Can we control reality through self-identification?
A. Preface
The following are some thoughts of mine about:
What does REALITY means to human?
To make my life easier, I’ll use the movie Blow-Up to extend the topic I want to mention. So let’s begin.
B. Occasionality
The first thing I felt about Blowup is the uncontrollability of the authors — the photographers in this movie. This uncontrollability which include both the photographed and the photographer, shows the interpretation of the photo is the key. Thomas the photographer shows his controllability in his job, characteristic and freedom as an author of his ‘works’. He can easily tease the young models to satisfy the feeling that he wanted to represent, in other words, bent them to his will. The feeling of control let Thomas remained arrogant, but when the accident photograph of the woman which he shot sneakily turned out that he found the photo conditions are both occasional and unduplicatable. As he zoom-in the photos to help him found out the mystery, the out-of-focus scenario represents he knew that he figured the puzzle out unintentionally. He seemed disappointed because of the unpredictability and uncontrollability of a photographer — an author. The other evidence of this point of view is that in the latter half of the movie, Thomas search for the opportunity to get the feeling of shooting once again without directions. The pursue let him deeply gain his lesson —
The photographs are occasionally made in a large scale of possibilities.
C. Value
The second thing came up was the experience of photographers can not be duplicate by photos. Thomas wanted to re-experience the whole scene, so he kept trying to control everything he could — the woman, the dance steps of the woman and his own confidence. But Thomas was blocked quickly — the woman disappeared after he found out the murder. He tried to arrange all the plans and needs for the photo procedure in the past, but this time, there was not much to do. The lesson was tough for Thomas — whatever he did, the photo he shot will never be the reflection of the reality.
It is a sorted angle of observation of reality which even the photographer could not manage a lot.
The most obvious evidence related to this argument was the guitar fight scene. Every fan seems able to seize the experience if they own the fragment piece of the guitar which broke by the mad guitarist. But after the mess, the fragment turned out to be nothing but garbage. Thomas could not even tell the value of it. This symbol seems like conveying the same message of the dead body which Thomas found on the revisit after the murder had happen. The corpse and the fragment of guitar may stand for the things that were being left after the experience we had gone through and forgot unintentionally. The two symbols are the metaphors of photographs that allure us to keep the memories fresh enough, which is certainly a fantasy.
As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.
Thomas at last found out nothing he could probably grasp form the experience had already faded away, just like we need to redefined the relationships between humans and photographs, or more further, between humans and the past we had experienced.
D. The Intent to Control
The last point I want to mention is about the last scene which is the ‘mime’ at the tennis court. Thomas was forced (in a certain way) to throw back the invisible pretended tennis by the play he bumped into. There is a key here. He threw the tennis back by dropping his camera first. In my point of view, there is an indication the director had intended to reveal here:
Humans are not able or ready to experience anything unless they could ‘drop’ their intentions to control or arrange their memories first.
E. Self-Identification
Wrapping things up, Blowup indicates that the relationship between the record of yourself, or digging deeper, the identification of yourself and reality was complicated and with huge gaps most of the time. The photographs are by neither the reality nor the photographers controllable. The only key to have some progress may be the interpretation of the viewers/readers, which I had mentioned in my previous article.
Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.
References
- Blow-Up — Michelangelo Antonioni (1966)
- Susan Sontag, On Photography .New York: Delta Books, 1977, pp. 3–24.
- Patricia C. Albers, William R. James, TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY A Methodological Approach, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 15, 1988, pp. 134–158.
