and men and machines...
that applies to politics...
...though more than politics...
though sometimes, more politics...
made me think about how images and politics work together...
...to do evil...
And how evil...
...might be countered:
by being reconfigured
Maybe?
...gave me something to write anyway.
1 comment:
Quick credits on that post - the pictures are from:
Footlight Parade
Metropolis
Triumph of the Will x2
42nd Street
Footlight Parade x2
Jud Suss x2
Triumph of the Will and Meet John Doe, alternated twice
and Jimmy Cagney in Footlight Parade
The thesis, if anyone cares, is, basically - Nazis took what Kracauer called the mass ornament, turned it into an instrument and emblem of the state, staged by and for Hitler and his cronies... while American films, especially Berkeley, treated the mass ornament much more as straight decoration/abstraction, staged by and for the camera, and you and me in the theater.... Capra, meanwhile, seems to be deliberately parodying Riefsenstahl in Meet John Doe - sun becomes rain, Hitler's triumphalism becomes John Doe's defeat...
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