What Do We See When We Actually Look?: The Importance of Visual Aesthetics
As I mentioned in last week's note, I have just returned from spending some time away from the clutching tentacles of civilization. I was up in the woods maintaining a small piece of land I own, with no access to the internet or cell service, building steps up a little hillside out of torso-sized rocks, conversing with the trees, sitting dreamily around a campfire.
One of the most striking things I notice when I go to that place is a sense of timelessness. Aside from the occasional fallen pine, it looks and feels exactly the same each time I visit. The trees and rocks stand as they did a year ago; the stack of ax-split logs by the fire ring will be untouched when I return next year. This is a pedestrian enough observation but what struck me last week, in relation to this journal, was the way in which this timelessness relates to vision, and to what we might call "the visual." Or more exactly, the way it relates to the visual's effect on us.
Up there in the mountains, what we see does not care about our existence. The trees and rocks remain unchanged, and while the sky with its clouds and storms and sunsets is everchanging, its appearance is in no way predicated on trying to influence us in one way or another. It does make us feel certain things – a sunset over a long vista inspiring awe, a dark thunderhead stirring up fear of a possible lightning strike – but it is not aimed at us. It looks and acts as it does whether we are there to see it or not.
And then on the heels of that, one returns to this world – of the internet and media and human-constructed landscapes – where virtually every single thing is created with the goal of trying to make us feel a certain way, react a certain way, think something or do something. Houses are designed to make us feel comfortable, mansions are intended to instill in us a belief the power and value of wealth, street signs want us to understand where we are or what to do, cars are shaped and colored to inspire us to buy them, advertisements strive to shape our very desire itself, and on, and on, and on.
Which is to say that we live in a world – down here in what for better or worse gets termed "civilization" – in which our relationship with vision itself, and the effect of what we see on us, is one of the most important elements of our lives. Which is also to say that entities which urge us to think about seeing are terribly important to our ability to understand our world and the way we move through it. The way we shape it, and the way it shapes us.
Exhibit B of entities that urge us to think about seeing, which I will get to in a moment, is the visual aesthetics of movies: the way images on the screen are designed to evoke in us feelings or questions or understandings or all the rest. But first, Exhibit A, which is an advertisement I came across recently while I was gallivanting across the internet.
There are certain phenomena I come across in those gallivantings that cause me to stop dead in my mental tracks, look around (both literally and metaphorically) and inquire of my fellow human beings whether we have all gone insane.
This is one:
How do we start to talk about this image? Well, first off, what is it? For starters, it's an internet "ad" that popped up on my computer screen. I put the word in scare quotes, because while that's what we might call it, it's not really an ad. That is, it's not advertising anything. It is, rather, simply trying to entice me to click on it.
If I do so, it will redirect me to some infernal listicle of not even pseudo-scientific natterings about mental illness (or really "mental illness"), the purpose of which is not even remotely to inform me about anything at all, but actually to follow and analyze my internet behavior and plant things (the cookies and tracking analytics and all the rest of those ephemera that have no real substance in the world (certainly not like a rock or a tree), exist only as electrical currents, and yet determine so much of the life and existence of our society; we should, of course, have an accurate name for these things, something like "internet imps" or "hobgoblins of damning commerce" or "avatars of greed," but alas, for all of their other abilities, coders and internet titans seem to lack that one most necessary of human attributes, imagination, and so cannot even conjur up fitting appellations and so simply reduce it all to the collection of "data," damning us all to hell (as is perhaps their intention) with blandness) on my computer.
Phew. Put differently, the above image, most simply and directly, is an attempt to control my behavior so that someone can profit (and here's the remarkable part) by not providing me with anything at all.
So the image of this poor woman with her pierced tongue making this inane expression at the behest of some photographer is designed to capture my attention not by offering me some good or service, but simply by stimulating me in the most base way possible. In the minds of whoever (or whatever AI) put this graphic together, this attempt at stimulation seems to be one of stirring a kind of idiotic curiosity, combined with a basement-level concern and/or interest in an issue of the day (in this case, mental illness). The hope is that by sending this moronic voltage through me, the "ad" will induce me to click on it, which will allow it to do its electronic voodoo (tracking and analyzing my behavior, installing its munchkins of rapacity on my computer) which will earn someone, somewhere some money.
The unintentional comedy – or is it outrage and disgust? – inspired by this schizophrenia girl image begins, I think, with its startling combination of stupidity and ineptitude. To start with, what the hell is that face she's making? To me, it looks like the kind of face people make when they're trying to imagine what it's like to "rock out" to what in their imaginations is a piece of particularly black-arts-inspired – but still fun! – heavy metal music. The cape (?) and tongue piercing, for me, add to this effect. You will probably have your own set of responses and comparisons. But can we all agree that this expression is absolutely stunning in its lack of relation to anything we might call schizophrenia? I think we can.
Or…can we? You and I, dear reader, regardless of how well educated we are in the specifics, might understand schizophrenia to refer to a type of mental illness that has nothing to do with piercing one's tongue and making a face that says "Hell yeah, let’s party!" But as to the population at large, one can't be certain. By this, I do not mean to be condescending. I simply mean that schizophrenia is a word loaded with trope, uncertainty, lack of knowledge and, maybe most importantly, fear. Many people do not know exactly what it is, except that in their heads it's really bad.
This is where the caption comes in. "Everyone should know these common signs of schizophrenia." Language like this is so ubiquitous on the internet that it sometimes slides by beneath our perceptual level, but it's worth pausing on it for a moment. Note the opening: "Everyone should." The "should" indicates necessity; the "everyone" indicates that this necessity – to be on guard for that creeping terror of schizophrenia – is widespread. Perhaps there's even an epidemic of it afoot. Not just you or I should be on the lookout for it, but everyone.
"Common signs" reinforces this message, and also offers a solution. "Common" tells us, in conjunction with "everyone should," that this menace is not just all around us, but out there in the open. My god, there are "signs" of it everywhere! But what are those signs? Can it be as simple as this heretofore undiscovered fact that everyone with a pierced tongue has schizophrenia? Is listening to mischievous heavy metal music indicative of its horrifying presence? But it also looks kind of naughty and fun – maybe this whole mental illness thing is actually a hoot! There's only one way to find out, my friend: click on the link.
Sarcasm aside, one of the most interesting things about the image of the schizophrenia girl is that the absurdity is the point. While this "ad" may be infuriating to anyone suffering from schizophrenia (not to mention mental health professionals) it really has nothing to do with mental health at all. What it has to do with is manipulating the viewer: convincing them that there's a widespread menace out there, and perhaps even one that they suffer from (in our current age of proliferating diagnoses, one imagines there are many, many people looking for medicalized reasons their lives are the way they are – and why stop at depression or anxiety when you might be able to saddle yourself with a real heavyweight?); and further convincing them that this mysterious affliction has easily recognizable signs that everyone should be aware of, which is to say, why go to a professional at all when you can self-diagnose yourself and your friends with schizophrenia with the simple aid of a listicle on the internet? The outrage of the image, the idiocy of it, the fearmongering;– they all serve only one purpose, which is to stimulate the denizen of the internet to click.
I’ve dwelled on this image for a somewhat extended period of time to make a point: human-made images are not static things, like trees or rocks or the sky, that do not care who is looking at them or why. They are, instead, created for a purpose.
One often hears encomiums about the visual qualities of a film; just as frequently, the people one hears these accolades from are not spending enough time actually thinking through these qualities. What passes for a "visually stunning" piece of cinema is more often than not engaging in a game not dissimilar to that of our schizophrenia girl: assaulting us with a certain kind of stimulation, for the purpose (in the movie) of inducing a kind of numbing annihilation, a visual (and aural) bombardment that convinces us that something "important" or "meaningful" or "exciting" is happening, and at the same time preventing us from thinking about it at all.
In the same way that our schizophrenia girl wants us to click without ever actually thinking about what's going on, the average visual ploy in the average superhero film (for example) would like us to feel a kind of emotional grandiosity without ever thinking about its source, or reasons, or implications. And both have, interestingly, a similar effect: they create us.
The more one sees images like that of the schizophrenia girl, for example, the more one becomes convinced that that picturing of it is what schizophrenia is. And the more one watches cinematic stimulation that has as its end only the bluntest of effects – being oversaturated with color and motion and sound – that bluntness, that oversaturation, becomes what one thinks that cinema is.
Fear not, though, dear reader. Because there is an antidote out there, in the films of directors and cinematographers who would actually like to engage you with what they put on the screen, rather than obliterating you with it.
The image above is from a long tracking shot in the opening of The Morning After from 1986, directed by Sidney Lumet and photographed by Andrzej Bartkowiak. It's a film about a woman, played by Jane Fonda, in deep distress: she's a failed actress, an alcoholic, and has been framed for a murder. Hopefully, the relationship of this image to the one that popped up on my computer can be made clear without too much explication. Both feature women in distress (again, I struggle to find the language to describe that schizophrenia girl photo – can she be said to be in distress?), and yet consider how they both go about their aim. The "ad" assaults us, insults us, treats us (as does so much of the internet) as little more than lever-pushing rats to be stimulated into clicking a button.
The Lumet/Bartkowiak image offers a corrective. It asks us, or suggests to us, or raises questions for us; the diminutive form of Jane Fonda's character is almost washed out, or overwhelmed, by the blankness of the urban Los Angeles landscape, the strange pale mass of the building she's walking in front of. It attempts to draw out from us a quiet response, or perhaps to instill in us the beginning of a quiet understanding: this will be a film about a character suffering the same fate as the woman in this image: she is imperiled, at risk of being overwhelmed, made tiny by the size and ultimate banality of the Los Angeles scheming in which she is caught up.
The image, in short, speaks to us, or converses with us, rather than thieving from us.
This image is from Point Blank, a crime thriller from 1967 directed by John Boorman and photographed by Philip H. Lathrop. It shows a moment in which the main character, a man named Walker (played by Lee Marvin), is tackled to the ground at a drunken party by a friend who's demanding that Walker join in on a heist; this friend will almost immediately double-cross Walker and try to kill him. The image is a frenetic one (and is integrated into the film with wonderfully complex editing): the frame is broken by the legs of the partygoers, the actors are caught in a blur of motion and sound and yelling.
But this Boorman/Lathrop image is aimed, vitally, not simply at the stimulation of the audience but also at the communication of the experience of the character: Walker is confused, overwhelmed, on the ground, surrounded by the moving legs of uncaring bystanders, and suffering under the weight of a treacherous, insistent friend. It's an attempt to put us into his position, an attempt to communicate something. In this, it invites us into the perspective of another human being; and it asks us, therefore, to think about how other human beings are: how they feel, and the things that happen to them, and how they react, and why. It is the precise inverse of the internet "ad": it does not want us to give it something, but wants to give us something.
This image functions differently, of course. It's a still from Halloween, John Carpenter's 1978 horror masterpiece starring Jamie Lee Curtis and photographed by Dean Cundey. This particular scene employs one of the greatest and most effective visual horror movie tropes: allowing the audience to see a threat the character isn't aware of. Curtis, in the foreground, believes that the film's bogeyman Michael Meyers is dead. His prone body has lain in the background for several seconds while she slumps against the door frame to recover, and now we watch as he sits up and looks at her, preparatory to rising and advancing on her once more.
Of note here is the heightened alertness this moment precipitates in the audience. Suspecting what’s going to happen, we shift our attention back and forth from Curtis to the prone figure in the background, waiting for it to rise; once it does, we experience a mounting fear on her behalf, wanting to cry out to warn her as Meyers moves toward her unaware and vulnerable form. Like the internet "ad" this visual moment certainly wants to induce a strong emotion in us, and in the sense that it's taking control of our feelings – wrapping us in fear and tension that only the completion of the scene can release – it is "manipulating" us.
But notice the difference: Halloween, here and throughout, invites us to be alert to its visual presentation. Inert forms may resolve into threats, empty areas of the screen may suddenly be filled with the monstrous. And this effect of heightened attentiveness carries with it (for those of us who like this kind of thing) a frisson of excitement unto joy: the experience of being scared in this way is pleasurable. And so we participate willingly in our own terror, watching for the next threat, hollering at the screen as the character approaches the darkened room they should rightfully run from.
In other words, the use of the visual in the Carpenter/Cundey image expands our awareness, heightens our engagement with the things we see around us. Much like the first two images, although employing a different approach and for different reasons, the purpose here is communal. The image functions as a kind of tether between creator and viewer, a way for the director and cinematographer to take us by the hand, as it were, and walk us into an experience.
I could go on. The image (above) from The T-Men (1947, dir. Anthony Mann, dp. John Alton) in which a criminal named The Schemer is being locked inside a steam room to die, and trying to break the glass with a stool while his executioner watches from the outside; the shot (above) from The Road Warrior (1981, dir. George Miller, dp. Dean Semler) in which the feral boy climbs onto the hood of the speeding truck to grab a last shotgun shell at the exact moment the psychopathic Wez leaps up to grab him from where he's been holding onto the truck's grill; the image (below) from Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009, dir. Werner Herzog, dp. Peter Zeitlinger) which shows us Nicholas Cage’s titular character sitting with a man whose life he once saved - at the cost of his own physical health and sanity - in front of an aquarium, pondering the meaning of existence itself: all of these ask things of us, invite us, raise our awareness, attempt to use the visual itself as a mode of bettering our lives rather than denigrating them.
This is one of the values not just of cinema, but of art itself. It is an engagement with one another, a way of trying to understand what we see, and why, what we create and how we are created. Engagement with it is thus an engagement with the reasons the world is as it is. Thus can we be saved from the voracity of the schizophrenia girl and her brethren.
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