I just included a link cause I can.... ;)
Anyway, In my "material intelligence" class we watched the movie Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit by Werner Herzog. The premise of the film follows several characters in various states of deafness and blindness. Some from birth, some from progressive degeneration. The thing I found most interesting is that the film seems like a documentary, and in certain ways it is. Recently the idea of documentary film as objective truth has become better understood as subjective truth. Herzog's film does document the journey of one women's visitations of others with similar afflictions, however her personae acts as Herzog's guide though out the movie. We as the viewer view the film with the assistance of the guide and Herzog through her. The film explores what life and human existence means and is affected by our senses (or lack thereof). There is the obvious caveat in that that we the viewer rely both on sight and sound to interpret the film, however, the movie is in german. So with the exception of the native speakers, we must rely on an interpreter in order to understand the spoken word through subtitles. As I watched people forced to communicate through various interpreters it dawned on me the measure of trust that must exist between them. It occurred to me that the same trust must exist between us the viewer and the interpreter hired for the film. Interpretation is always the politics of language.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
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3 comments:
I don't know if you can call it the same trust as the def/blind have with their interpretors. As viewers we still have the image on the screen and the sounds of their voices to comfort us in their translations.
Yes, but I meant that our interpretation of what is going on is fully dependent on what the narration is. We trust that what is written is what is spoken. It only occurs to me because I can translate the spoken german- I am a little rusty but...
But I'm not comparing the two as equals, just a common thread. It occured t me when the one woman was describing what something looked like. To the blind woman she has to take it on faith that a red rose is a red rose and that it looks "beautiful" or has a certain "look" about it.
Perhaps it is all a fiction and the "truth" in faith is less a goal than the narrative, i.e. Man Bites Dog, which is an over the top example, but the director as interpreter is a very interesting topic....
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