The Use Of POV In Media Today

In an attempt to archive some academic papers I've written over the past few years (relying on the hard drives of sometimes faulty PCs has left me tired and frustrated), I will be uploading some of my old work to this blog over the next few weeks. Here is one I wrote for a "Media and Critical Theory" class I took in the Spring of 2011.

      The cinema, in its most basic and purest form, is a medium for the eye of the curious spectator, a mass commodity created to provide an equal part collective and individualized experience for all that it encounters. Valued first and foremost as a visual art form, filmmaking is an aesthetically judged, immensely popularized field that may be considered the first art to be founded more in technology and mechanics than in human-to-human/environment interaction; live musical performances, with microphones coming in between the singer's voice and the listening audience's ears, could also be considered an electronically-dependent form of performance. It is therefore quite ironic that a process that relies so heavily on the advancements of modern day technology could strike so many people as being one of the most intensely personal forms of artistic expression. The filmic technique, relying on sprockets and bolts, can cut skin deep and into our subconscious. The externalized act of viewing film enables the spectator to internalize, relate, and live through it.

      Going to the cinema is in many ways a participatory act, and to act obtain something of value, one must first develop some form of a connection with the material. Intimacy is key to enjoyment. In his often quoted, much discussed essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”, German theorist Walter Benjamin writes in section sixteen, “the most import social function of film is to establish equilibrium between human beings and the apparatus. Film achieves this goal not only in terms of man's presentation of himself to the camera but also in terms of his representation of his environment by means of this apparatus. On the one hand, film furthers insight into the necessities governing our lives by its use of close-ups, by its accentuation of hidden details in familiar objects, and by its exploration of common place milieux through the ingenious guidance of the camera, on the other hand, it manages to assure us of a vast and unsuspected field of action” (37).

      There is another way in which an “equilibrium can be established between human beings and the apparatus,” and this involves the common practice of encompassing point of view (POV) shots to quite literally put the viewer into the world of the film, seeing the surroundings through a character's eyes. POV shots possess the distinct and exciting ability to heighten the immediacy of a motion picture. If we are viewing a film as a certain character, then we are placed inside the story in a way that would not have been possible if we were viewing a live stage production; in the theater, we are observers but never players. Thus, a direct link begins to develop between character and spectator, between the passive viewer and the alert and active (and alive) motion picture character. We identify – or are forced to identify – with the character because we are left with no other choice. The filmmaker makes us them, and so we reason with the character, however flawed, on the big silver screen because there is no other perspective to follow. There is perhaps no greater way of gaining an audience's attention then by placing them inside the camera's lens and looking outward. 

     Through POV practices, the spectator is aware of the director, looking through the viewfinder on his constantly persuasive apparatus. It could also be said that the spectator becomes not only the character in question but the off-screen filmmaker constantly directing the proceedings. A greater sense of power and responsibility is therefore thrust upon the attentive spectator, allowing him to become aware of the technique and movemaking process on a greater level; he sees through the director's eyes and thus sees through the character's.

      In literature, we will quite frequently notice an author using the main character of his piece to narrate the story in question. The author may do this in one of two ways: 1) the entire novel will be told via the first-person, “I” voice, or 2) the author will allow the reader to at times access a character's internal thoughts before reverting back to the third-person format. Each are effective and can be used for different, occasionally contrasting purposes. When using a third-person narrative, the author will most likely be telling the story as if he were a spectator himself, i.e. the tried man then walked upstairs and went to bed, although this artistic choice allows the author to occasionally enter the character's mind. The reader can access the character's inner thoughts, but the character is not aware that he is being exposed to the reader. The reader is spying on the story unfolding, and in this format the author grants them a momentary chance to play God, toggling reader's role between that of the spectator and that of the character himself. This narrative choice is used for the overall objective purpose of the story at hand.

      On the opposite end of the spectrum is the first-person narrative format, in which a character narrates the story from his point of view (using the “I” voice). This enables the narrator to give his opinions on the event he is describing and to slightly slant the events to his liking. This alerts the reader of what could be an unreliable narrator; it also makes him conscious of the fact that this is only one (of many) character's accounts of the so-called reality of the story. As the role of the storyteller is brought to the forefront, this narrative device is used as a subjective tool, one where are to question the validity of the information we are being told. In this situation, the literary use of individual perspective (or POV in the cinema) serves as a device incorporated to stimulate doubt and suspicion. 

      It is with this knowledge of basic literary narrative technique that we are better able to understand the role POV plays in the world of motion pictures. The two art forms (literature and filmmaking) are, at their storytelling core, very similar. The difference between the two evolves from their modes of operation. The POV in the cinema, being a visual concoction, makes the scenario much more dependent on real time – if we see a car coming straight at us from a character's POV, our time to react is nil. We experience the hit from the oncoming car just as the character does. POV in film takes a restricted narrative and makes it visceral. Our senses our heightened by the simple fact that, for the duration of the film, we are experiencing an alternate reality, but a reality just the same.

      In his influential book, Theory of Film, Siegfried Kracauer connects the role of the movie audience to that of a willing dreamer. This is where the aforementioned subconscious aspect of the cinema rears its head. As the cinema depicts a version of the world that the viewer is forced to accept, the viewer will then let the film in question become a part of his temporary reality. This will, needless to say, occasionally occur unnoticed and unwillingly. “Released from the control of consciousness,” Kracauer writes, “ the spectator cannot help feeling attracted by the phenomena in front of them. They beckon him to come nearer. They arouse, as Seve puts it, disquiet rather than certainty in the spectator and thus prompt him to embark on an inquiry into the being of the objects they record, an inquiry which does not aim at explaining them but tries to elucidate their secrets” (164, 165). Although the viewer may never be unaware of the fact that he is safe and sound, sitting in his seat watching a movie unscathed, he must be a willing participant in the projected images on the screen. His subconscious wants to play along, and so he allows it to, surrendering full reign over to the human-operated but never fully human apparatus. Does this make him a misunderstood daydreamer or a clinically insane empty vessel waiting for the cinema to live his life for him? Kracauer continues, “so he drifts towards and into the objects – much like the legendary Chinese painter who, longing for the peace of the landscape he had created, moved into it, walked toward the far away mountains suggested by his brush strokes, and disappeared in them never to be seen again” (165). In this given scenario, somewhat sad and yet peaceful and morose in its description, the spectator wants to escape his reality and trade off with someone, or something, else's. He is an empty, unhappy soul that unconsciously gives his life over to a substantial fictional reality. Luckily for him, film provokes the most alluring and stunningly visual (if he has run out of images in which to daydream about, the cinema is never-ending in its generosity) of realistic alternatives. Any film can technically “work” if the viewer/participant buys into it. 

 

      In a previous academic paper I wrote on John Carpenter's 1978 film, Halloween, “in J.P. Telotte's article on the film, Through a Pumpkin's Eye: The Reflexive Nature of Horror, the idea of perception is given acute observation. Telotte describes Henry David Thoreau's experience with a pond and its mirror image as being key in interpreting Halloween's distinct visual style. When we look down at a pond we see our own reflection staring back at us, much like a voyeur keenly observing his next unsuspecting victim. The only difference is that when Michael Myers stares down three high school girls, they are unaware of their exploited figures. 

      Carpenter allows us to view along side the killer (in one case, through his six year old eyes), enabling the viewer to participate in the proceedings, enabling us to feel like accomplices to the crime. While one could claim that following the killer throughout town would lessen the mysteriousness and secluded nature of the animal, Carpenter shows that, if anything, the overall impact is strengthened. We see what Michael sees (Telotte describes it as the visual relationship between man and his surroundings) and we are not relieved but rather much more horrified. 

      The film is told in three specific visual acts 1.) POV of Michael 2.) side by side with Michael 3.) Laurie's POV and quest for survival. They are each important in their own way. As the film starts out, we follow young Michael (via his POV) as he observes his sister, Judith, making out with her boyfriend. They go upstairs to make love but it is Michael who cannot comprehend what all of this means at such a young age. As an adult viewer, one can see the adolescent sexual behavior between Judith and her boyfriend as being simple and harmless, though Carpenter also uses Michael's POV to show intense confusion to the situation. As Loomis describes Michael as having the "the blackest eyes, the devil's eyes," we begin to realize that Michael's anger and psychopathic tendencies rise from Michael's lack of comprehension; he is unable to visually see, distinguish and separate people's intentions from their actions. It is his lack of reflection that deems him unfit and dangerous.”

      Thus, we are presented with a highly attractive and yet highly dangerous storytelling device. The use of POV tricks the spectator into believing his is control of the projected images he observes, but, being pre-recorded, nothing could be further from the truth. The moving image is in control of itself and determines what its audience sees, and not vice versa. And so, with this observation, POV shots can become dangerously untrustworthy in their authenticity. No where is this more apparent than in the genre of documentary filmmaking, a so-called entity that is proclaiming to document the truth, that is the unmistakable and inarguable reality the camera lens picks up placed in front of it. If fictional narrative filmmaking is a sexy dream, then documentaries are the rough but dignified factual life caught on film. They are believed to be unbiased testimonies of reality. 

      On documentaries, Kracauer explains, “they are supposed to be true to fact; and is not truth the best propaganda weapon? Whenever a documentary succeeds in swaying the minds, part of its success is due to the spectator's conviction that he is in the presence of irrefutable evidence...Assuming a film passed of as a neutral documentary does not include scenes staged for the purpose in mind but confines itself, as it should, to rendering reality pure and simple – there is, however, no way for the spectator to make sure whether he is getting his money's worth – yet it may feature certain aspects of a given object at the expense of others and thus influence our approach to it. The actual shots are of necessity a selection from among possible shots” (161). 

      It has become common to hear about new documentaries that recently opened in theaters that either get the facts completely wrong or only tell one side of the argument. This is, for obvious reasons, quite often the case when discussing political documentaries. There are those who will agree with message of a political doc (if not because they were convinced by the film then because their previous beliefs were simply reconfirmed by it) and those that will call it manipulative and untrustworthy propaganda, omitting facts and making up new ones in order to push their agenda forward. In other words, some docs can be seen as nothing more than political recruitment videos, and their filmmakers are labeled as petty leftists or right-winged campaign messengers. It is with this genre of filmmaking then that the inclusion of POV takes on a whole new level of power. Propaganda in the cinema is nothing new, and yet its ability to persuade others via the moving image remains an extremely valuable and noteworthy adversary.

      Is it possible while watching a political piece of filmmaking to disagree entirely with what the filmmakers are saying? Our initial reaction is to say “of course”, that we as individuals are strong minded and resistant towards pushy, obvious politic diatribe. Our minds are well-guarded and our beliefs are our beliefs for a reason. In this line of thinking, we are the discrediting the power of not only political filmmaking but of the cinema as a whole. As moviegoers, we give up many of preconceived notions in order to, for two hours or so, accept new ones, and we do not only with our minds but with our entire bodies. Kracauer writes, “the moviegoer is much in the position of a hypnotized person. Spellbound by the luminous rectangle before eyes – which resembles the glittering object in the hand of a hypnotist – he cannot help succumbing to the suggestions that invade the blank of his mind. Film is a n incomparable instrument of propaganda. Hence Lenin's dictum: 'The cinema is for us the most important instrument of all the arts'” (160).

      Documentaries, being very often based around a particular point of view, regularly adopt the POV shooting style, although its ways of being identified are somewhat unique compared to when it is employed in fictional narrative filmmaking. For starters, many documentaries are presented entirely through stock footage, whether it be of clips from the news, wild life, sporting events, etc. A narrator, typically the film's director, speaks over the clips to create a story that will intrigue and provoke the viewer. Here, POV shot takes its form over the entire film. We become the surveyor of the provided stock footage and, given the political nature of the piece, become enraged and disgusted; although films can often make us sad, how often can they make us feel physically weak? The authenticity of the piece does not matter as much as much as its hold on our attention, however misguided we keep trying to remind ourselves it probably is. “For an idea to be sold it must captivate not only the intellect but the senses as well,” Kracauer notes. “Any idea carries a host of implications, and many of them – especially the latent ones, relatively remote from the idea itself – are likely to provoke reactions in deep psychological layers compromising behavior habits, psychosomatic preferences, and what not. The prospective believer may reject an idea intellectually and yet accept it emotionally under the pressure of unconscious drives.....or the reverse may happen: he repudiates an ideas because his emotional resistance to it proves stronger than the attraction it exerts on his intellect” (160). 

      When influencing the mind and body through visual stimulation, political propaganda can be hard to tune out. If a filmmaker hired by a political party is asked to get across a candidate's talking points in a thirty second television commercial, he must find a quick, impactful way to hit the viewer hard. One recent example of this entered the spotlight when Republication politician Sharron Angle ran for Senator of Nevada against her Democrat counterpart, Harry Reid. Angle approved a commercial which highlighted Reid being against Arizona's immigration laws, saying that Reid was in favor of illegal immigrants sneaking across our borders and taking jobs away from the increasingly high number of unemployed Nevada residents (Angle also shared with us that Reid wanted to given illegal aliens special tax breaks). Whether or not the viewer believed Angle's claims hardly mattered. The brief commercial was designed as both a smear tactic and a horrifying representation of the unknown “other”, the faceless, dangerous immigrants coming to harm us. When the commercial spoke about the immigrants, the viewer was shown black and white shadowy footage of intimidating men staying low to the ground, sneaking behind a caged fence, on the lookout for any border patrol forces. Their faces were hard to see and their physical movements were slowed down considerably. “Variations of camera angles are of similar consequence,” proclaims Kracauer. “In their screen apotheosis of the Russian Revolution, Eisenstein and Pudovkin availed themselves of unusual angles to magnify the class struggle and enforce audience participation with the workers” (162). 

      From the camera's perspective eye, these scary immigrants were coming towards us to attack and, well, take our good paying jobs with them. Juxtaposing this footage were scenes of distressed (but hard working) Caucasian families, innocent, concerned, and non-threatening. They were also being shown in color, an important note when one considers the fact that the only Caucasian to be shown in black and white was “illegal immigrant lover” Harry Reid. As the commercial comes to a conclusion, the distraught narrator proclaims Harry Reid “the best friend an illegal alien could ever had,” before cutting to newly bright, sunshine-filled footage of Sharron Angle peacefully walking down a suburban block with her presumable husband. She is a person who favors old American values and tradition, and this warped thirty second propaganda piece shows it. We see the world through Angle's POV and are frightened by the world she envisions. The ad is not just anti-illegal immigrant, it's anti-immigrant. Only one racial color (white) is depicted as wholesome and good, and the rest are simply trying to destroy us. This advertisement provided Angle with quite a bit of backlash from pundits and polemicists, and it has been credited with being of the main reasons she was not successful in last year's election.

      POV techniques are becoming popularized in other significant ways today, one which involves electronic video games and their frequent reliance on “first-person shooters.” These games encompass a character's POV to provide a player with total immersion in the virtual reality, and the intensity of each game is vamped up accordingly. Does this device not also increase the violent behavior in the real lives of the players that revolve around it? The psychological results are still pending, but one thing is for sure: first-person shooters enable video gamers to become a part of the world in which they are merely spectators with a joystick. They are given interactive power and virtual control.

      Through the use of POV, filmmakers are able to bring the spectator closer to the medium itself. We are able to see life through the eyes of another, through the eyes of a man-made machine, and are given an alternate vision to the reality both foreign in its detail and and frequently common enough to relate to in its various depictions of physical life. As Benjamin describes the apparatus' value, “our bars and city streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories seemed to close relentlessly around us. Then came film and exploded this prison-world with the dynamite of the split second, so that now we can set off calmly on journeys of adventure among its far-flung debris. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended....This is where the camera comes into play, with all its resources for swooping and rising, disrupting and isolating, stretching or compressing a sequence, enlarging or reducing an object. It is through the camera that we first discover the optical unconscious, just as we discover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis” (37). Cinema itself is the point of view of the camera, and the inclusion of a spectator living through it is all but expected. Today's media landscape uses it to their advantage to increasingly spread their point of views and beliefs to the masses, hoping to slightly alter and shape the national subconscious. If successful, the people can be sold and lead to believe anything. Both a fascinating artistic device and a political hindrance, the eye of the camera is reality altered and adjusted.