Introduction to Visual Culture, Film & TV M50
Attempted Formal Analysis
Informal Analysis
Prefers to pretend like visual culture is not its main intent
Third Person or Other
First Person
Story Format
Hi There! Glad you're reading this far!
HG Wells, "The Country of the Blind". You can read it as a story, but it is really more of a thought experiment about what would life be like if everyone were blind except you...you wouldn't be as powerful as you think!
Mother of George Adenike wants a baby with her new husband, but is faced with a huge moral dilemma when he proves infertile 
First Person
"Teaching my Camera to See my Skin" Formally describes the author journey in photography to stop seeing white faces as the only normal, and to capture dark faces with more complexity
Third Person or Other
Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave" from The Republic, What is out entire sense of reality were a projection of shadows on the wall? If someone exposed us of our incorrectness, would be be able to let it go?
"A Short History of the Shadow" Discusses Plato's Allegory and that shadows bear a negative connotation. Is fear of darkness really a Western fear though???
Color Focused
Persona film 1966 Note the use of shadow in this film...this is about as formal of an analysis of greyscale, color, light, and shadow as you can get, though they the movie technically follows a plot. Boy with glasses still suffers from blurry vision and an overexposure to light.
"The Shadow" by Hans Christopher, follows a man and his shadow's joint attempt to keep his poetry alive in a visually focused world. Does his shadow get a shadow when his shadow becomes a full person?
What is Light?
What is lack of light?
19th Century Insight Into Psychology of Color and Emotion. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe pioneered both scientific analysis of light (even though he was largely wrong) and color as emotion from a poetic perspective. Here is his color wheel.
"Colors/Black" Paul LaFarge. Critical Analysis blends toward casual. "Black, the color of not seeing, not doing, is in that sense the color of freedom. / No wonder the cool kids wear black."
"All Black Everything" “When we read about black art by black artists, they seem always to refer, however indirectly, to black lives (and deaths), and to living (and dying), in relation to their black art.” (8)
"Night Coming Tenderly, Black" One of 25 works by Dawoud Bey, here showing Lake Erie.
"Photography, Darkness, and the Underground Railroad" Analyzes Dawoud Bey's 25 work exhibit.
Shadow!!!
Wanna Trick someone with color! Follow Joseph Albers excerpts from Interaction of Color for guidelines on how to do so!
"Color of Subjectivity" by Daston and Galison. Color is subjective, yet light wavelenght is not... how can that be?
The Art of Color by Itten: Main idea again that color arises in the human eye and brain
Wizard of Oz Borderline Formal/Informal Analysis, since color is so exploited as a tool, but it's technically all about the story of self-discovery.
All Light Everywhere Film, which focuses primarily on the justice of police body cameras, show here.
"How Not to be Seen" Monty Python. A woman is shot by a shotgun because she came out of hiding. Need I say more?
"Picturing Whiteness" by Maurice Berger, whiteness is assumed, while all other colors are pronounced separately
"How not to be Seen: A fucking Didactic Educational Movie" There are 4 ways to be invisible to a camera... how about you just get smaller than one pixel!?
The source that ties all sources together...
"Panopticism by Michel Foucault: Concept of a prison with a central, all seeing guard tower is a black mirror of society. Are you ready to be an "object of information, never a subject in communication"?
"Invisible Images" by Trevor Paglen. Most modern images are made by machines for other machines
Bleu, Derek Jarman, 1993. Blue as the theme of fading into grief, which is what happen to our main character.
Blue Mythologies by Carol Mavor. Analysis of the movie Bleu noting that the mother eating the daughter's lollipop is her attempting to eat her sadness, but it doesn't work.
"Into the Blue" by Derek Jarman. “'Blue gives other colours their vibration', Cezanne. TRUE BLUE.” (105)
Chromophobia by David Batchelor. Color is important, both in art and poetry, but how has it influence all of western society?
"The Evolution of Art Towards the Immaterial" suggest that "Blueness has not dimension, it is beyond dimensions. Should this source be in this cateogry, then, if it is beyond light?
Lorna Simpson, "Darkening". Sometimes a dark blue can feel more like the absence of light than an outright color.
"Using Black to Paint Light" by Robin Coste Lewis. Very stream of consciousness, such that you really feel the author's intersectionality as a woman of color.
"Lorna Simposon Searches for Meaning the Artic Ice" by Steph Rodney remarks that Simpson submerges us in an "icy desert devoid of human habitation"
"The World as a Whole: Color" by Stanley Cavell analyzes manny movies, including the Wizard of Oz. But what if we view this source as simply comments on light versus lack of light. It completely changes its meaning.
"A Child's View of Color" by Walter Benjamin does explore color, but does so through the lenses of the purportedly innocent child. "Children are not ashamed, since they do not reflect by only see" (51)
"Blindness and Visual Culture" by Georgina Kleege consider the 'hypothetical blind man' via eye witness testimony.
. "Molyneaux Redux" by Georgina Kleege. Research done on the blind often comes with the asumption that blindness is an intrinsic tragedy.
"The Mind's Eye: What the Blind See" by Oliver Sacks rather informally explores two men living with being blind.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison follows the story of an invisible man that is so utterly lonely in the world, he must reach out.
Tinh Minh-Ha's "The Image and the World" considers the unseen and symbols of emptiness.
"La Glows" by Lawrence Weschler is arguably informal since it is so subjective...still, I agree that the haze of LA combined with the near constant sun give LA light an quality like few others.
"Los Angeles Notebook" by Joan Didion talks about the suffocating haze and heat that mark her experience with LA summers. I know that feeling!
Like several of the other whiteness articles found in the formal analysis, first person section, "A Coat of Whitewash" by Le Corbussier remarks that whites is a sign of high culture and purity.
"White Paintings" by Robert Rauschenberg depicts white paintings as relying on light and shadow, as opposed to color, contour, or overall design. It's crazy to think this is in the SF MOMA...not super impressed :/
"The Whiteness of the Whale" by Melville challenges the convention of whiteness as purity and beauty, and instead remarks that now, white is a sign of high culture
Yves Kelin, Untiled White Monochrome (1958)
"Whitescapes" in Chromophobia by David Batchlor describes the uncomfortableness of an intensely white house, and how it can be intimidating (9).
Blonde Venus directed by Joseph von Sternberg, 1932 becomes more self-aware as our morals update. But in 1932, it was not nearly so self-reflexive. Pictured, Helen taking off her gorilla costume to reveal she's actually a nice white lady!
"Blinding Blondes" by Hilaria Loyo explores the dichotomy of white and black in masquerade films. Can I get another source bout white being a symbol of purity? Yes you can sir.
Such bullshit it's hard to categorize
Hans Blumenberg's "Light as a Metaphor for Truth" claims that light is a guiding, clarifying beam of truth, while also being a phenomenon of physics, but absolutely gets lost in its own sauce
James Turrell, "You Who Look" is a mini documentary about Turrell's lifelong project to make a modern day Stonehedge-esque site. Praise the pagan overlords, and perhaps find influences of Egyptian architecture here? A view from inside his volcanic resort.