detournement links
---"The Production of Meaning"---"The Story of Electronics"
---Dargis considers filmmakers on the internet:
---Robert Palmer's documentary about punk rock
---Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle: "what appears is good; what is good appears"
---Kent Jones' "Five Easy Pieces: The Solitude":
"The solitude. Of men, sometimes women, who refused to settle on a place, a role, a “stable” identity. They walked through my life for a few years when I was a boy—carpenters, child-care workers, counselors, psychiatric patients. Some of them were my teachers.
Were they happy or sad, kind or mean? None of the above. They were discontented with the choices offered to them. They were acutely aware of their discontent, and they were trying to find a way to act on that awareness. Now, in 2010, when conformity comes in an endless array of shapes and sizes and styles, these people would be classified under “the sixties,” and then assigned one of the following subheadings: Selfish, Lost, Narcissistic, Alcoholic, Bipolar, Privileged, Disturbed, etc. But that’s not the way I remember them. Back in those days, no one categorized, celebrated, or condemned them. You just watched and listened, and read their personal dissent in their eyes, their silences, their gestures. It’s a kind of existence that is largely gone now. The people who lived it either adapted or shifted gears, stabilized or imploded. Some became realtors or contractors. One of them, the one I loved the most, took off one night and wrapped his car around an oak tree.Five Easy Pieces was and is a great film because it gives us such a clear and unobstructed view of this particular type of American exis tence, brought into being at a certain interval in our history when the expectations of class and family carried more weight than they do now—“Auspicious beginnings—you know what I mean?” Film production is a cumbersome and lengthy affair, and the finished product, no matter how good, almost always lags behind or stands apart from its moment. Occasionally, though, when the conditions allow, movie and moment are one. Like Warner Bros. at the dawn of sound or Preston Sturges at his blindingly brilliant peak, Five Easy Pieces speaks with eloquence and simplicity from and to the America of its time, from melancholy opening to ineffably sad closing shot. In 1970, it was a revelation. Today, it remains a shattering experience, in part because it contains an entire way of life within its ninety-eight minutes."
Were they happy or sad, kind or mean? None of the above. They were discontented with the choices offered to them. They were acutely aware of their discontent, and they were trying to find a way to act on that awareness. Now, in 2010, when conformity comes in an endless array of shapes and sizes and styles, these people would be classified under “the sixties,” and then assigned one of the following subheadings: Selfish, Lost, Narcissistic, Alcoholic, Bipolar, Privileged, Disturbed, etc. But that’s not the way I remember them. Back in those days, no one categorized, celebrated, or condemned them. You just watched and listened, and read their personal dissent in their eyes, their silences, their gestures. It’s a kind of existence that is largely gone now. The people who lived it either adapted or shifted gears, stabilized or imploded. Some became realtors or contractors. One of them, the one I loved the most, took off one night and wrapped his car around an oak tree.Five Easy Pieces was and is a great film because it gives us such a clear and unobstructed view of this particular type of American exis tence, brought into being at a certain interval in our history when the expectations of class and family carried more weight than they do now—“Auspicious beginnings—you know what I mean?” Film production is a cumbersome and lengthy affair, and the finished product, no matter how good, almost always lags behind or stands apart from its moment. Occasionally, though, when the conditions allow, movie and moment are one. Like Warner Bros. at the dawn of sound or Preston Sturges at his blindingly brilliant peak, Five Easy Pieces speaks with eloquence and simplicity from and to the America of its time, from melancholy opening to ineffably sad closing shot. In 1970, it was a revelation. Today, it remains a shattering experience, in part because it contains an entire way of life within its ninety-eight minutes."---Nathan Ihara notes the culture of appropriation:
---Sean Young, Dune, and David Lynch
---"This Sporting Life, Billy Liar, and the British New Wave" by Movieman0283
---7 billion people on this earth
---Two in the Wave trailer
---It Came from Kuchar
---Gareth Edwards of Monsters
---Richtel's "Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction"
---lastly, the internet's cyber radicals
Comments
However, only a few of the links really concern detournement. Given the omnipresent corporate onslaught, I wish that people practiced subversive attacks on the received media more often. I like the way Adbusters keeps trying.