media.
Journalism as usual: the use of social media as a newsgathering tool in the coverage of the Iranian elections in 2009
Megan Knight
School of Journalism, Media and Communication
University of Central Lancashire
Abstract:
The Iranian elections of June 2009 and the ensuing protests were hailed as the “Twitter revolution” in the media in the UK. However, this study of the use of sources by journalists covering the events shows that despite their rhetoric of the importance of social media to alerting the global community to events in Iran, journalists themselves did not turn to that social media for their own information, but relied most on traditional sourcing practices: political statements, expert opinion and a handful of ‘man on the street’ quotes for colour.
This study shows that although the mythology of the Internet as a place where all voices are equal, and have equal access to the public discourse continues - a kind of idealised ‘public sphere’ - the sourcing practices of journalists and the traditions of coverage continue to ensure that traditional voices and sources are heard above the crowd.
Extracts:
New and social media are changing the way journalists work, or so we are being told, often by those same journalists themselves. The protests following the Iranian elections in June 2009 were an excellent opportunity for news organisations to use these new tools in their coverage. The protesters were young, and digitally connected, they were using Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to tell the world what was going on in their streets, but was the world really listening?
A substantial part of the framing of new and social media in the traditional media is that it will provide alternative voices with access to the public discourse. This has not been borne out by research except in the context of specific stories, but the discussion of social media (and specifically Twitter) and its role in the events in Iran in 2009 continued in that vein. This research shows that although the mythology of the Internet as an equal place where all voices are equal, and have equal access to the public discourse, a kind of idealised ‘public sphere’ continues, the practices of journalists and the traditions of coverage continuing to ensure that traditional voices and sources are heard above the supposedly empowered “citizen” crowd.
The study did not show the extensive use of social media as a source in traditional reporting, although social media sites and, more specifically, Twitter, were used and quoted. However, the substantial number of sources in which the channel of communication was not identified (almost half the total) raises some questions. The analysis of the coverage of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan shows that news organisations are not clear when they are using material sourced via the Internet, or social media (since more than half of the stories did not discuss the origin of the video). This raises the question of whether much more of the information presented in the newspaper articles is sourced via social media sites than is initially apparent.
The lack of specificity when sourcing material from the Internet is interesting, since none of the newspapers were consistent on this matter, and it appears that they expected that the readers would know the origin of the footage of Soltan’s death. It seems likely that rather than being dishonest about the origins of material (which is one way of interpreting the data) that the use of social media is becoming ‘normalised’ in such a way that journalists no longer feel it is necessary to identify every instance in which they use such tools to communicate with sources. It was not that long ago that it was thought necessary to explicitly mention that communication with a source had taken place on email, rather than on the telephone or in person: this is no longer expected or required by most style guides.
The metajournalistic discussions about the use of Twitter imply that the journalists are much more reliant on social media as a source than is apparent from an analysis of the articles. There are only 15 articles which explicitly use Twitter as a source, and there are seven articles discussing whether this is appropriate. This would also imply that the use of social media is more common than the data would suggest, and that it is in some way hidden. The metajournalism, however, does not distinguish between material produced for the printed newspaper and material published online only. Sullivan, particularly, seems to be discussing primarily informal online media when he says that “the point of blogging is a first draft of history, warts and all”, although earlier in the same article he is clearly discussing more traditional journalism.
Since there appears to be a disconnect between the extent to which journalists believe they are relying on social media and the extent to which this is obvious to the readers of the newspaper (but possibly not to the online community of the same news organisation), this raises two possible areas for further study: a sociological analysis of journalistic practices at the point of production to determine whether they are using social media sources, and a comparative study of news published on paper and online to determine whether the standards for sourcing differ within those media.
Underexposed: The neglected art of the cinematographer
Philip Cowan, University of Wales Newport.
Abstract
The artistic contribution that Directors of Photography make to the films that they shoot, in narrative mainstream cinema, has been historically ignored in favour of the director-centred auteur theory. In order to address this imbalance a new approach to attributing authorship in film needs to be implemented, which acknowledges co-authorship in collaborative filmmaking. By taking established auteur methodologies Philip Cowan, himself a practicing Director of Photography, analyses the role of cinematographers, and proposes new ways of evaluating their work.
Underexposed: The neglected art of the cinematographer
Thanks to the widespread acceptance of the auteur theory in film studies, and its bias towards the film director as the single author of a film work, the cinematographers’ role has been chiefly ignored by mainstream film theory and criticism. Popular film commentators almost always credit the director with the look, or visual style, of a film, and this attitude is noticeable in academic research, epitomised by the way films are referenced, for example Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941). The implication in the reference is that Welles is the sole author of Citizen Kane.
The general academic view of the cinematographer is as a technician, charged with the technical and practical realisation of a director’s vision. At best the cinematographer is viewed as an artisan, a craftsperson, whose expressive abilities are subordinate to the directors’.
The auteur theory needs to be re-evaluated. Directors are not sole creative instigators of their films. There are teams of artists; writers, cinematographers, actors, editors, working within mainstream narrative cinema, and their creative contribution needs to be recognised more widely. By taking up the cause of the cinematographer I want to underline their key creative contribution, and begin to suggest a way of analysing their specific influences as co-authors of their images.
Choosing a camera viewpoint holds many considerations, some of these are technical, but the technical is there to serve the creation of meaning. Using elements of composition, frame, lighting and movement, to embody the meaning of a narrative is what makes a great cinematographer. It is, of course, fundamentally important that the craftsperson understands and knows how to utilise their tools for best effect. The technical is not irrelevant, it is a fundamental foundation for a skilled artist.
Of course, there are films that just use the camera to record the action, Nilsen’s notion of the ‘passive reproductional’, as there are lighting plans that just illuminate what needs to be seen, but both the camera and the light can be used to add layers of meaning, significance, and relevant symbolism to the image. This should be the purpose of great cinematography, or motion picture photography, the writing of a narrative with movement and light.
There is no set formula for how to shoot a scene, in the same way that there is no 'formula' for writing a good story. Many commentators on story structure mistake it for a recipe for formulaic narratives. Story structure is akin to ideas of pictorial composition, it guides notions of form, not content. The approach depends on what 'commentary' the cinematographer needs to add to a scene, or what aspects of the narrative, character development or thematic concepts, they want to represent. Once this has been decided upon, then strategies of expressing these ideas can be made.
There are, of course, strategies that have been 'discovered' and sometimes turned into conventions for individual shots and editing compositions, for example a low camera angle makes a subject powerful or dominant, and conversely a high camera angle can have the opposite effect. The practice of shot-reverse-shot, or shooting static ‘master shots’, ‘two-shots’ and then ‘singles’ can often be categorised as the ‘passive reproductional’. These approaches are the fixing of action that happens in front of the lens onto the recording medium, a purely mechanical process often devoid of any creativity. Compositional aspects from drawing, painting, and photography can all apply to a motion picture frame, the elements that add to the challenge of the cinematographer are aspects of time. Individual shots of set durations are built into sequences, which must have a coherent meaning, or cohesive style.
The weakness of the early auteur critics is that they fixate on the director as the single creative author of a film. Clearly, as some later commentators point out, filmmaking is a collaborative process, and it is often difficult to attribute the source of an idea, or concept, to one individual. Is it the writer, who is totally ignored by the early theorists, probably due to Truffaut’s bias? Is it the director, the director of photography, the designer, the actor, or the editor? Or is it, as seems more obvious, a combination of influences? What makes the theory of authorship difficult is that this combination of influences alters from crew to crew, team to team, film to film. Sometimes it is reasonable to suggest one individual has much more influence over a project than any of the others working on it, but it is the team that is important. Welles made films after Citizen Kane, with less skilled collaborators, which resulted in lesser films, The Lady From Shanghai (1948), Confidential Report (1955). The inconsistencies in the films of other so-called auteurs can probably also be accounted for by the same criteria, that is, the experience and skill of their collaborators.
If we accept this as a premise the next task is to identify key collaborators. However we should not make the same mistake as the early theorists by pointing at one (or two) specific roles, the writer and the director. As I have stated the key creative personal in the realisation of a film can include the producer, the director of photography, the designer and the editor. Although I would not go as far to say that they all contribute, in all circumstances. Each film team works uniquely, taking into account the experience, skill and personalities of the individuals involved. In this way we can probably be no more specific than to recognise that the authorship of any film doesn’t belong to one individual (the director), but more likely two, or three, possibly six, to varying degrees of contribution. I would purpose that Citizen Kane’s success is due to the fact that it is a masterclass in collaboration, not that it is the work of a 'genius' single author. It is Mankiewicz’s script, Toland’s photography, Wise’s editing and Welles’s direction that make this film great. Perhaps in the future films should be referenced in terms of all its authors, for example, Citizen Kane (Mankiewicz, Toland, Welles, Wise, 1941), or at the very least, Citizen Kane (Welles, et al, 1941).
‘Back to the Future: Multi-Image Screen Narrative in a Digital Age’.
Jeremy Bubb.
Abstract
‘We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice…We never look at one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.’ (Berger 1983:1)
This statement denotes our searching nature, claiming that as viewers we are eager to make sense of what we see, constructing connections across our vision, and piecing together fragments of information in search of meaning. We have a central vision that we use to focus on main events and a peripheral one that allows us to be drawn to other areas of interest. Today, in everyday life, there is a constant battle for our peripheral vision, a range of moving images continually distracts us. Each time we enter a public space or switch on our computer screens, advertisers have found a way to push their products on us, and now a plethora of moving images have become an accepted part our experience. This article attempts to explore the aesthetics of this recent phenomenon of multi-imaging to see if there is a historical context in relation to storytelling and to find out what can be learnt from the past in order to help build strategies for creating narratives of the future. I will examine a range of visual examples and review the technical and cultural aspects of stories that have been told using more than one image and attempt to draw comparisons. Starting with the visual storytelling of 14th century diptych religious paintings, I will go on to look at the impact of perspective, then early film form, comparing its arrival to recent developments in digital technology, discuss Abel Gance’s cinematic epic Napoleon (1927) and its relation to Russian montage. The avant-garde, Expanded Cinema, and Internet art will also be examined. The context of my work is practice as research and I will discuss this in relation to the conceiving, writing, directing, editing and exhibition of my film Writ in Water (2009), a narrative film designed for three-screen presentation in a cinematic context.
Keywords: Multi-Imaging, Abel Gance, Practice as Research, Diptych, New Media
Extracts
This article reflects on my current research, which involves an integrated critical practice, from film conception to completion to exhibition. In my article, I discuss these aspects in detail in reference to two of my films, Writ in Water (2009) and Angels with Folded Arms (2005) the latter being influenced by a14th century painting, The Wilton Diptych. I will also discuss aspects of practice as research which has grown out of the area of Arts and Humanities subjects and been successfully developed in Dance, Theatre and Fine Art. In these areas where practice and studio activity is a significant and often integral part of the subject, individuals have had considerable success in reflecting and engaging with the process of making and how this relates to theory. In the area of Film, Media and Communications significant progress has also been made and practice as research is now recognized as an acceptable approach to forming new knowledge.
The making of Writ in Water (2009) was a research project that investigated an approach to narrative that acknowledges our growing capacity to understand a range of new ways to read stories presented through means of digital technology. The digital era is a time in which film and video are no longer solely defined by their material base such as celluloid or tape, but also through the way in which the image is scanned onto a digital chip: ‘interlaced’ or ‘progressive’. During this transitional period aspects of film production will be rewritten and, while certain practices remain, the question is for how long? In exhibition this has already happened, digital technology has changed the way in which films are projected, but the integrity of cinema is preserved and the experience of going to see a film remains more or less the same.
Cinema has traditionally been configured as a single screen on to which all resources converge to create the most evocative images of our time. It has conspired to facilitate an omnipresent viewpoint of the world through a solitary image, with one protagonist and often a single narrative-thread. Part of my research has been to review past examples to establish how we have arrived at our current thinking.
I begin with 15th century Renaissance painting and the establishment of perspective as the origin of the single viewpoint. The use of perspective became extremely popular during this time and techniques developed quickly and by 1434 Jan van Eyck had painted The Betrothal of the Arnolfini, a painting that demonstrated a sophisticated and accomplished use of perspective. In The Story of Art, Gombrich writes that this painting marks 'The first time in history the artist becomes the perfect eye-witness in the truest sense of the term' (Gombrich 1972:180). The use of perspective as a truthful account of the world was now the dominant mode of representation and this prevails until the development of the camera in the late 19th century.
During the Renaissance period there is evidence that the lens has influenced the way in which images were recorded. According to David Hockney in his book The Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters there was widespread use of optical devices to assert the dominance of the single viewpoint.
It wasn’t until much later, in1839, that Fox Talbot in Britain and Louis Daguree in France, become the two men recognized for ‘inventing’ photography. ‘The invention of the camera changed the way men saw. The visible came to mean something different to them. This was immediately reflected in painting.’ (Berger 1983:18)
From this point onwards there is a significant shift in visual culture moving away from the emphasis of creating a true likeness, towards the widespread experimentation with the distortion of images as an expressive means. We see the arrival of Impressionism, Expressionism, the avant-garde and abstraction and are all liberated by the lens.
One filmmaker that worked on the periphery of the mainstream was the Impressionist Abel Gance. In 1927 he created the landmark film Napoleon. This film is of particular note as it is a true attempt to create a new expressive visual cinematic language for commercial consumption. Gance’s approach, of extending visual narrative beyond the parameters of the frame is in many ways similar to that of the painters of the 14th century, they also considered the restrictions of the single frame as inadequate to represent their stories.
During the time that Napoleon arrived on the cinema screens in France, in Soviet Russia there was a very different use of multi-imaging. Eisenstein, Kuleshov, Pudovkin and Vertov used a multitude of images and sound in a collision of shots to reflect a revolutionary state in a dynamic new approach to film language, which speaks to the masses: an ill-educated audience. This was very different to Gance’s complicit use of multi-imaging that was intent on bringing a new vision to audiences, a cinema to reaffirm French achievement through one of their greatest leaders.
Later in the 1960s, filmmakers revisited the restrictive boundaries of the cinema screen once again, using multi-imaging to create the Expanded Cinema movement. This group of artists was focused on image rather than story. In recent times, similar issues of practice have been taken up by artists working on the internet. They see this space as a flexible and an unrestrictive place, enabling the exploration of the material aspects of communication and the media, rather than focusing on issues of narrative.
HITCHCOCK AND SMALL-GAUGE:
SHAPING THE AMATEUR FICTION FILM
Ian Craven
Abstract: Amateur film frequently earns its cultural value and claim to preservation as evidential substrate, a moving record of the past, with credibility rooted in the automatism of the cinematic apparatus and the indexicality of the photographic sign. Such potential is identified early within the organised cine movement, with ‘hobby’ filmmakers internalising such definitions, as the quantity of non-fiction footage retained across the archive sector readily confirms. Less visible in critical commentary or the expanding catalogue is the amateur practitioner’s commitment to the fiction film, despite ongoing engagement via templates derived from professional counterparts, alongside exploration of more autonomous non-professional modes and genres. For many such filmmakers, the figure of Alfred Hitchcock assumes a particular prominence, influencing projects, authorising techniques, and acting as a theoretical counter in debates concerning amateur roles and creative potentials. With a view to locating such fascinations within the understandings of amateurism within which they have been implicated, this essay considers firstly, arguments concerning the status of the fiction film within the cine movement of the 1930s; secondly, the organisational codes thereafter deemed appropriate to the cine enthusiast tackling screen fiction, and thirdly, the case of an amateur ‘thriller’ with a distinctly ‘Hitchcock touch’ from the 1960s, identified here to illustrate some characteristic dependencies and diversions of the cine fiction aesthetic.
From the outset, Hitchcock seems to have appealed at a range of levels of significance to cine amateurs in Britain: the very earliest references within the hobby literature recognise him (Anon 1929: 9) as simply ‘our greatest British director’, and the reputation would remain undiminished thereafter. Celebrated as ultimate exponent of the planning and economical assembly championed by the ‘insider’ figures ‘creating and sustaining activities for other participants’ (Unruh 1980: 282), Hitchcock quickly epitomises the ‘tyro’, firmly in control of his projects, celebrated in early accounts of amateur directorship (Sewell 1932: 21-22) and frequently caricatured within small-gauge productions.[i] By the 1960s, the filmmaker’s work itself had been repeatedly identified as exemplary reference for non-professional filmmakers, as part of Hitchcock’s wider construction as the ‘master of screen technique’, permeating amateur cine culture, as elsewhere.[ii] A typical instance (‘Proteus’ 1961a: 983) introduces allusions to North by Northwest (1959) as illustrating three ‘sure-fire ways of creating suspense’; another (Rose 1963: 163) cites The 39 Steps (1935) in discussing the use of sound for shock effect ‘to embellish the surface of the narrative’, whilst a third (Laguerre 1935: 103) compliments The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) for the ‘unexpected touch’ which ‘shares perplexity’ with the audience.
Senses of affiliation had seemed reciprocated by Hitchcock’s own assertion of roots shared with the amateur in silent cinema, and stresses on his prioritisation by choice of creative resources such as ‘backgrounds’, to be emphasised by the amateur of necessity:
He should first plan out on paper the order in which he is going to tell the story, then determine the pictorial quality he is aiming to bind the picture together. My own method is often first to visualise in advance the backgrounds across which the story will unwind itself, and then I imagine in a vague manner, the action and the characters. (Hitchcock 1937a: 376)
Such accounts of Hitchcock’s working methods echo uncannily through cine ‘how-to-do-it’ manuals, marking shared problems, and proffering solutions deemed workable across both sectors. Such shared rhetoric undoubtedly reinforced senses of connection, confirming Hitchcock as a reliable guide to acceptable technique for the amateur filmmaker. Comments on tempo, for example, crystallise wider sets of correspondences. According to Hitchcock writing in 1937, amateurs often neglect questions of rhythm, without which ‘the picture is jerky and the effect on the audience unsatisfactory’ (1937a: 378); according to Alex Strasser, in an influential handbook for amateur movie-makers published the same year: ‘The flow or rhythm of the shots is … one of the most important elements of cutting. A sequence of shots running through the projector is considerably influenced in its effectiveness by its smooth or jerky flow.’ (Strasser 1937: 139)
At times, Hitchcock’s public persona seems to have coalesced an ideal image for amateur cine itself, constructing the director as both supreme exponent of the rationalised art of ‘studio grade’ filmmaking, but also as something of a maverick in the system, chafing against the creative obligations of ‘appealing to millions’ (Hitchcock 1937c: 61): according to one assessment from the amateur sector, ‘a director who is not only a fine craftsman, but a hero with unfaltering courage’ (Anon 1929: 9). Pictured in this way, Hitchcock exhibits a kind of ‘semi-autonomy’, akin to that of the amateur, which finds expression in his film style. Apparently able to synthesise aspects of avant-garde technique treasured by many early insiders, with the realist impulses ‘officially’ deemed key elsewhere to the amateur cine enterprise, and more time-honoured techniques of good story-telling, Hitchcock offers a model of the ‘rounded’ filmmaker, fundamental for many to the sector’s imaginary.[iii] So whilst illustrating the creative possibilities of expressive montage for instance, the scenarios of Hitchcock’s films are seen to square readily with welcome stress on the rooting of drama in the everyday world, and to fail only where they betray a distracting artifice which compromises narrative integration. Champagne (1928) thus apparently ‘reeks of the studio’ whilst still displaying ‘a general slickness and production values in excess of the usual British film of the period’. Even occasional failures of realisation however seem only to further secure amateur identifications:
It is pleasant to look back at Champagne, and learn from the good and the bad in it, and even pleasanter to reflect that its grandly individualistic and competent director is still at work, with an even surer touch…’ (Bulleid 1943-44: 34)
The very uneven-ness of the text is sensed here as confirming a kind of semi-transgressive ambition, which the amateur might do well to emulate in his or her approach to questions of creative freedom, whilst nonetheless continuing to demonstrate respect for, and an ability to meet, prevailing ‘constructional’ standards.
Watching Hitchcock’s output through the 1930s, many cine amateurs probably glimpsed a like mind, which may help to explain particular senses of ownership: as later commentators have noted, any number of Hitchcock’s most popular films seemed to suggest thematically the director’s sense of affinity with amateur values, and subscription to a more reasoned ideology of amateurism, understood in directly political senses as ‘citizen involvement’, as well as more strictly creative ‘freedom of expression’ terms. According to Ina Hark:
Repeated sequences in the political films portray an audience, in which the amateur sits, and a performance or lecture that the professional enemies of democracies control or manipulate [….] recurrent sequences work out a linkage between good citizenship, and a particular kind of audience participation, as contrasted with the passive behaviour of silent or easily led spectators who represent a populace ripe for totalitarian subjugation. (Hark 1990: 8-9)
Indeed The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) gaining the IAC medal, with its contrasts between the effectiveness of amateur and professional methods in the detection and stabilisation of social disturbance, rehearses polemics for the necessity of amateur participation especially clearly - perhaps this is why IAC members voted for it, instinctively recognising an instructional image of themselves in its depiction of unruly audiences securing equilibrium, through a usurpation of their assigned roles as passive spectators, and their movement into direct participation?
Perhaps with such portrayals, Hitchcock simply flattered the sensibilities of what he would soon term ‘the vital central stratum of British humanity; the middle class’, precisely that social fraction coincidentally and enthusiastically exploring the possibilities of small-gauge filmmaking (Hitchcock 1937b: 15) in the inter-war years. Amateur admiration scarcely seems to have lessened thereafter however, even as the social base of amateur cine broadened in the post-1945 decades. Published interviews continued to sustain attention (Cleave 1969), whilst assessments from cine clubs on Hitchcock’s seventieth birthday in 1969, summarised persistent senses of connection:
No director has worked harder to immerse his audience in his work [….] No director cares less for the critics and more for the audience than Alfred Hitchcock. And no director is more known, respected and favoured by that audience. (Wright 1969: 746)
Gilly Smith
Barthes and Jamie Oliver.
ABSTRACT
This article looks at the legacy of the work of Roland Barthes half a century after the publication of Mythologies, exploring its relevance to the construction of our modern world through Lifestyle Television. In particular, it looks at the work of Jamie Oliver in exploiting popular myths to sell aspiration to viewers, and suggests that the radical potential of such schemes is now concentrated on the politics of food and “transformation TV” for improving one’s world.
It looks at the influence of critical and cultural theory in the educational backgrounds of some of these producers, and asks if this has raised a consciousness in television production, developing a discourse which has the potential for revolution. Finally, it asks if television, led by the feel-good factor of the myth, shows that aspiration and consumption can successfully mask the dominant power relations in society while introducing a new discourse in Lifestyle TV.
Barthes’ France of the 1950s and 1960s was a place of rapid social and economic change as a new era of mass consumerism was encouraged by the post war boom and the rise of advertising across the Western world. A new socially mobile working class was engaging with a media-constructed reality in which aspiration for new consumer goods, whiter, cleaner clothes and skills in ornamental cookery encouraged them to invest in ‘aspiration’ and become more connected to the fantasy of a ‘good society’ perpetuated by the mass media. The myth promised control over one’s life, resolving the emptiness and alienation of the workplace.
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It would be pushing a point to suggest that Television in the late 1980s and 1990s was largely produced by ideologically informed graduates of the Frankfurt and Birmingham schools, but Jane Root, one of the TV executives credited with creating Lifestyle TV (Smith, 2008 p80) graduated from London College of Communications in the early 1980s where critical theory was part of the curriculum. She went on to study the philosophical and historical construction of society in an MA in International Relations at the famously Marxist Sussex University. She would later employ Jamie Oliver’s producer, Pat Llewellyn who studied film theory at the University of Westminster in the mid 1980s; ‘I started off by doing quite 'serious' telly,’ she says. "The first thing I ever commissioned was a philosophy series that included people such as Jacques Derrida’. (Low, S, Daily Telegraph, 20 Jul 2002).
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Television offered this generation an opportunity to make a real difference to the way society saw itself, with an enormous expansion of output as channels and ideas multiplied in the early 1990s. For Root and Llewellyn, their biggest influence would be in Lifestyle TV. Llewellyn explained to me how Lifestyle was first re-imagined for a new generation. Jane Root had sent a memo to staff at Wall to Wall Television asking for ideas on food or gardening to fulfil a new ‘Lifestyle’ brief from the commissioning editors of BBC’s Factual TV.
‘I wrote back and said I knew about food, so we came up with Eat your Greens (in 1992 with Sophie Grigson). There had been naff daytime things like Galloping Gourmet and Fanny Cradock in the afternoons, and then Floyd brought a traveller’s spin to that and a kind of post modern thing by calling the camera over. Food became about style and lifestyle and said so much about sophistication and class.’ (Smith 2008 p79)
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As his media persona developed, Oliver was seen on screen as TV’s Naked Chef and snapped by paparazzi off screen popping around the corner from his flat to buy his vanilla pods and his fresh fish. Off screen, Jamie Oliver’s world was quickly branded by the tabloids as stylish, youthful and healthy, with everything apparently within his reach; while his old school mates featured in his on screen barbecues, off screen he was Brad Pitt’s new best friend. McCracken (2005, p. 112, from Lewis 2010 p587) would call him one of the ‘super-consumers’ of celebrity Lifestyle TV; ‘they are exemplary figures because they are seen to have created the clear, coherent, and powerful selves that everyone seeks.’ It was the clarity of the message for his audience, the absolute promise that life could be ‘pukka’ if you cook like Jamie that Barthes called ‘euphoric’ (Barthes 1957 p70). It was a perfect example of the Barthesian myth which distracted Lifestyle Television’s audience from the reality of its place within the dominant relations of production (Moriarty 1991: p171) and which has become the staple of Factual Entertainment TV.
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Amanda Murphy is an award winning Executive Producer and consultant specializing in creating new prime time formats for multiple markets. Like Root and Llewellyn, Murphy was a student of cultural theory, graduating in 1985 from Leeds with a degree in Communications and Culture Studies. She thinks that although it may well have been only a small part of the self help puzzle, the newly imagined Lifestyle TV was meeting the needs of its audience. “Jamie is one of those larger than life (presenters) who’ve got a bit of character, a bit of skill and this transformational quality about them. That means that you can cast this super character who can transform whatever you want to transform and affect people’s lives enormously.” (Amanda Murphy, interview 7.12.11)
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Murphy fully admits that producers consciously tap into the audience’s aspiration for a better life; “When we create these characters on TV, whether it’s Gareth Malone, Ramsay, Jamie, Supernanny or the Dragons, the power of TV means that we can make people believe they can do things a bit better.” I put Guy Redden’s point to her, that Lifestyle TV divides us into those who are ‘worth less’ and ‘worth more’ (Redden 2011). “But (as a producer) you can do more than that.”
Murphy was responsible for devising the parenting hit, Supernanny and sold it to ABC America and 47 different territories for Ricochet TV. She explains how the original idea was developed in 2003 to fill a genre gap, the magic moment when a producer spots something that hasn’t been done before. “The original idea came from Nick Emmerson who was a father of two young girls at the time” explains Murphy. “We’d had property, property, property. There wasn’t quite so much food at that time, although Hugh” (Fearnely-Whittingstall) “was around. Nick was looking for interesting ideas and was clearly inspired by being a father.”
She explains how consciously ‘the message’ was constructed. The team wanted to create a “new Mary Poppins, but not necessarily a warm Mary Poppins,” Murphy tells me. “She could be stern and she could be harsh because she would be more notable that way. It would have more edge.” Edgy, she explains, would mean the programme would be more talked about and would be a bigger series. Even the name ‘Supernanny’ was deliberate; “She was unusual. She wasn’t your warm normal nanny or au pair. It was a super-hero thing.”
[i] The Tyro (1963) directed by G. W. Harris for the Brighton Cine Group, crystallises the directorial type succinctly (see Anon 1965: 215). Numerous accounts stress Hitchcock’s high levels of organisation, which the amateur is encouraged to emulate (see Hitchcock 1937c: 61).
[ii] The term ‘insiders’ derives here from its development within ‘social world’ theory, and notes its utility in describing those amateur participants who lead, define and regulate non-professional movements (see Unruh 1980: 275).
[iii] Relationships between the emerging amateur movement and the avant-garde are suggested by essays appearing in principal cine journals: Vivian Braun (1937: 294) insists that the amateur should develop avant-garde approaches to move beyond ‘empty, but all too common, point-the-camera-shoot-the-scene technique’, and cultivate an ‘impressionism’ identified elsewhere with Hitchcock’s work. See also Zimmermann’s work on links between the American avant-garde and early amateur movements (1995: 137-155).