Media is the Massage: Illuminated Manuscript

Wes Anderson: Visual Style and Authorship

As far as directors go, Wes Anderson has always been well known for his distinct film style. The first thing people are bound to notice when watching Wes Anderson’s films is the choice in color. Most of the scene’s in his films are notorious for having extremely saturated colors, making each still from the film stick out. It is also interesting to note the compositions of Wes Anderson’s shots. While it is generally known that The Grand Budapest Hotel was shot using almost entirely one point perspective, it is easy to see in other films that when given the chance, Wes Anderson does generally prefer to use this camera angle. While some might make the assumption that straightforward shots such as these would eventually become boring, Anderson makes a point to make his shots continuously interesting as he increases his body of work. One shot in particular that stuck out to me was from the film Life Aquatic, in which we see one character walking throughout the rooms and floors of the ship through a cross section. There is also a similar theme that persists in Wes Anderson films, focusing on strife between family members, very often between parental figures and children. This is showcased as the main plot to The Royal Tenenbaums, which focuses on the return of an estranged father to his family of genius children. What I feel is the most interesting thing about Wes Anderson’s style, however, is his genius at capturing certain feelings of nostalgia. Each of his movies possesses a great amount of atmosphere, specifically unique to the film yet still a larger part of the atmosphere of Wes Anderson. Each time I finish one of his films, I find myself feeling happy yet melancholic about being done with the movie. Maybe this is why Wes Anderson has recently been working his way into my heart as one of my favorite filmmakers, his movies consistently make me want to revisit the feelings he previously gave me.

Screenplay Cinematography: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

As cinematographer for this film, I would concentrate on using the lighting and camera movements to evoke the craziness caused by the large amounts of drugs consumed in the film. I feel the zany hallucinations presented in the screenplay would best be accentuated by intense bursts of color, contrasted with extremely dark high contrast lighting. I think this lighting would also do well to invoke the feelings of Las Vegas, primarily the look of the neon lights. I think the bright color of the lights would create an important contrast between the bright opulence of the strip and the bleak desert outside. The desert outside would look best as a cool purple, while the lights and interiors would be bright reds and yellows. The brightest colors of all would come from the drugs themselves, which I would have colored in insanely unnatural colors. In terms of camera angles, I would use uncomfortable close ups to showcase the intense discomfort of being too high in so many scenarios. In extremely intense scenarios, I would take the camera out of focus as characters lose focus. In contrast with the colors and haziness of the high in the movie, once the drugs wore off there would be a dramatic difference. I would have the world look uncomfortably bright and crisp, almost jarring to look at. The desert in the day would seem bright and white, blinding the viewers. Just as the cinematography earlier would make the viewer feel like they themselves were in the high of the movie, the cinematography at the end would make viewers feel as if they themselves survived this ordeal and were blinded by the sober world.     

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

For my reading, I decided to investigate the ethos of the world in the story Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. The primary belief that seems to govern the world of these characters is that eventually, all people will find themselves getting married. This also leads to the general perception that marriage adds value to a person, making it not only important to be married, but to stay married. What interests me most about these beliefs is that the main characters presented exist within this world, but were raised by single parents and never saw the great values of marriage. Siyu is even seen within the story to reject a marriage by not going to see her own father’s wedding. While any major characters within this story seem to clearly reject the idea that marriage is truly the end all be all of life, at the end they themselves succumb to the idea of marriage. Even though they agree to be wed, this marriage isn’t portrayed to be as much of a perfect happy occasion as society would lead the characters to believe. Instead, these characters almost seem to be playing into this world’s beliefs without really believing them. Marriage doesn’t make any of these sad people any less happy, but they can fit into the world around them by creating a space for they themselves to not fit in together. In this way it is almost as if they have found a way to beat the conformist expectations surrounding their lives while never truly changing a thing.  

Even the Queen

In response to this story, I wanted to discuss the idea of the patriarchy and the idea of banding together to eliminate it. This story tells of a world in which menstruation is eliminated, and great strides are made in equality, a world that sounds like a personal haven to me. While this sounds perfect in my eyes, a group still exists that aims to free women from this new form of oppression. The story offers up the interesting position that while oppression may not exist in certain aspects, some people may still look for ways to fight it. The Cyclists in this story made a point to fabricate a reason for a scientific advance that women fought for a form of oppression, when actual women from a time before the shunt don’t see it this way at all. In this particular story, the origin of the cyclists is not revealed and as such we have no way of knowing if it began as an authentic women’s movement or not. While I find the position of the cyclists to be completely against what I would believe in that scenario, I feel that as long as an action is seen as wrong or rebellious in our society, people will continue to do it just to make a point. In terms of this specific issue, there are already some people who believe certain things about menstruation that align very closely with the cyclists’ ideas. While I agree that menstruation should be seen as less of an unmentionable thing, I still genuinely believe that it is a horrible bane to my existence and would pay large sums of money to never deal with it again, and as a woman I get to believe that. What I feel this story boils down to in terms of smashing the patriarchy and going against the norm is that the women’s movement is primarily about the right to choose, but is also about the right of a woman to have the ability to make an educated uninfluenced decision. The cyclists paint a pretty picture but don’t expose the whole truth in order to gain support, making them the real deceivers in the end.

Katamari Damacy: Legendary Video Game Classic

One of my favorite video games, which I feel as a series may be one of the greatest games, is the Katamari Damacy series. The main reason I feel so passionately about this game is the fact that I feel it does what a video game should perfectly. This series takes one simple concept: the rolling up of objects, and executes it well. In recent months, my passion for this game has grown as I made a point to show it to some of my friends and in the process learn more about the game’s history. One particularly interesting fact about the creation of this game is the fact that the creator of the series actually started his career as a sculptor, rather than a game designer. The game was designed to be easy to understand while also being fun and humorous. At the core of the game is the mechanic for rolling up objects, the glue that holds all of the minor premises together. What makes Katamari such a knockout, despite it being such a simple game, is the fact that the mere action of rolling up objects is whimsical and enjoyable. I have distinct memories of playing a level over and over again, only because it had no time limit. I enjoyed trying to roll up the objects so much that objective didn’t really matter to me, it wasn’t needed to give the game enough interest or mental stimulation. Even though I find the basic game mechanic to be near perfect, that doesn’t mean I don’t want the fantastic art or music presented in the game. On the contrary, I find all of those features to be the icing on an already delicious cake. In the wake of complicated AAA first person shooter games, Katamari represents the very simple idea of what a game is meant to be.