More "Realism?"

I found myself a little put off by Bazin's commentary (Editor's Note: Looking at everyone else's posts, it seems as though I was not the only one). I think he gave too much credit to photography for its ability to accurately maintain realism, while at the same time not giving it enough. "The photographic image is the object itself, the object freed from the conditions of time and space taht govern it. No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or discolored, no matter how lacking in documentary value the image may be, by virtue of the very process of its becoming, the being od the model of which it is the reproduction; it is the model." (169) He is describing it as though it is the accurate portrayal of whatever it represents, which I think is probably more invalid today than when he was writing. It makes me think of how the camera adds 10 pounds to the people it's capturing. Do those people necessarily possess those 10 pounds or is it an illusion? Bazin would say it is what is most accurate. However, our previous readings (and likely our personal experiences) prove that even film/photography in its truest form can be deceptive to the eye.

"For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man." The photogragher or videographer plays no part, then? They do not frame the shot, zoom, lean, angle, focus, etc....? It all just happens, by the very nature of film...capturing life exactly as it were. I think not. Many a study have shown that a simple change of camera angle can invoke an entirely new response. So what you are seeing is tempered by the involvement of the person filming...as well as your conditioned responses. I would hardly call this automatic.

To be fair, there were some things about Bazin that I liked. He mentions that plastic arts somehow satisfy a "man's primitive need to have the last word in the argument with death by means of the form that endures." (167) This is provocative because it seems to be the goal of most to leave behind some legacy...some immortal record of their time and accomplishments. In the past, portraits were the legacy of the royalty. Nowadays, we hope to land in a publication or crash through the airwaves for more than a brief second...as a sort of, yes, I made it kind of existence. With the proliferation of film (both photographic and video), anyone can now create a "legacy" work and post it on YouTube...to hopefully be immortalized in the ever-expansive YouTube library of greatness. So, maybe film is not so different from these plastic arts...but rather an expansion of their purpose and goal.