Wings of Desire

So for our latest History and Context of Journalism module, we were shown the German film 'Wings of Desire', an existentialist film based around passion, desire and achievement. The basic premise of the film is based around two angels, non-corporeal beings who watch over Berlin in the late 1980's. Both are disenfranchised with their existence and long to be human.

The main character, Damiel, is the one who yearns for humanity the most. After meeting a young trapeze artist named Marion (played by the late Solveig Dommartin, who looks eerily like Cate Blanchett), Damiel becomes infatuated with her. It's his desire for humanity and for her that results in him becoming human.

These themes of passion and desire are key elements to existentialism. Existentialists believe that to get something, you only needs to desire it enough. This is apparent in Wings of Desire, where Damiel's desires come true. True romantic love is also a key theme of both existentialism and of the film, with Marion and Damiel truly in love, even though they don't really know each other.

It's a good film and well worth a watch, even though it may be a bit confusing and long winded. Definitely worth seeing if you want to find out more about existentialism.

WINOL Week Four!

I love it when a plan comes together. This weeks edition of WINOL was by far the best we've done. This was easily due to the amount of practice that we got before we actually recorded it. The headlines were done early, packages were in on time and the timings were accurate. Success!

Despite our obvious brilliance there are still things that we can tighten up on. We still need to remember what the story's about and not lose focus. Our stories are still pretty waffle-y at times. If we can maintain the high production values that we had this week with a concise method of storytelling then I see no reason why we can't rival the local publications. 

On a personal level, sport was again good. We need to focus on women's sports apparently, which should be interesting to say the least, but we've really got our stuff nailed down. There's a few minor production issues we can improve on, such as maybe ball watching a bit too much, but content wise we're spot on.

Next week we've really got to ensure that we don't drop the ball. The last time that we did a great bulletin we cocked up the following week. The fact that the BJTC are in next week means that we have to do an even better bulletin than this week. 

"Hell is other people" and listening to Radiohead live.

So in the latest installment of our History and Context of Journalism, we learnt all about those cheerful folks called existentialists. As far as I can tell, I tend to agree with them on a fair few things such as personal freedoms (apart from the whole "it's okay to murder folk" bit) and their hatred of Nazi's. That being said, I wouldn't want to go to the pub with one of them. They seem right miserable buggers.

Their key belief it seems is to ask why do people do anything. Why do I go to the shops? Why do I eat bread? Why does Rafa Benitez insist on zonal marking? They also have a like, maybe even a dislike, of morality. To an existentialist, that would be herd behaviour, something which they can't abide.

Conformity is something of a cardinal sin to existentialists. For them, there is doing things in good faith and in bad faith. Conformity breeds bad faith. This is their main gripe with fascists, particularly Nazi's. Everything they did was in bad faith as they were compulsive liars. Similarly, the people of Nazi Germany engaged in massive levels of conformity, ignoring the atrocities of their government.

People that existentialists do like is people with passion. It doesn't matter about what your passion is, just so long as you have it. You could be an artist, a football fan, a teacher, anything. I'm quite fond of this belief. The ability to have passion and care about things is important in life and without it, everything becomes a bit boring.

Existentialism isn't perfect, but it makes enough sense and has some good ideas. It may not be for everyone, but it works.

1885: A Nietzsche Odyssey

Today we ended up watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film with strong links to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. 2001 is probably one of my favourite films of all time and certainly my favourite Kubrick film (which is high praise coming from someone who adores his work).

In 2001, the piece of music Also Sprach Zarathustra (or Thus Spoke Zarathustra in English) is a key musical motif of the film. The music is heavily influenced and even named after Nietzsche's book chronicling his own ideas on life, evolution and the Ubermensch, as well as other philosophical beliefs that Nietzsche held.

Many of these philosophical ideals can be seen in 2001, most notably Nietzsche's ideas on the evolution of man. 2001 starts with a 20 minute long section detailing the life of pre-historic apes, ones that will eventually become mankind. They're primitive herbivores, living side by side with other herbivores and like them are prey for creatures such as leopards. This all changes after the arrival of the Monolith.

The Monolith is curiously both Nietzschean and Kantian. In Nietzschean terms, it is an example of “will to power”. The Monolith seemingly imposes its will on the apes. It stirs in them ambition, achievement and the desire to succeed. This is probably best shown in the film after the Monolith leaves. The apes it visits, who earlier in the film had been driven from a near-by watering hole, go back to attack and kill the leader of the rival group of apes. These apes also begin to use tools in order to kill animals for food, giving them protein and accelerating the evolution of their minds. The Kantian influence can be seen through the Monolith as being above the apes’ perception, being what Kant would call a “transcendent object”. It is able to observe and understand the apes, but they (and humanity later on in the film) are unable to do the same.

The Dawn of Man sequence is the section I disagreed with Horrie on. In the lecture and on his video blog about the film, he said that he believed that the Dawn of Man section takes place over millions of years. To me, it’s apparent in the film and in the novel that the Dawn of Man takes place over a very short period of time, with the Monolith acting as a catalyst. This is most evident in two instances. Firstly, the moment where Moonwatcher examines the bones has a quick flash to the alignment of the Earth, Moon and Sun that occurred when they saw the Monolith. Secondly, the fight between the two tribes of apes quite clearly takes place over a short period of time. In the first, Moonwatcher’s tribe is clearly outmatched and forced away. After the encounter with the Monolith and their discovery of weapons, they return and force out the other tribe with ease.

Following the fight between the two tribes of apes, there’s one of the most famous transitions in cinema: the bone being thrown into the air and turning into a spaceship. This begins the section of the story dealing with man, the stage of existence that Nietzsche believed we needed to “overcome”. This transition shows how humanity has advanced technologically, going from being apes crawling in the dirt to men exploring the cosmos.

Another Monolith is discovered on the surface of the Moon. The scene where humans come in contact with the Lunar Monolith is very reminiscent of the scene where the apes encounter their Monolith. The encounter is based around the senses, with the Monolith being observed and touched, much in the same way the apes treat it. To me this indicates that man hasn’t evolved much in the millions of years since first clubbing other animals round the head. While undoubtedly more advanced, they’re still fundamentally primitive. It isn’t until Dave Bowman’s encounter with the Monolith in orbit around Jupiter that humanity makes its first steps to becoming what Nietzsche would call “Supermen”.

The mission to Jupiter that makes up most of the film is an exploration of humanity. Humanity in this stage is very Apollonian. Mankind is rational, logical and scientific. The apes on the other hand were entirely Dionysian. HAL is the embodiment of this Apollonianism as he is a machine. However, he is perhaps more also more human than the actual humans onboard Discovery One. For example, HAL pleads with Dave Bowman to stop removing its memory, appealing on grounds of compassion, logic and eventually fear. The fact that HAL expresses these very human emotions shows that it would remain permanently flawed in the eyes of Nietzsche. As a machine, it is incapable of evolution. By being made by man, it will remain forever flawed. Man is able evolve to a higher level, which is what happens to Bowman at the films climax. This is a stark contrast to HAL who de-evolves to a simple, child like state due to Bowman deactivating him.

Following the arrival of the Discovery One in orbit around Jupiter, Bowman encounters the much larger Monolith. This takes him through the surreal “Star Gate”, leaving him in what appears to be a room decorated in the Classical style. As the scene progresses, he sees himself getting older and older, before eventually appearing on his deathbed as The Last Man. This is when the Monolith appears to Bowman, transforming him into the Star Child. This transformation into the Star Child is Nietzsche’s idea of the Ubermensch. It’s highly evolved (despite appearing as a baby). It’s able to breathe in space and is indicated to be a balance between Apollonian and Dionysian modes of being.

One thing I’ve learned from all this is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a mightily deep film. Its complexities are probably impossible to dissect as it has so many different interpretations. After all, it was designed by Kubrick to be deliberately ambiguous! Some may say it’s one of those films where you should sit back and enjoy the spectacle, but that would be doing it a disservice. Watch it, analyse it and come to your own conclusions.

WINOL Week Two!

Well this was an improvement over last week, albeit by the skin of our teeth! I really thought this was going to be another disaster week but I was thoroughly impressed by the professionalism that everyone showed. We went through the bulletin with little to no rehearsal, the technology being a bit shitty and people not being quite sure how it worked or what they were supposed to be doing and still managed to get a decent bulletin out on time!

I like to think how we would've reacted in our first year if we'd been given responsibility like this. I think it shows how far we've come in so short a time because we'd have panicked like there was no tomorrow!

The stories this week I felt were stronger as well. We had a good exclusive with the man from the Orange Wednesday adverts revealing that they wouldn't be running them. Our stories were generally stronger overall and there didn't seem to be a weak area at all.

I was personally a bit disappointed with our sport coverage this week. We had a major problem with the football match that we'd put all our work into actually being cancelled. This left us with very little content for the bulletin besides the non-league round up and the (now very short) report on the cancelled game. However, getting the news story about the collapsed player at the Totton vs Gosport game was something I'm rather pleased with.

Hopefully next week we'll be more confident, know how to use the equipment more and have settled fully into our roles. One thing's for sure, I'm not working the sound desk in the studio!!

FAO: Journalism Students

Yes it's a piss take of creating news packages, but if it's good enough for mainstream news then it's good enough for WINOL!

God Is Dead. Funeral's at 12:30...

So today we studied the mad, bad and dangerous to know Friederich Nietzsche. Nietzsche is someone who you probably wouldn't want to have a drink with. He strikes me as someone who'd be perennially miserable no matter what you did (unless it was take part in an orgy in the basement of Cinderella's Castle).

Nietzsche seems to, rather unfairly, have this reputation as a completely insane Nazi. While, in fairness, he did eventually go bonkers (most likely due to syphilis), his beliefs themselves weren't all that mad. He was also no Nazi. He had his beliefs twisted and bastardised by the Nazi's, but Nietzsche was opposed to anti-semitism, nationalism and racism, which was pretty much everything the Nazi party stood for.

Nietzsche had some good ideas in his syphilis addled brain.I don't entirely disgaree with his views on morality, for example. For Nietzsche, morality was created by mankind and there was no such thing as moral absolutes. Everything was relative to everything else. If someone grew up in a society where it was okay to beat women then they wouldn't see it as wrong, even though we'd find it abhorrent.

I also concur with his attitudes towards religion. By breaking with the idea of a God, one loses the right to an exclusively set range of Christian morals. This is a stark contrast to the philosophical beliefs of Immanel Kant, someone whose beliefs were based very heavily in the Christian mindset.

This being said, I do disagree with Nietzsche's opinions on equality. Personally I feel that people are born equal. Yes people are elevated to positions of power, but that's just their title. As people, they're no different on a fundamental level to anyone else. Additionally, I don't agree with his dislike of democracy. Yes, if the world were left in charge of wise, infallible people who always made the right decision for everyone that'd be super. However, people make mistakes no matter how enlightened they are. To place the power of society in the hands of a few individuals is the road to corruption.