Notes and Conclusions about ARARAT

I had stepped out when Ash announced our specific task and was informed were are supposed to write a blog entry on the movie. With these vague instructions I asked myself "Why would Ryan want us to see this movie. He obviously thought it was related to the class." As a heading and guide to the notes I began to take I wrote "HOW DOES THIS FILM USE SEMIOTICS OR SYMBOLS?" The following is a series of notes (that parallels the timeline of the movie) I took and a explanatory blurb as to how they are relevant to our class' conversations.

NOTE -The old man (David) wears a uniform (official, inspector, questionnaire, regulator. He asks questions and let people talk).
EXPLANATION *His role is that of narrator, but in a way that he sets up the situation for the characters reveal themselves.

-During the mothers lecture at the museum there's a symbol in the back of the room that is spotlit. It is of a young man reaching upwards and has other characters knelt beside him.
*This could be an embedded symbol for Raffi as a man coming of age and becoming independant and trying to define himself independently of those near him.

- The scene of the director and assistant talking to the artist in his studio (now realize its the set and the artist might be the director of photography or someone with a vision of how the movie should be shot).
* This made me think that the film placed a parallel between an artist and social upheaval. They (artist and community) are two modes of resistance and change happening at the same time.

-The scene that Ari says you couldnt see Ararat from this point is when I realized that there were various media used to represent an idea or event in time, could even represent a feeling.
* Medias used by different characters
Gorky=paint
Director= film
Raffi=story (both talking to the camcorder during his trip and retelling his heritage in the airport)
Ari=history/research/"fact" (I have an additional point to add to this later see "%%" below)
Actors (Ussher and Bey) and Celia= they had their own personal ideologies to explain their own "histories"

-Scene where Raffi is held up in the airport w/ the film might be another way of describing a "story" the way of explaining through information combined with narrative.
*The words in the film clue you into the tactic of multiple way to process the events that happened in the past. "Story of Raffi and Celia" Raffi corrects his mother and says dont call it a story.

-There's a scene where a village woman is translating "Ussher's" words to the boys to go find help, but how well does this idea or concept the physician is trying to convey translate.
*Metaphor for how actual events get processed through many things including time, cultures, technologies, etc.

-The "behind the scenes" setting and shots acted as a backdrop telling the "truth."
*Pulls one in and out of what's real. Subversive.

%% IMPORTANT
-The scene in the bookstore where the young girl confronts her stepmother about her father's death addresses the issue of memory and encoding. The mother says "Even if I could remember it the way you wanted me to, I doubt I could"
*Even though she's a historian she relies upon the information others have left for her, leaving a wide amount of subjective slippage. What does it say about her conclusions about Gorky and others when she has trouble sorting out her own personal memories.

-In the interrogation room in the airport Raffi's video camera is pointed toward him yet is in vcr mode so it's playing the shots he got in Turkey.
* It's a mirrormirror on the wall in that a camera is meant to capture the likeness of a person, yet the image playing of Raffi is that of the place where he went for answers to his own identity. (dont know if I explained that correctly)

I have other thoughts but I am waaay past 100 words...In short this film was a multichannel/level attempt to show that:
a)there are several ways to describe histories
b)memory and retrieval of this information is based upon the way it was packaged (this is also VERY true in neurobiology)

Response to Miller's, Pictures for Rent

This article is an intersting view into the niche of stock photography as an example of how photographs can act as semantic currency. This is because what is contained in a picture is heirarchical, and these subtopics can be exploited when combined with other ideas/media of related content.

I found the artistic interpretations of artistic commentary of stock photography particularly interesting. Why "Post-human" (the piece with the 4 seperate men on the telephone next to a photo of a woman reclining on the telephone) works is because it plays to the inherent taxonomy of the social language within the photographs. The use of the "invisible/cordless" communication lines of the telephone connect all of the subjects (of which the 4 men are grouped yet seperate, and spatially equal to the woman). Once this connection is identified the roles of the figures are considered with the men being "executive" (mysoginistic) and all vieing for space (or attention) from the woman who is portrayed reclining in a bikini (suggesting her work-role affords her time to relax while others work).
All of the specificities contained in a photograph are somewhat fluid to a certain extent, with larger headings identifying formal qualities. Special interest groups can sift through stock photographs by identifying the formal qualities within the photo (man/woman, # of people, location, etc). However the details color the specific message within the particular event being "documented." And this type of photograph can play on traditional framing and composure to focus content.

The reference to Irving Goffman was interesting in that he deals with social roles and the masks we adopt in an attempt to include ourselves socially, at least from his book "Presentation of Self in Everyday Life." So I view this as relating to the gestures and objects having imbued with social connotations.