The Fascination of Images: How Do Images Teach Us to Desire
The fascination of images: How do images teach us to desire
The culture in which we live teaches us to, and what to desire. It does so through the works of psychoanalysis, interpreting the unconscious, free associations, fantasies and dreams. Interpreting these in a way in which to make the viewer the resolute to the images. The basic human needs are different to that of what we desire, we need food, water, shelter, yet we do not desire these things in a way in which we desire love and sex. It is the culture in which we live that teaches us what it is that we should desire through our relationships with cinema, television and images. Had we never seen the body types, wealth and material possessions that we view on a daily basis through the use of imagery would we still desire them? Or would we be content unknowing at the possibilities of what we could be or have. The body types of women on television, with their perfect bodies and lives, these women while rarely seen in the real world are the women that men desire and women desire to be. Cinema and television gives us a world that both conforms to our desires and establishes them, it is within these images projected at us on a daily basis that teaches us what it is that we should desire. In the works of Jean-Luc Godard a French film director, he often cites existentialism, the guiding principles behind Godard’s works was that, “realism is the essence of cinema” and that this could be achieved through various aesthetic and contextual media. Within his works he uses long shots to avoid unnecessary editing, yet in contradiction to this he uses jump cuts within certain scenes. Within his 1963 film ‘Le Mepris’ (Contempt) the two main actors are Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccol, Yet Bardot is the one who is used to the greatest effect even when there is equal dialogue between the two characters it is her that the camera lingers longingly at which in turn forces the viewer to look longingly at her. Beneath the
The culture in which we live teaches us to, and what to desire. It does so through the works of psychoanalysis, interpreting the unconscious, free associations, fantasies and dreams. Interpreting these in a way in which to make the viewer the resolute to the images. The basic human needs are different to that of what we desire, we need food, water, shelter, yet we do not desire these things in a way in which we desire love and sex. It is the culture in which we live that teaches us what it is that we should desire through our relationships with cinema, television and images. Had we never seen the body types, wealth and material possessions that we view on a daily basis through the use of imagery would we still desire them? Or would we be content unknowing at the possibilities of what we could be or have. The body types of women on television, with their perfect bodies and lives, these women while rarely seen in the real world are the women that men desire and women desire to be. Cinema and television gives us a world that both conforms to our desires and establishes them, it is within these images projected at us on a daily basis that teaches us what it is that we should desire. In the works of Jean-Luc Godard a French film director, he often cites existentialism, the guiding principles behind Godard’s works was that, “realism is the essence of cinema” and that this could be achieved through various aesthetic and contextual media. Within his works he uses long shots to avoid unnecessary editing, yet in contradiction to this he uses jump cuts within certain scenes. Within his 1963 film ‘Le Mepris’ (Contempt) the two main actors are Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccol, Yet Bardot is the one who is used to the greatest effect even when there is equal dialogue between the two characters it is her that the camera lingers longingly at which in turn forces the viewer to look longingly at her. Beneath the
Bibliography: Hughes, Robert. The shock of the new: art and the century of change. U.K, Thames and Hudson, 1991. Richard, Leppert. Art and the committed eye: cultural functions of imagery. West view, 1996. Sterritt, David. The films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the invisible. New York, Cambridge university press, 1999. Goffen, Rona. Titan’s Venus of Urinbino. New York, N.p, 1997. www.Lancan.com www.jean-lucGodard.com