(no subject)
So hi Livejournal. I'm back, sort of, basically because I feel like I am posting too many text posts on my Tumblr, and that Tumblr isn't really a place to keep a written blog where you would expect serious comments on your thoughts.
So.
Currently I'm studying for my last written exam of the year, of a course we have called 'Understanding Animation'. It's somewhere between animation history and animation analysis, no one really knows what we were supposed to study in that course, but w\e. One of the more interesting subjects I'm studying for the exam is documentary animation - whether animation can be documentary at all, and in what ways is it different from real footage\live action documentaries. We use Creature Comforts and Waltz with Bashir as our main examples.
One of the agruments in an article I'm reading titled Absence, Excess and Epistemological Expansion says that animation cannot be documentary for two reasons
And these two arguments are just fundamentally wrong. Take Waltz with Bashir for example:
Furthermore: some people claim that WwB, specifically, cannot be treated as a documentary film because it combines a lot of misguided memories or hallucinations of Ari Folman and the other people interviewed for this film.
But the thing is Ari Folman tells us this, he tells us his main recollection from the first Lebanon war [this scene where he remembers being with his friends at sea] is something that never happened, he tells us none of the friends he remembers were with him have any recollection of this event, and there is even a scene where he meets up with a psychologist friend of his, who tells him that the human memory is never an objective thing, and that people can make up memories that never happened and believe with their whole hears that they're real [I can't find the scene in Youtube with subtitles: basically, the psychologist tells him of an experiment, where a person is shown a picture of him as a child, with his father, in an amusement park. The photograph was Photoshopped, the person was never with his father in an amusement park, this event never happened. Yet, after being shown the picture, the person begins to remember the event - that never happened - proving our brains can and will create memories that are not true]. So blaming Folman of trying to deceive his audience is just not true. Besides, this is a documentary about remembering: most of the events depicted in it are personal memories that never had any coverage in film.
Another thing that pisses me off about the critique given to WwB is that a lot of people dismiss it as being a documentary about personal traumas from war because Ari Folman and the others interviewed were on the offensive side of the war. While a lot of veterans sympathized with the movie [not just Lebanon veterans; Vietnam and WW2 veterans as well, people from all over the world]; at the time a lot of people were saying that because Folman was in the attacking\occupying forces, he has not legitimacy to feel traumatized and present himself as the victim.
So basically those people are saying people cannot feel regret for something they did that they feel was wrong? An Israeli soldier can't feel bad\sorry about shooting a Palestinian? A Wehrmacht soldier can't feel bad about killing people from the Russian, French, American or any other army? Germany can't feel sorry and regret WW2? That's basically saying people can't regret the things they've done, that people are not allowed to change or realize their past mistakes. And that's just bullshit.
I would just like to clarify that I don’t sympathize all the way with Waltz with Bashir and I think some of the ideas\opinions it presents are wrong. However, that does not disturb me in appreciating its amazing animation and in recognizing that it is, in fact, a documentary with legitimate views.
So.
Currently I'm studying for my last written exam of the year, of a course we have called 'Understanding Animation'. It's somewhere between animation history and animation analysis, no one really knows what we were supposed to study in that course, but w\e. One of the more interesting subjects I'm studying for the exam is documentary animation - whether animation can be documentary at all, and in what ways is it different from real footage\live action documentaries. We use Creature Comforts and Waltz with Bashir as our main examples.
One of the agruments in an article I'm reading titled Absence, Excess and Epistemological Expansion says that animation cannot be documentary for two reasons
- Its creators are animators, first and most importantly; and only later are they documentary film directors
- Animation isn’t objective; it’s not footage of anything that happened, nor does it use this footage as reference; it was created by someone and therefore is subjective
And these two arguments are just fundamentally wrong. Take Waltz with Bashir for example:
- Ari Folman isn’t an animator, he knows nothing about how to make animation and had but one duty: directing the film.
- First of all: parts of Waltz with Bashir were in fact based on real-life footage. Secondly: documentaries that contain real-life footage of events [such as the massacre WwB deals with] aren’t objective, either. In fact, they are more misleading than animation documentaries. Every documentary tries to… shall we call it, push a point, and if you take that into consideration: only the editing [not to mention the directing] of the film makes it subjective, because it is edited in a way that will make you sympathize with what the director is trying to tell you. At least with documentary animation, you come with the knowledge that non of this is objective, because someone had to create it out of nothing.
Furthermore: some people claim that WwB, specifically, cannot be treated as a documentary film because it combines a lot of misguided memories or hallucinations of Ari Folman and the other people interviewed for this film.
But the thing is Ari Folman tells us this, he tells us his main recollection from the first Lebanon war [this scene where he remembers being with his friends at sea] is something that never happened, he tells us none of the friends he remembers were with him have any recollection of this event, and there is even a scene where he meets up with a psychologist friend of his, who tells him that the human memory is never an objective thing, and that people can make up memories that never happened and believe with their whole hears that they're real [I can't find the scene in Youtube with subtitles: basically, the psychologist tells him of an experiment, where a person is shown a picture of him as a child, with his father, in an amusement park. The photograph was Photoshopped, the person was never with his father in an amusement park, this event never happened. Yet, after being shown the picture, the person begins to remember the event - that never happened - proving our brains can and will create memories that are not true]. So blaming Folman of trying to deceive his audience is just not true. Besides, this is a documentary about remembering: most of the events depicted in it are personal memories that never had any coverage in film.
Another thing that pisses me off about the critique given to WwB is that a lot of people dismiss it as being a documentary about personal traumas from war because Ari Folman and the others interviewed were on the offensive side of the war. While a lot of veterans sympathized with the movie [not just Lebanon veterans; Vietnam and WW2 veterans as well, people from all over the world]; at the time a lot of people were saying that because Folman was in the attacking\occupying forces, he has not legitimacy to feel traumatized and present himself as the victim.
So basically those people are saying people cannot feel regret for something they did that they feel was wrong? An Israeli soldier can't feel bad\sorry about shooting a Palestinian? A Wehrmacht soldier can't feel bad about killing people from the Russian, French, American or any other army? Germany can't feel sorry and regret WW2? That's basically saying people can't regret the things they've done, that people are not allowed to change or realize their past mistakes. And that's just bullshit.
I would just like to clarify that I don’t sympathize all the way with Waltz with Bashir and I think some of the ideas\opinions it presents are wrong. However, that does not disturb me in appreciating its amazing animation and in recognizing that it is, in fact, a documentary with legitimate views.