Sex Sells

Below are my notes on the 'male gaze' Lecture which was about men looking at women in an 'alluring' way. The Lecture seemed to me to make men seem very seedy and pathetic but people will look if you dress in a way which makes them want to. Early examples like the birth of venus the goddess of sex/love she poses covering her body mostly, but leaving some uncovered. This is still the same today with victoria secrets catalogues and adverts with many scantily clad women. This is done (nowadays) because Sex sells every time and is a easy way to sell products and or services. 

I think this can very much relate to my field in games and film. We see women in games nowadays with massive breasts and nothing on and this is because a lot of the gamers out there are blokes and making the protagonist (such as lara croft) really attractive will make them like the game more than if she want. Sadly though i don't believe Lara Croft was made for a female audiences. I think she was made this way becasuse sex sells, everytime. 

 

Look at her great big personality 

In films as well producers and directors take advantage of using attractive women to portray the roles required. Theres nothing wrong with that everyone loves seeing hot people in films and these days beauty is more of a born-with talent which you grow into. Perfect example of this is using Angelina Jolie for Lara croft, she's stunning, so thats half the reason she got the job, she's a very talented actor as well but if she wasn't as hot as she is, theres no way she would have been in the film 

John Berger

According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means overcome. Men act women appear men look at women. Women watchthemselves being looked at 

Hans memling vanity, 1485

Alexander cabanel birth of Venus , 1863

Sophie Dahl, opium. 

Titians, Venus of Urbino 1538

Manet, Olympia 1863

Manet, bar at the folies bergeres 1882

Mirror is a metaphor for the false social perception or Parisian life at the time. 

Jeff wall. Picture for women 1979 

 Coward, R 1984

The camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the street.

Coward R, the profusion of images which characterises contemporary society could be seen as an obsessive distancing of women

Cinemas the perfect voyeurist environment, you can look and no one sees you looking 

Men usually drive the story, Lara croft an exception, but still sexually objectified. 

Artemisia gentileschi

Judith beheading Holofernes 1620

Women marginalised within the masculine discourses of history

Cindy Sherman, untitled film still #6

1977-79

Barbara Kruger 

Your gaze hits the side of my face 1981

Sarah Lucas. Eating a banana 

Sarah Lucas fried eggs

Tracey emin money photo 2001

Reality television is the peak of voyeurism, people being watched (big brother) are aware and play the fool, so to speak so the audience will like them.

looking is not indifferent there can never be any question of just looking 

Mood Board

I made a mood board concerning the ideas for the cinematic were doing. Just some basic ideas based around an idea of a mouse and a cat.

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis 

These are the notes I took in the psychoanalysis lecture. They are mostly ramblings of a madman trying to type down as fast as I can but even though there isnt a direct link but there are certainly aspects of games themes/motifs which appear to be influenced by some of the ideas suggested in the lecture.

The development of the psyche from birth 

The development and the role of the unconscious in our everyday lives

The development of gender identity 

Understanding the complexities of human subjectivity 

Not only a form of therapy (the talking cure) a theory of the mind and a model based theory that can be applied to other objects and processes.

A way of categorising and understanding desire, motivation and dreams

That we at not entirely controlled by logical and reasonable thought, our unconscious can affect out lives as well

Freud1890s. Treated hysteria patients using psychoanalysis by guiding them to discover and accept repressed thoughts and events

Dreams: Analysed his own and others dreams in terms of their hidden associations and wish fulfilment 

Observed infants in the first few years of their life and association with parental figures, 

dynamic unconscious 

Created through infancy to protect our conscious selves from events ideas and thoughts that are not acceptable to consciousness 

Continues to affect out conscious in some ways

The unconscious is chaotic without order or language 

Makes itself present through things like Freudian slips 

Freuds hysteria patients developed debilitating symptoms as a result of experiences or feelings that had become repressed, 

Our development into wilful conscious brings is full of confusing contradictory and misapprehended thoughts and ideas 

An attempt to make sense of both out biological/instinctual self and out logical thinking self.

We creat associations and assumptions through sense data often incorrectly 

The child must experience and overcome these mixed feelings and misconceptions in order to gain sexual identity.

The uncanny. 

Unhomely

Something that is natural and yet familiar 

Something that was supposed to remain hidden which as come to the open 

Where the boundary between fantasy and reality break down 

Analogies between the unconscious and the uncanny 

Id,unconscious,preconcious

Id - pleasure principle 

ego - reality principal 

superego - understanding other people 

Jacques Lacan

Had his own brand of psychoanalysis 

Lacan proposed that the development of the psyche is entwined within the structures of language, we affect language like it affects us,

The mirror stage 

The child's recognition of itself in reflection (in objects or other people) signifies a split or alienation. The identification of yourself outside itself 

Rivalry while the child may recognise its own image it is still limited in movement and dexterity 

This resulting in the formation of the ego which aids and continues to aid a reconciliation of body and image.

Captation the process by which the child is at once absorbed and repelled by the image of itself.

Lacanuan unconcuoua 

The unconcious is structured like a language 

That's not to say that the unconcious has a language is still a chaotic place 

The unconcious is the discourse of the other 

Highlighting the ways in which meaning in encoded within linguistic signs written or spoken words

Unconscious details are encoded in various ways as they Slip into consciousness 

Metaphor/metonymy

Desire metonymy a part of something used to represent the whole or the whole used to represent a small part.

Lacanian Phallus 

Not the biological penis but a symbol of power/order attainted through its associated LACK the potential of lack (male) actual lack (female)

Masculinity/femininity are not biological definitions but symbolic positions 

Our interactions/relations to the symbolic phallus provides a speaking position in culture within the symbolic order 

The orders of reality 

The real 

That which cannot be symbolised/signified

Where our most basic animal selves exist

The imaginary 

The order which exists before symbols and signification 

Where the ego is born and develops 

No clear distinctions between self and others 

The symbolic 

The order of the other 

Exists outside ourselves,

Psychoanalysis

Subjectivity what it is to be human, motivations desire and the unconcious 

To help us understand why things are the way they are 

To understand artists motivations for creating 

Model based paradigm models provide a tool for categorising or breaking down individual groups of art.

Edward bernays - the godfather of PR and Freuds nephew 

Applied knowledge of psychoanalysis unconscious desire to advertising and PR campaigns

Revolutionised advertising by applying manipulation techniques



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I did Psychology for As level and found it really interesting so this lecture appealed to me in more than one way. The idea that these ideas could be incorporated into games and films makes it even more so. There are lots of games which use the 'Uncanny' term talked about in the lecture. Something familiar but is still different. This can be used to trick the mind in a sense to be off guard because what they see is familiar and not inherently scary. But adding sounds *cackling* *creaking doors* and you turn a nice environment into a nightmare.
         Changing colours and shapes is also effective and this is all without the help of an axe wielding maniac or a ten foot tall monster. Games and films which involve more psychological horror are much scarier than ones which don't. They get inside your head and force you to imagine the worst possible outcome. On the other hand films with monsters etc. are still scary (if done well) but only to a certain extent. The monsters are clearly not real hence it being a monster, so if something can't exist its much less frightening than films which propose a very feasible terrifying situation you might find yourself in.

Freaky people

Right now I'm not saying Bioshock is a feasible idea but the design of the main enemy 'The Splicers' Is very clever because the way they speak, the language they use as well as their accent how they dress and even move, all combine into making a terrifying adversary. They speak like they did (stereotypically) in the 60s which is familiar as we've all seen films. The difference is that they're shouting at you, often when you aren't expecting it and they also charge at you trying to cave your skull in.

Unity Character Demo.

Today we were given a refresher on Unity to review the stuff we had learnt last year as well as some new additions.

The image below is playing with light and the position of it. This also includes the intensity of the light as well as colour and strength of the shadows.

Experimenting with the colour of the light(s) showing the use of grayscale and experimenting with different shots for the film

Distortion and fish eye filters.

This bottom image showed us how to project our camera's view onto another plane and play it like a movie on the screen. I thought this technique would be very useful for the surveillance brief title. This session was really helpful as it proved i can pick these skills right back up after not practicing regularly for a while.

Summer

Over the summer I started a new blog where I reviewed and analysed various films that had caught my interest over the summer. Even though this isn't game related the skills of critically analysing these films  can be transferred over to doing the same with any games I come across. As well as this I'm trying to get some experience at a The Uk Film school. My brother recently did some work experience there and said it gave him some valuable insights into the industry

Over the summer I've been keeping an eye on few games that have interested me. Dishonoured.
I don't know much about this game but the trailer suggests its set in a weird steampunk world and reminds me of a cross between Assassins Creed/Bioshock in terms of gameplay and general layout.

Even though the phrase 'be who you want to be' is a little old nowadays in games this seems to fulfil a certain part of that by offering many different avenues in which to complete missions. Such as turning into a rat and crawling through the sewer systems to approach your target. Or jumping over rooftops silently immobilising guards etc. The approaches to each level and objective appear to be vary varied so players will miss secret passages or weapons or vantage points, in one play through, but another might find you going all guns blazing to deal with the situation


Ive also been looking forward to BioShock Infinite the 3rd in a series which has impressed through both of the previous games. The weird world of Rapture (in the first two) made the games terrifying as well as exciting to play and the 3rd instalment doesn't look to change that. The new game is set in the flying city of Columbia which, just like rapture, is disintegrating due to a civil war.

The great thing about the BioShock series is excellent for throwing all reasonable thought out of the window and replacing normal people with an entourage of nutters known as splicers. These will be familiar to players of the previous two games as they are the cause of most scares which occur in the game. Bioshocks weapons are also really well designed and in keeping with the steampunk genre which makes a nice refereshing change from the standard weapons you find on Call of Duty.