Volker von Prittwitz Political Analysis Film - Video - Game, August 03, 2016 www.diberlin.info
Film - Video - Game
1. Basics
A film (movie, motion picture) is a series of still images which, when shown on
a screen, creates the illusion of moving images. This optical illusion causes the
audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed
rapidly in succession. A film is created by photographing actual scenes with a
motion picture camera; by photographing drawings or miniature models using
traditional animation techniques; by means of computer-generated imagery
(CGI) and computer animation; or by a combination of some or all of these
techniques and other visual effects.1
tvmovie.de
Film in its diverse shapes complies with human curiosity and human need for
entertainment. Fictive entertainment films offer to the beholder the
opportunity of plunging into an imaginary world of phantasy where everyday
rules are inverted. Psychologic film theories stress the similarity of motion
pictures with dream images, that both provide the opportunity of getting
easing. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular
entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating—or indoctrinating—
citizens. The visual basis of film gives it a universal power of communication.
There is a lot of film types: Documentary films, alternative sequel films,
amusement park films, animated films, anthology films, black-and-white films,
crowdfunded films, direct-to-video films, documentary films, fan films, film
series, films with live action and animation, independent films, interactive
1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film
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Volker von Prittwitz Political Analysis Film - Video - Game, August 03, 2016 www.diberlin.info
films, internet films, open content films, prequel films, reboot films, remakes,
sequel films, film serials, short films, silent films, film spin-offs, sponsored films,
television films, unreleased films, world's fair films.2
Video (from Latin: video = I see) is an electronic medium for the recording,
copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Different
from classical cinema film, whose storage medium has been celluloid, the
recording medium of videos consists of a magnetic tape or a digital memory
card. Digital video is a representation of moving visual images in the form of
encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents
moving visual images with analog signals. Meanwhile there is a big variety of
technical specifications regarding forms, storage media, and ways of displaying
videos.3
Conducting of video recordings and the subsequent up-load of produced videoclips at a video-portal such as YouTube has become a matter of course for
many young people. On closer inspection, the production of a high quality
video-film, indeed, proves to be a relatively demanding task. A video-film is like a tele-mission or a cinema film - a multi-media total artwork. It
comprehends not only the medium moving-image, but also the media tone,
text, and image. Although a high quality level of video-films can be achieved
only by the employment of specialized persons (for camera recording, tone
recording and so forth), meanwhile even laypeople are able to produce videofilms - fostered by increasingly cheap technical instruments such as personal
computers, cameras, and HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), a digital
replacement for analog video standards.
Relevant special types of videos are product videos, explaining videos, and art
videos. Explaining videos are to mediate complex issues to a consumer group in
an efficient way. Typical ways of operation are storytelling and multi-sensory.
The audience is addressed by a story in a cognitive and affective way. Many
explaining video formats use a simple language and easily accessible images,
symbols, terms.4
A game is structured playing, undertaken for enjoyment and other endogen
(intrinsic) benefits such as having a feasible challenge and peaceful interaction.
As already shown by Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens (1938/39), games
can be traced back beyond the most early origins of mankind.5
2
Fn. 1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video
4
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videofilm
5
http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/huiz003homo01_01/ ; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_ludens
3
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Volker von Prittwitz Political Analysis Film - Video - Game, August 03, 2016 www.diberlin.info
http://www.azquotes.com/author/7023-Johan_Huizinga
Key components of a game are a specific (game) world with specific (game)
rules, specific challenges, and rule-bound kinds of interaction. Beyond, games
help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform
an educational, simulating, or psychological role. They are principally distinct
from work, which is usually carried out for external benefits or even under
pressure, and from art, which is prevailingly an expression of aesthetic
elements. In practice, however, there are not only ideal-typical games, but also
a great variety of mixtures and combinations of games and other forms of
governed reality, for instance games with paying spectators and professional
players. Sometimes games are considered art such as games involving an
artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games.
Meanwhile the term game often is applied to computer programs that allow
one or several users to play together online. A video game is an electronic
game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual
feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor. The word
video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device, but it now
implies any type of display device that can produce two- or three-dimensional
images.6
2. Political Film
While there is an established concept of Political Literature - in the sense of
enlightening and critical writing, corresponding with the historical rise of
modern literature in the eighteenth century - there is no established concept of
political film. In the contrary, some observers express their distance to the
term. The German film director Ulrich Köhler substantiates his abstention from
making political films: Die Logik des Politischen ist verschieden von der Logik des
6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game
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Volker von Prittwitz Political Analysis Film - Video - Game, August 03, 2016 www.diberlin.info
Künstlerischen. Politik strebt…nach einem Kompromiss und verfolgt einen
Zweck, Kunst dagegen kann kompromisslos und offen sein (The political logic is
distinguished from the logic of art. Politics strives at finding a trade-off and
pursues an aim, art, in contrast, can be uncompromising and open).7
In contrast, political cinema is often characterized as portraying current or
historical events or social conditions in a partisan way in order to inform or to
agitate the spectator.8 Following this concept, political films serve to propagate
certain political views - based on the peculiar potential of films to generate
dream-like impressions and to reinforce subliminal attitudes. Against this
background it does not wonder that totalitarian systems such as the German
Nazi-regime have systematically used films to stabilize and to expand their
power, often connected with war-like or explicit war-oriented ways of
behavior.
The term of political films in that sense refers to films that do not hide their
political stance. However, also ostensibly apolitical films, which promise mere
entertainment as an escape from everyday life, may fulfill a distinctly political
function in a totalitarian state and should be understood as political as well. So
the authorities in Nazi Germany organized a large production of deliberately
escapist movies in order to strengthen their regime. Also in other
entertainment movies, for example westerns, the ideological bias is evident in
the distortion of historical reality. A classical western would rarely portray
black cowboys, although there were a great many of them. Hollywood Cinema
or more generally speaking Dominant Cinema was often accused of
misrepresenting black, women, gays and working-class people.9
Addressing the concept of political films only to explicit or implicit system
propaganda, indeed, would fall short. Since historical events or social
conditions are often dealt with in a partisan way independently from the given
frame of political system. Understood in that very general sense, almost any
film has a political aspect because every film is explicitly or implicitly framed by
choosing a certain socio-political context and by transporting certain values.
Free opinion and free art under that aspect belong to the basic freedoms.
Taking a political position and stimulating the spectators to reflect their own
positions might even foster a democracy.
Vice versa, political films can transport critique of an authoritarian or
totalitarian system. Finally they may contribute to perceiving illegitimate
7
Frederic Werner, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung 2008: Vorwort zu: Mit Bildern bewegen - der politische Film heute
http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/akademie/hamburg/06824.pdf
8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_cinema
9
Fn. 5
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Volker von Prittwitz Political Analysis Film - Video - Game, August 03, 2016 www.diberlin.info
practices such as corruption, powerful lobbyism, or other forms of excluding
democratic opposition in any political system.
3. Analytical Potentials of video and film
Against the mentioned background analytical potentials of film and video
become clear. The author of a script book, the director of a film, and other
involved actors usually operate with certain images of their subjects on their
minds. Sometimes films are structured as a series of hiding and detection of
more or less important facts - an analytic procedure that can also be used for
explaining political events and processes.
First and foremost this potential is activated in documentary films nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality,
primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record. Such
films were originally shot on film stock—the only medium available—but now
includes video and digital productions that can be either direct-to-video, made
into a TV show or released for screening in cinemas. Documentary has been
described as a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of
audience reception that is continually evolving and is without clear
boundaries.10
During the last decades a broad spectrum of historical events and processes
has been documented by diverse thematic types of documentary films reaching from single events such as the start
of World War II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfRq-JeUCSM
to documentary films on certain political
personalities (for instance the Iranian
revolutionary Ayatollah Khomeini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfrJ2rBobGs to historic
overviews (for instance a documentary series
about the 20th century:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC46CCvwlaw.
Finally diverse comparisons and specific
comparative issues, for instance Magic propositions of the 20th century:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxZsHXWvID4
10
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film
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Volker von Prittwitz Political Analysis Film - Video - Game, August 03, 2016 www.diberlin.info
US President Kennedy 1963 in Berlin
Meanwhile a whole culture of documentary films
attractive for a broad public has developed - pushed
forward by personalities such as the German historian
Guido Knopp - criticized and envied by many colleagues,
but respected and beloved by TV spectators.11
A specific analytical potential of films refers to
psychological features. Films not only vividly document personal images,
attitudes and interpersonal relations; they can also show psychological dramas
- an almost human capability that makes films particularly real for the
spectator. Indeed on this way films may run also a risk of simplifying
psychological and on this way conceived political structures and processes - see
for instance films on the psychological backgrounds of terrorists such as the
Red Army Fraction (RAF) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Ud5ofIwB8
Also currently a tendency of reducing national and international politics to
psychological aspects of and between leading actors is fostered by the medium
film simply because those personal constellations can be transferred on this
medium particularly easily and impressively.
On the other hand, by films common facts and usual perceptions can be
alienated, particularly an artistic performance. Then the spectator of a film sees
things with different eyes - a precondition for detecting reality in a new way,
for reflection and possible innovation.
Impressive examples of how artistic alienation
and immediate emotional access can be linked
with each other are rendered by Ulu Braun’s
artistic video-films and video-installations - see
11
http://www.welt.de/geschichte/article113299705/Von-Kollegen-gehasst-und-beneidet-Knopp-hoertauf.html
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Volker von Prittwitz Political Analysis Film - Video - Game, August 03, 2016 www.diberlin.info
his video Westcoast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYj_CM_3PQk, a trailer on his video The
Park http://www.ulubraun.com/videos/video_Park.html, and an interview (in German) under the title
Land of Confusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN19xDEZYt4
4. Barriers and Chances
There are political, psychological, and economic barriers for analyzing politics
by film and video: Since films can reach a broad public, they often become an
object of governmental regulation or even permits, particularly in
authoritarian and totalitarian states such as theological states. Insofar critical
filmic analysis runs the risk of getting suppressed. Vice versa, states where a
culture of successful film production has developed tend to consider that as an
expression of cultural identity. That’s why the film policies of those countries
often expand and foster their national film productions.
Psychological barriers against filmic analysis often exist regarding alleged
attacks on the own society. Once spectators realize that essential structures of
their society are analytically queried by a film, spectators who identify with this
society feel attacked themselves. Hence films of that kind run high risks of
failing economically.
An example for that failure was the US American film All
the Kings Men, a 2006 film adaptation of the 1946 Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel All the King's Men by Robert Penn
Warren. The story is about the life of a fictional character
resembling Louisiana governor Huey Long, in office 1928
through 1932. He was elected as a US Senator and
assassinated in 1935 in a struggle about power and
corruption. In spite of its high-profile cast (co-staring
amongst others Jude Law, Kate Winslet, and Anthony
Hopkins), direction and production team, the film was a massive failure, both
with critics and at the box office.12
Indeed if analytical films are well made and affirm identification patterns of
essential population groups, they have chances to become successful. A
prominent example is the work of Michael Moore, a USAmerican documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, author,
journalist, actor, and liberal political activist. He produced
and directed Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), a critical look at the
presidency of George W. Bush and the War on Terror,
12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_King%27s_Men_(2006_film)
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Volker von Prittwitz Political Analysis Film - Video - Game, August 03, 2016 www.diberlin.info
which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time and winner of the Palme
d'Or. His film, Bowling for Columbine (2002), which examines the causes of the
Columbine High School massacre, won the Academy Award for Documentary
Feature. Moore's written and cinematic works criticize topics such as
globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, U.S. Presidents
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the Iraq War, the American health care
system, and capitalism. In 2005 Time magazine named Moore one of the
world's 100 most influential people.13
4. Video Games and Political Analysis
Meanwhile video and gaming have connected to a mass phenomenon, video
games. Since this process has so far developed in a private market framework,
selling and marketing of video games have been prevailing criterions for it resulting in an almost total percentage of well playable simple games
(particularly for children and adolescents). The usual pattern of those games is
Zero-Sum-constellations between the player and the computer or between
several players. Here politics can occur, if at all, only in forms of very poor
politics, that is according to the logic of power or - mostly dominating according to the logic of war. Intelligently made political video games that go
beyond those logics are to come.
13
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore
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