Killing us Softly

North Americans are constantly in motion. The average Canadian/American always seems to need the latest clothes, technology, car, music. We have effectively made our society a society with a deficit of attention. Watch any mainstream TV show and try to invest in a character for more than five minutes. It’s impossible. This perpetual transformation also applies to things like fashion, the way people look, the things people wear ect. If you are not up to date with the newest clothing or shoes or whatever “it” may be you will be left behind in the society. This, of course, is not true. This is just what Advertisers want us to think. If we don’t buy the latest whatever it may be than we are not in the “in” crowd and are social outcasts. People, unfortunately, full-heartedly buy into this philosophy of change and spend countless hours and dollars purchasing the newest trend setting items. This philosophy has made our attitudes change as well. People are no longer in relationships as long as 50 years ago, people buying houses more rapidly, and tiring of what they have now with great speed. All of this rapid change is to achieve to maintain an image of wealth and a kind of beauty. The unattainable image is ingrained into our society through media. We are constantly shown images of wealthy, beautiful people so there is a large population of people who are in search of this image all the time.

Three Day Road Blog

Ever since she was very young, she has lived a less than desirable life. A number of awful events occur on a regular basis but she is resilient and strong spirited. The worst of these events would be when the French trapper rapes her in the Church. This act, although atrocious, could be compared the treatment of Natives in this book and in Canada. Rape is rarely about someone's sexual urges taking hold of them, it is more about overpowering and shaming the other person. Niska was raped in a church, by a white French man, while she was drunk. This represents the overpowering of Canadian Natives by European settlers. First they gave them religion, then liquor and then claimed the Native's land as their own. Natives were taken advantage of as Niska was. All her powers stripped from her as the Natives powers over their land was taken. This scene is one of a handful in the book that are alluding to the Native struggle as a whole, but this is the most cut and dry example of that allusion.
This scene connects with the rest of the book through the idea of white dominance over Natives. Elijah putting on a British accent and trying hard to fit in with the rest of the regiment is an example of how submitted Natives felt. So much so that they had to change who they were fundamentally so that the whites wouldn't see them as just Natives.

"'No more,' I said to him, standing up and walking out so suddenly that i surprised even myself. My legs left like a new calf's, loose and long under me so that i had to grab the door frame as i passed through it...""...'this is a good place, a holy place,' he whispered, biting at my ear.'You are a holy Indian, no?' he whispered 'The other Indians say you are very holy, very strong.' His lean body pushed against me. I could feel his hardness. I did not answer him but kissed him back instead...""...He laughed. 'I fucked you in a church,' he said, and smiled. I smiled back at him. "I fucked the heathen Indian out of you in this church,' he said, but this time the smile was not so happy. 'i took your ahcahk,' he said to me, the smile gone now. 'Do you understand? I fucked your ahcahk, your spirit. Do you understand that?' He stared down at me, his eyes wide with a look that made me feel ill. I pushed him away with my legs and covered myself up. 'It's too late.' he said 'Your nothing special, just another squaw whore. I took your power away in this place and sent it to burn in hell where it belongs'" (Pgs- 159-161)

Waits V. Audi (2000)

In 2000 Tom Waits, the American Musician, was approached by Audi asking if they could feature “Innocent When you Dream”, a song by Waits, for their commercials in Spain. Waits declined the offer. He has refused every request for companies to use his music in their commercials on the grounds that he doesn’t like people branding themselves with a product. He’s quoted “If Michael Jackson wants to work for Pepsi, why doesn't he just get himself a suit and an office in their headquarters and be done with it?". He has also made comments on advertising with celebrities, "Apparently, the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad — ideally, naked and purring on the hood of a new car," he said in a statement, referring to the Mercury Cougar. "I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor."
After Audi asked Waits if they could use his song and he declined, Audi released commercials in Spain with a song extremely similar to “Innocent When you Dream”. It was, in fact, a variation of the song with a sound-alike singer. Waits filed a suit and a Spanish court ruled that Waits’ moral rights and the copyright on that song were violated. It would not have been as big of a violation if they hadn’t used a sound alike singer. Waits argued that he has his own “sound” created by his gravely voice. He was given compensation from Audi but gave most of it to a charity. He joked about the incident later saying “the company got the name of the song wrong, thinking it was called "Innocent When You Scheme".“


Here is a link to the song "Innocent When You Dream":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md7iv0Rg1LU

Laws broken see: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html

I think that Waits was very much in the right when he filed suit against Audi. The company came to him with a request to use his material, he denied them that right and they turn around and hire a sound alike singer to sing the same song. What is that? Instead of moving on and changing the song they had chosen, they just tried to go behind Waits’ back knowing full well they didn’t have the artists blessing. What did you think he was going to do? Be o.k. with it and say, “I think that now the ad is out with my music in it, I kind of like it”. No! Audi was probably aware of Waits’ steadfast opposition to have his music in advertisements but still went ahead and put the song in their commercial.
The idea of it being illegal to use someone’s “sound” is off putting because it limits people’s creativity. Perhaps this sound alike singer didn’t even know he sounded like Tom Waits. Maybe he had no idea who Waits was and was approached by Audi to do this TV spot. Still it wasn’t really about Waits’ sound it was more about the fact that he refused to let them use his music and they did anyway.

The Yes Men

The 2003 documentary film, The Yes Men, directed by Dan Ollman, Sarah Price and Chris Smith follows two unlikely masters of satire on a mission to refocus the global view of The World Trade Organization (WTO). Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum are Yes Men. The WTO is making it easier for rich countries to outsource their work to poor countries causing the poor countries to get poorer and the Yes Men don’t want to see the populous stand for that. They want people to be appalled by the things they bring up in their presentations IE. Cost effective slavery and a series of tubes that transports North America’s fecal matter to Africa and turns our excellent excrement into hamburgers. The Yes Men want to bring the truth about what corporations like this and others are doing through “Identity correction”.

Yes Men is a mix between cinema verité and an expository documentary. We are seeing the film makers and they are interacting with the camera but they are still trying to change our opinion on the WTO. It is shot through the perspective of Mike and Andy.

I thought the films use of humor was brilliant. They were able to bring out all the points they wanted to and still be hysterically funny. For example the suggested climax of the film was when Andy brought out his gold spandex management/leisure suit in front of an audience of unsuspecting businesspeople. It was adorned with a gigantic phallus shaped screen and still taken semi-seriously. It was the fact that these people thought that there was no way this was a prank of any kind that was surprising. They thought it was impossible that they were getting made fun of simply because of the forum they were in and the Yes Men proved them wrong. Another scene was days before Mike and Andy went down to Australia and were talking about if satire was, “more fun”. They came to the conclusion that I the majority of the people who watched this film came to and that is that not only is satire more fun, it’s more effective.

Yes Men is one of the better films that makes people question the ethics behind an organization like the WTO. It’s important that people don’t agree with a corporations that have questionable agendas. The fact that people can join the yes men and help correct the identities of other wrongful businesses is fantastic. I hope the next yes men does just as well as this one.

1) What does Deborah Scranton mean by the “disconnect” she hopes to “bridge” with her documentary?
The disconnection between our society in North America and our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is almost no information given to us about the war in Iraq.

2) How does media (television, news, documentaries, film) contribute to creating this disconnect?
They are the ones who are supposed to be giving us the information on what's happening over there but they can and do leave out information.

3) How can a documentary like "War Tapes" help remedy or bridge this disconnect?
It lets us see through the soldiers eyes and brings a new light/viewpoint to something that not many North Americans know.

Hearts Of Darkness Review

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse, directed by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper with Eleanor Coppola’s footage. Hearts of Darkness is a documentary about the difficulties of making Apocalypse Now and the journey that Francis Ford Coppola (director of Apocalypse) took into the darkness of his own heart and the problems when one is faced with making a movie. The film is structured chronologically but interview footage from recent years is used to put old footage, sound clips, pictures ect. Into context. This works quite effectively because you see or hear someone speaking on set and then the same person thirty years later explaining their feelings at the time. It makes for a very well rounded view of how everyone was feeling.

Hearts of Darkness was a mix between an observational and an expository documentary. It definitely took on the role of “fly on the wall” and at the same time was telling us what we were watching and interpreting the images for us. Eleanor Coppola was the fly on the wall in the film and we watch through her lens. She was probably the only person who could have been around Ford Coppola all day, filming and not gotten grief about it. At parts it did seem as though it was from Francis’s perspective but it was really Eleanor’s view of how her husband and his crew were handling the film and its effect on them. For example the scene in which Francis is saying he has been thinking about killing himself. This was not shot from Francis’s view, it was shot from Eleanor’s, hearing her husband talking about suicide and her responding.

The film was very well done. It was very interesting to watch and understand the severe conditions Apocalypse Now was made under and, as deeper look into humans in general. One scene that grabbed me the most was the interview with Martin Sheen when he was talking about filming his scene in the hotel. It used footage from the film and the interview itself extremely effectively, cutting between the two with Sheen telling you exactly how he was feeling at certain parts in the scene and how Ford Coppola was using Sheen’s real emotions, actions and drunkenness to create reality. Another effective scene was the where Dennis Hopper and Ford Coppola were arguing over why Hopper had not learned his lines yet. This showed Ford Coppola’s patience and the problems that he took on when he had to deal with actors who were constantly high on something. Any other man would have cracked and broken down by that time in the shoot but Ford Coppola stayed on and finished because he had to.

It didn’t seem like there were any unnecessary scenes in the film. Without one scene we would lose the feeling of chaos that was constantly on set. The one scene that added the least amount of plot development was the French plantation scene. It made it clear that many of the shots that took up lots of time and money were not put in but other than that nothing was added. I think that the entire film was extremely well done and for an hour and a half documentary was very informative.