IPad Apps and Eagle Cam

The Grass App is deceptive.  Its fun to play with for the first few moments, and the gentle waving of the virtual blades of grass inspire a feeling of calm, but then it just starts to feel pointless and frustrating- it won’t hold any shape you try to draw.  It tries to create the illusion of naturalness, but there’s still too much structure.  The randomized pattern is still a pattern and looks the same on everyone’s screen.  After staring at it for more than a minute, it stopped looking like grass and more like a bunch of grass green lines.  I think it represents our attempts to control our interactions with nature.  The game makes us feel like we can move the grass however we want, and tries to make us feel like we are really surrounded by grass, that it’s under our fingers and we’re in control of it, but in the end none of it is real.  I’d much prefer to go outside and sit on real grass myself, even if I can’t control it the way I can in the app.   
Guru meditation
The setting didn’t draw me in, but I felt like that was the point of the bare desert and the few clouds and the lack of detail: to make us feel peaceful, but not focused on the screen.  Instead, once we have the ipad level and are sitting comfortably, we are stuck in one place, sitting still, with nothing to keep our minds occupied.  This is a game that actually kind of promotes letting your mind wander, the same way certain types of meditation do, while testing how long you can sit still without fidgeting.  It’s a weird concept for an app because it makes us quit focusing on the ipad and just take some time to think, or at least concentrate on what our body is doing rather than on the machine in our hands.  And yet our temporary escape from the draw of the ipad is still dependent on an app, so we do have to devote a small portion of our concentration to the device in our hands.   The app gives the illusion of a forced escape from technology, but that escape is dependent on technology.  Of course, the app could also be manipulated and turned into a game of how many things you can do (moving, walking, etc) without losing, but either way it’s a game entirely focused on using the player’s body, not their mind.  The sounds the game makes are very annoying though, and the position of your fingers holding the ipad makes it very uncomfortable, becomes distracting, and takes away from the experience. 
Decorah Eagle cam 
The value of the eagle cam, or any nest cam, is that it presents the birds as they are, no commentary, or editing, so each person is free to draw their own conclusions, and is also unable to overlook any “evil” that happens on screen.  It’s presented as simply a window into nature, showing exactly what happens, with no editing, so if one of the parents brings back someone’s cat to feed its young, or if one of the chicks kills its siblings, we will see it and have to accept that that there is no malicious intent, it’s just nature.  However, I wonder if it is really a good idea to invade the eagles’ nest year after year.  All the attention means more and more people will be inclined to seek their nest and other eagle nests out, because the eagle cam makes them feel so close to the eagles, without truly allowing them to realize how powerful the birds are, and they may want to get just as close in the real world.   

Tambien La Lluvia

Near the beginning of the film, during a reading of the script, Anton gets lost in his character, and ends up using the waiters (who are indigenous) as props to help him practice the scene, similar to Columbus being consumed by his quest for gold and using the natives to obtain it.  The first shot is focused on Anton’s hand pouring a glass of wine, above a table covered with fancy fingerfood, immediately associating him with wealth and power, like Columbus.  Throughout much of the scene, shallow focus, close-up shots of Anton/ Columbus depict him again a background of greenery, isolating him from the other actors and the modern world, giving the illusion that he is surrounded by wilderness.  When he plants the “flag,” the camera is looking up at him, making him look tall and powerful, a true conquerer, and the background of the shot only contains trees and mountains, as if he is somewhere in the wild, rather than in the yard of an expensive hotel.  The sound of running water also fills the background during this shot, alluding to the sea voyage he has just made.  Close-ups of Anton alternate with wide shots showing the whole yard, serving to draw us into Columbus’ story and then reminding us that it is a story within a story, enabling us to see parallels.  

At the end of the scene we are given a close-up of Columbus/ Anton as he demands the waitress to tell him where the gold is.  When he grabs her ear to examine her gold earrings the focus abruptly shifts from the actors to his hand and her ear, emphasizing both the gold and also the first contact between native people and the invaders (in both stories).  A series of shot/ reverse shots of Anton/ Columbus and the two waiters follow, and as Anton/ Columbus grows more agitated the speed of the shots increases, emphasizing his mounting frustration.  Interestingly, we are given an over-the-shoulder view when looking at Anton, as if we are standing beside the waitress as a comrade, but see the waitress through Anton/ Columbus’ eyes, as if he is forcing his point of view upon us, just as he is doing to the natives.  The scene takes on a slightly eerie quality, as if Anton truly is Columbus, and left me feeling more friendly toward the native people than the film crew.      

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

I was shocked to learn Herzog had misled his viewers in order to create the metaphor he desired.  I understand he did it for artistic reasons, but in the context of a documentary, viewers are usually expecting to be shown facts, even if they are somewhat skewed by the opinions of the filmmaker.  However, by lying he is able to draw several important connections between the albino crocodiles (alligators) and humanity.   

The scientists in the main part of the film state that humans did not live in the cave.  Whatever each individual’s reasons for creating the paintings and adding to them over the centuries, it is clear that they had a deep respect or fascination with nature.  The lack of images depicting humans suggested to me that these ancient people valued the world around them and were more focused on it than they were on themselves.  Furthermore, the only image that does depict part of a person shows it blended with animal.  This gave me the sense that the people who made the cave valued nature and perhaps were still part of it.  Herzog alludes to this when discussing footprints of an eight-year-old boy next to those of a lion, speculating about the possibility that they could have walked side by side as friends.  Herzog’s postscript then shows us how far we are from having the relationship with nature that our ancestors who created those paintings had.  His use of the albino alligators and the lie that they came about due to nuclear waste seeks to show us that we are no longer honoring nature, but polluting it.  They also represent us: they are unnatural, just as we are now unnatural compared to the people of the cave, and we both are unfit for survival in the wild.  We are now better adapted to living in the modern world than in the natural one.  But to me it’s unclear whether he thinks this adaptation is good or bad: he seems to leave that up to us.   

Going Green?

At home, I sit high on rigid limbs

And the deer watch me from below.

As their curiosity ebbs, the sky grows dim:

They move off but I can’t follow.

I watch the tawny animals graze

While to the west a wind turbine towers.

Framed by jutting boughs, it draws my gaze

With its astonishing size and power.

Its huge blades turn, so strong and sure

(though next to the sun it’s a tiny fan),

Making green energy, so clean and pure;

A source of hope for the future of man.

Yet I wonder that they call it “going green:”

To me it just looks like another machine.

The Cove

The Cove opens with a sequence of slow-quality, sometimes jerky shots in black and white and thermal images, similar to images seen in James Bond films, depicting the horrific slaughter of dolphins in a cove near Taiji, Japan.  These mediums emphasize the mechanical way the dolphins are slaughtered, presenting the fishermen killing them as emotionally detached and disturbing the viewer.  Thus the viewer is already somewhat on Rick Barry’s side by the time he begins speaking.    

All the clips of Rick Barry and the other activists speaking about the issue are shot in a cozy interview setting, with no music in the background, typical of a documentary.  In contrast all shots of Japanese fishermen and officials are shot with low-quality cameras in dim, gray settings.  Certain shots were accompanied by mysterious, sinister music, and in one scene a children’s lullaby, which is a technique often used in horror movies to create a sense of wrongness, impending horror and death.  In addition, many shots of the Japanese were similar to the shots of killers or creatures in horror films:  close-ups of their facial expressions were shown when they were angry, persuading us to see them as sinister, a threat, people to be feared.  The only close-up shots of Rick Barry were when he was very calm or else tragically sad about the dolphins.  I was quickly persuaded to see the Japanese fishermen as murderers, and spent much of the movie in suspense waiting for footage of the inevitable slaughter of the dolphins.

By filming their “missions” from a third person viewpoint and splicing it with thermal images from their view point as they search for any sign of guards, the team draws the viewer in the same way a spy film does, making us feel as if we are there with them as they sneak around the cove.  They even include the “false alarm” segment typical of spy movies, when a marmot is mistaken for a guard, to get our hearts racing and make us feel the danger is real and could come at any moment.  By the time the film ended I felt like I had already partaken in the action alongside the team, and was thus more than willing to take real action.  I also feel that by building up to the footage of the dolphins the same way horror films build up to the death of the protagonist was very effective, because it used the format of a fictional movie, which drew me in, but then it would switch to interviews, reminding me that this is a documentary and this horror is not something we can turn off the TV and walk away from.  Blending horror genre with the format of a typical documentary thus makes its message very powerful.     

Wall-E

    Wall-E is about Wall-E the robot, and even though the movie contains and important eco-message for humanity, it follows Wall-E's story, not ours.  In a way showing things from his more innocent point of view helps us recognize the eco-message.  Wall-E and the robots have sufficiently developed personalities, yet still seem innocent and childlike, so we respond to them with affection.  They subtly point out all humanity’s flaws and yet it's somehow more acceptable if a non-human points them out than if a human character did it.  People are usually blind to their own flaws and might not take as much notice or might be offended if the main character of the film was human, viewing it as just another movie about some environmentalist going against the grain.  By using Wall-E as the main character viewers get the message without being offended. 
    Wall-E opens with shots of various stars and galaxies in space, beautiful dazzling swirls of color and light, emphasized by the lyrics of the opening song: “out there, there’s a world full of sparkle..see how it twinkles…glistens.”  The song is “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” from Hello, Dolly! (1964) and immediately inspires a feeling of nostalgia, a sense of simpler times, and a further sense that we have escaped reality.  Then we zoom through space and come down to earth, where we are jolted out of the cheery, nostalgic mood set by the song and find ourselves confronted with a ruined earth.  The song continues playing, but now it feels out of place, making us even more uncomfortable with the world on the screen.  Gone are the beautiful colors seen in the opening shots out in space: the earth is brown and gray and faded.  The filmmakers make it clear to the audience from the beginning that, besides being about the adventures of a cute robot, wall-e is intended as a wake-up call for where we could be headed. 
    When we meet Wall-E and watch him working, there are a series of shots where objects are shown being tossed into Wall-E’s lunchbox for saving.  These shots don’t show him, only the objects, forcing us to focus on the objects he finds interesting.  His misunderstanding of all our technology makes us reexamine these objects both with a new appreciation but also with fresh eyes, to see how ridiculous they often are. 
    There are a couple of things I found worrisome.  One was Wall-E’s initial treatment of the plant: he recognizes its value and how different it is, but he still treats it as a possession, and takes it from the earth, which might lead some people to think, even though the film advises us to act as its caretakers, that we own the earth and its okay to take living things from their home because they belong to us.  The closing credits, set to “Coming down to the ground,” relive how civilization progressed through art, beginning with cave paintings of the Axium’s return, then using Egyptian art style, then Grecian, and so on, progressing all the way through to van Gogh and modern painters.  The problem isn’t the clever use of  the progression of art, it’s the fact that the humans who returned to earth from the Axium seem to be following a similar progression of civilization  and industrialization as humanity did the first time around, which ultimately will lead to the same problems.  And even worse, this time around they have robots to help them, so it progresses much faster. 

The Corporation by Joel Bakan

Before I began The Corporation I knew the government has less power than corporations, but I always believed that if enough consumers joined together and stood behind the government, we could stop a corporation from treating everything, from people to the planet, as a way to make money.  Now I realize that isn’t true. When I immersed myself in The Corporation, I was shocked to learn that a corporation is legally bound by the government is to put profits before everything else in the first place to please its shareholders.    

The argument put forward that torments me most is that “social and environmental values are not ends in themselves but strategic resources to enhance business performance.”  Bakan uses the very effective example of John Browne, the BP CEO, who is a leading supporter of the precautionary principle, but still is pushing to drill on the Arctic Slope’s coastal plain, even though the effects it could have on wildlife, such as the Porcupine caribou herd, are unknown.  

 By demonstrating that even Browne, someone who believes in global warming and advocates “a need to take precautionary action now,” sees environmental responsibility as another strategy to increase profits, Bakan effectively leaves the reader feeling like every corporation is evil, and every environmentally friendly action they take is and always will be unreliable and false.  But since a corporation is legally bound to place its shareholders’ interests before anything else, if its shareholders were to place the environment first, the corporation would be forced to as well.  This is not likely to happen anytime soon, but still, Bakan might do better to encourage such actions and thus leave readers with possible ideas towards solving the problem of corporation immorality and irresponsibility, rather than feeling caged in by it with no way out.  After building up our hopes about Browne and then crushing them, Bakan leaves readers feeling like something must be done, but offers no solution, no hope.