My experience of the social media platform Instagram over the last 2.5 years has not been filled with unequivocal joy. I understand that I should get with the times a little bit - "no-one reads long-form criticism anymore" "people communcate mostly with images and experience now", and so on, but I admit I was resistant for a long time. To me, there's nothing like - and will never be anything like - sitting down to read a piece of long-form criticism from someone who really cares about the subject enough to give it their full attention and reflection. Also, there's something self-aggrandising about the platform (and social media genreally) that doesn't fit with the intention of criticism: part of the act of criticism is staying invisible and putting the focus on the artist and their work, which doesn't sit well in the age of personal hyper-branding.
So in launching an Instagram page this week, my intentions are very much to fit my own sqaure peg into that round hole, without, I guess, over-reacting to the age of the influencer. My plan with it is to offer that most difficult of things, "access", as people have very legitimate reasons why they might sideline their critical reading: time and money pressures, lack of attention due to other demands, and simple discomfort at sitting down for an hour with ideas they fear they will not understand. I hope to be able to offer more byte-sized parts of discourse for those without the luxury to spend hours reading and dissecting a text (although in my opinion, it's time well-spent).
In conceiving this trio of lectures, I have been greatly influenced by my colleagues at Cultural Workers Studio - both their support, which motivates me - and the specific nature of their plight. While the 2022 Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine gets a lot of press, it can be a little lacking in other types of attention. There have been a few dedicated events and support for an exchange of ideas around those events in 2022, but I observe a lack of reflection on a cultural level on what I view as a seismic shift in philosophy represented by the last few years. Far from being given adequate attention, these matters seem to have been put into a category where they are viewed as uncomfortable or too difficult.
While I do set out to push this in a particular direction, some of it is necessarily going to be just provocation from the outside. One key area which seems lacking to me is basic feminist solidarity. Sitting against a lack of recognition of the struggle for Ukrainian self-determination as a women's one - or at least with some specific challenge to women - is a basic ignorance of people that has been alarming to witness. When a military invasion happens in urban areas, there is normally an exponential rise in suffereing, but the suffering is not always balanced. Especially in the early days of the invasion, where there were not even opportunities to evacuate people due to the military strategy of seizing as much territory as possible, the suffering seems to have been massively one-sided. As with almost all military event, the army has a male image, on both sides, putting non-men in a position of accepting both protection and aggression from men. Worship and idolisation sit uncomfortably next to hatred and fear - their common thread being dependence, and their common antidote being powerful realtionships between women that acknowledge this shared expeirence.
Although in my view I am not able to speak from a feminist position, I choose to offer a few guiding lines for the absent conversation here. To do this, I'm reliant on a lot of my early education in the Cinema Studies Department of the University of Melbourne, where especially Sage Walton, Dr. Wendy Haslem, and Adjunct Professor Angela Ndalianis greatly influenced me with both their insights into the patriarchal apparatus of cinema and their blatent and completely contradictory enthusiasm for the form of the screen. So through the mechanism of Hollywood Film History, I want to introduce discussions that may aid in the coming years - as our image culture has not contracted but expanded exponentially in the age of the influencer, with many viewing conventions established in the early days of cinema (and greatly influenced by military conflicts such as World War 2 and Vietnam) return to haunt us. These historical examples make mockery of the seemingly tacit idea that things will retun to normal, a conception which goes to show that the repercussions of war - both personally and on culture - have been forgotten, not to mention the atrocious philosophical about-face that marked the opening of that specific invasion.
In the meantime, opportunities are being observably lost. So stepping into the centre over the next weeks will be more an act of urgency than anything else - where I attempt to frame at least a basic supporting structure by which a loss of autonomy, agency, an independence can be seen - one that is specific to women's experience. There are some risks in doing this, and its success or failure will depend on my capacity to stay within a very specific area, offering resources and proposals that are hopefully generous, and that may aid to guide in creating meaningful exchanges between East and West. There is a lot to learn, and a lot of ground to cover.
Week 1 on Sunday looked at one of my pet topics, the Slasher sub-genre of Horror Film, and specifically the creation of the "Final Girl" by Carol Clover in the 1980s. The Final Girl is a hugely influential contemporary figure both aestetically and in the logic of the camera, yet Clover's initial doubt that she represents any significant advencement in terms of agency remains.
Week 2 will examine the "Weepie" sub-genre of the 1950s and other forms of "body cinema" including pornography - a historically exploitative genre both in its use of the camera and its production conditions. In this context, we will examine modes of viewing in relation to Laura Mulvey's conception of the cinematic apparatus and Linda Williams development of post-pornography.
Week 3 will look at subjects closer to my own identity. Online Misogynists have exploded in popularity in recent years, stemming from the 2005 book The Game by Neil Strauss. I will briefly look at their historical development and various mechanisms for manipulation and control, before moving on to my own concept of Superhumanism - a way to reintroduce humanism through a mode of collective viewing.
Should be a lot of fun - stay tuned through my brand new Instagram account here, or follow the livestreams only over at Youtube.
Note: Current publication is done with the understanding that colleagues and communities from Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kyiv, Lutsk, and Lviv among others in Ukraine are currently under attack in an attempt to erase Ukrainian culture and identity. No artist should be forced to rehearse how to pick up the gun.
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