Posts Tagged ‘media’
01
Jul
2010
Razzle Dazzle: The Fabrication of Fame
Parasites, heroes, and what our primal desires have to do with Frank Sinatra.
What, exactly, is fame? That’s precisely what The Museum of Moving Image explores in Razzle Dazzle — a fascinating new six-part video essay about how Hollywood has portrayed the various facets of fame, from heroism to infamy and everything in between.
This series about the individual’s primal desire to be loved and feared. To be known, period, by strangers. To be recognized and appreciated, whether for cultural importance, athletic skill, artistic excellence, or God-given natural endowments. It’s about the difference between success and celebrity, and how the two words have become interchangeable.”
The first chapter lays the groundwork for how Hollywood fits into the larger context of modern image culture, with subsequent chapters focusing on specific archetypes that dominate the media landscape — the Hero, the Parasite, the Fraud, the Maverick.
The media are the supercharged electrical currents that fame and infamy plug into.”
The series explores the craftsmanship of celebrity and the caveats of fame. (Which, as Frank Sinatra snarkily and brilliantly pointed out to young George Michael in 1990, may not be so bad after all.)
What BBC’s excellent The Century of the Self did for our understanding of consumerism, Razzle Dazzle does for our understanding of celebrity. And the parallels between the two – between what we’re conditioned to buy and what we’re conditioned to buy into – reveal remarkably similar mechanisms of manipulation.
We also highly recommend The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated History — a lavish visual record of Hollywood’s collective rise to fame, featuring more than 800 rare vintage images from private collections and government archives. It explores the very mechanisms of glamour manufacturing and the various currencies of fame in a way that pulls you into the smoke and mirrors and arms you with powerful reality goggles, but leaves it up to you to decide whether or not to use them.
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22
Jun
2010
Press Pause Play: The Evolving Creative Landscape
From basement art to media glory, or why ones and zeros are the new chalk.
A few months ago, we raved about a new film about the change in production, consumption and distribution of creative works.
Today, we’re taking a closer look at Press Pause Play, the ambitious effort to dissect and document the evolution of today’s creative landscape.
A new generation of global creators and artists is emerging, equipped with other points of reference and other tools. The teachers aren’t certified schools anymore — it’s web sites, discussion forums and a “learn by doing”-mentality. We see the children of a digital age, unspoiled or uneducated depending on who you ask. Collaboration over hierarchy, digital over analog — a change in the way we produce, distribute and consume creative works.
The film comes from the team behind the 2020 Shaping Ideas Project and features interviews with an incredibly wide spectrum of creative visionaries, from the pop stars to the businessmen, the basement filmmakers to the studio heads.
Set to release in ealry 2011, Press Pause Play will embody the very principles it preaches — cross-platform distribution, a high-quality viewing experience both in theaters and on the mobile screen, and an open model that makes the final film free for anyone to watch, broadcast and distribute.
Catch interviews, quotes and behind-the-scenes footage on the PressPausePlay YouTube channel and take a look at some exculive production photos on Flickr.
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