Well here we go...nowhere. The road is continuous and we drive sometimes following, sometimes parallel, sometimes leading the camera or the viewer. The camera repositions the viewer as it follows the on screen action. the video has a button that says stop and go. It paces you and allows you to decide volume, screen size and monitor the buffering of the video. The viewer is given control of a movie about a car going nowhere. It gets curiouser and curiouser; the car doesn't go until the viewer presses start. The site of the action is dependent on viewer initiation.
As the image slowly unfolds, the impression is given that the most recent image the reason for the hold up of cars. Yet, as the image continues to reveal itself, the impression given is always incorrect. For example, the image reveals the first upside down car, presumably the cause of the delay. Then the image would reveal more cars in front of the upside down car showing that the initial upside down car is not the cause of the hold up.
Things (horses, cars, etc.) are constantly in the way of the event; the viewer is unable to see the human altercation or the reason for the gathering of a crowd, alluding to an anti-narrative structure of this image. This image unsettles constantly by generating an unstable environment where the viewer is never too sure of the circumstance, event, or significance of typical narrative clues.
The beginning of this image mirrors the way a viewer sees images that surround in day to day life. The same road is often traveled and the image could seem the same if close enough attention is not paid. There is no key to focus. The car that stays in frame like the viewer’s eyes becomes common and mundane. The rest of the scene gets more attention but which part should be focused on is never directed. Instead the viewer makes the value call on what to focus on. And still there are moments that break away words that flash on the screen and mean nothing in the context. Times when it acknowledges its existence in film rather than the outside.
Wow. The seeing of this video warps as the minutes go by. During the first couple of minutes, each jam of cars and people seemed to be the cause of traffic. But after about three minutes of seeing this, the trail seems to go cold as jam after jam are found to be in the middle of things rather than the cause.
At this point, the eyes undergo a kind of vertigo in which the moving camera suddenly stops and the images/events seem to scroll through the screen. Junk just seems to flow by as a single car swims upstream, fighting against the current of cars, people, animals, ships, children, balls, and abrasive horns.
By about six minutes into it, this scrolling becomes a looping. A constant replay. A broken record. As if for a moment, the moving image has magically frozen itself--becoming a canvas upon which a traffic jam is painted. Though things keep moving, they’re all moving constantly the way dry paint does on canvas—it’s constantly reliving itself through stillness. In this video, the eyes undergo a strange sensation where movement takes up this illusion of stillness.
Yet at around seven minutes, this vertigo wears away and the eyes snap back into a stable film structure--the camera pans out and the little black car finally swims its way out of the wild stream and happily makes its way into calm water.
OMG, I never thought the lineup would end. As cars began repeating I thought this was just going to be a loop after a while. But as the half way mark passed I realized that this was just one extensive scene.
I have definitely been in some long traffic jams, even ones where people got out and played football, but never any this long. The viewing of it all was far more monotonous than what it must have been like to be there. All of the waiting with none of the excitement. Well, there was some anticipation about what each character that entered the screen would be doing.
I would say that because of the angle that it is filmed and the speed at which the camera moves, the extent of the jam is definitely embellished.
The scene opens as our convertible protagonist approaches an enclave of traffic. Horns are blaring, a car is upside-down, people are arguing; and yet, children are playing.
What is the cause of the traffic jam? The ostensible cause is constantly deferred until the next one.
The horns become background music. They create a pseudo-rhythmic ambience that matches the disarray of vehicles and misplaced people.
In the middle of farmland is not a traffic jam at all; instead, the stopped cars and alternate modes of transportation are always already enmeshed within the landscape of the moving image. They become the landscape.
As our protagonist escapes the carscape, more familiar music plays and the camera becomes grounded. Our protagonist flees the scene and the image slowly fades into darkness.
Because the traffic and the concomitant noise become part of the landscape, this image redefines the immovable. Rather than the cars, it is the camera's seeing and hearing that creates movement. This image is movement.
This sequence of images can be infinitely broken up. As the cars move, it would seem that the image has some sort of linear sequence. However, with each new image that appears a new conclusion can be drawn just as old conclusions can be confused. Rather than view this image as linear, this image can instead be viewed as an intermingling of a multiplicity of images; this film is not one long incoherent image, but instead a million little images that have been put together. Rather than attempt to understand this image as one long narrative, it then becomes possible to read the image as individual events which exist separately from the rest of the frame.
The movement of this film holds its viewer captive to the screen just as the movement of the traffic therein holds the travelers captive to whatever comes to presence on their screen. The near constancy of sounding horns organizes this clip around the anxiety of the traffic. The anxiety of needing to always get somewhere that is inherent to the linear film medium parallels the anxiety of always needing to get somewhere in an automobile. This clip is a marriage of these parallel anxieties. The stickiness of road and filmic anxieties push and pull forever forward, and so slowly here. Past exotic animals, through fatal car wrecks and the subsequent roadside carnage, the film, like the road, is constantly a becoming as the new and the next are continually admitted onto the parallel screens. The viewer-participant is always only confronted with what is immediately before him on the screen, yet it is a difficult task to see what is present when all is becoming in the anxiety of the push and the pull.
How does this film go? Meanderingly. It goes cautiously (sometimes) and other times not-so-cautiously. It explores the 'pull-over'. What do you do if you are driving and your car has mechanical trouble? How about if your monkey got out of the llama cage? If there is something in the road ahead of you moving painfully slowly and you'd like to crack a beer - you pull over, to the side of the road. And pass time. What better way to pass time than with a pastime? Anyone for a childlike game? How about a cuddle? Unfortunately, if your horse is tired - you have no choice. Stubborn mules seem to pull over wherever they feel the need - eliciting strange behaviors from motorists; evasion, honking and swearing become one convoluted action. Finally, if you don't pull over timeously - you could be forced to pull over permanently. So pull over, all the way over - it's the right thing to do.
The image asks questions about the location of the viewer - who is viewing this site of unmoving cars? In what way is the viewer moving? How is she moving?
In addition, the image dispenses with explanation as a tool of providing a reason for the existence of the traffic. We are not presented with a reason for the existence of the traffic jam, as is expected as we proceed through the line of car. Instead, each car and the activities it is engaging in tells its own story, one that is not simply in service of a greater narrative.
Film is the medium of the present tense. The horns of the cars lined along the road continually blare as the camera pans to the right. Sometimes the camera pans quickly to the right and sometimes slowly. Every action is happening just as it appears on screen and that's why you can know what will happen next. Cars line the road along with a horse and exotic animals while children hurry along the other side of the road. A car just happens to be flipped over on the grass as a couple picnics on the road, sandwiched between two stopped cars. This is pure randomness, the pure working and happening of cinema. Nothing is captured or recorded, just always occurring.
There are a lot of screens. All of the car's windows, the 'long' camera shot itself, the spaces between the cars, and so on are different seeings of seeings. A lot of activities are taking place in the most banal scene. Isn't traffic supposed to be frustrating, mundane, and maddening? Perhaps this shot was maddening, but it was not mundane or anything like the traffic experienced on Highway 101. It is a new experience of traffic. It is a traffic of becoming: always changing, never expected, propelling.
Cinema, seeing, cars, all ride the flow from one moment to the next. Jump in, put on your seatbelt and sink into the dotty flux that engulfs you, that is you. As the car goes, as the camera goes, as the eye goes, so you go, so the world goes, and not a moment before. What medley of colors, speeds, textures and temperatures will next materialize? Each metallic shelled heap unveils itself for a brief current of now instants and vanishes, every moment a treat stupefying and titillating. A ball flies in and out of view, but how? You can only know when you see. And this seeing goes like a car goes, steady and slow, fearlessly heaving into the unknown, the unborn. Although this image employs the car as its dominant trope, its main mode, it toys and hints at the possibilities of other seeings-- that of a child, a horse, a truck, a blade of grass. So it goes, so it sees. This image is an allusion to its vehicular self and its infinite multifarious fragments. If it can be seen, it can see, but how? How?
What is the purpose of this clip in which a black car battles to navigate through a seemingly endless traffic jam? One possibly purpose is that moving through the traffic jam is a necessary step in the achievement of another goal, namely reaching a destination. The long jam could also serve to build anticipation for and raise the question of what is causing the traffic jam, in which case the seeing the horrific accident at the end of the clip should alleviate the viewer's curiosity. However, rather than serving as an instrument to carry out another purpose the traffic jam can act as the central event, in turn constituting its own purpose.
As this scene from Godard's "Weekend" progresses, it gets more and more absurd. At one point, a woman is sitting in her car pointed in the opposite direction of the traffic jam honking wildly like the rest of them. One has to wonder why no one else in this controlled scene of chaos has thought to bypass the traffic the way the black car does. The most hilarious aspect of this in my opinion is the toppled-over cars on the side of the road that appear to be entirely abandoned. This incredibly long shot draws attention to how conventional cinema privileges short shots and fast, narrative dialogue. It draws attention to the fact that it's a film as it moves slowly, unwinds, and only conveys the scene within the context of the camera's frame. We are only privy to what the camera allows us access to.
This scene shows how images can speak for themselves, they can make an argument, but to find that argument requires a kind of patience with cinema and a deep understanding of its particular grammars, the way one needs an element of patience in a traffic jam. It kind of serves as a metaphor for this class in a way, we must have patience to gather a complete understanding of how images operate, how they enact events in and of themselves.
This image literally unravels and reveals itself with time; it puts the viewer into a position of having to abide by the image's terms; this image truly dictates its own seeing.
This clip, as one long shot, is one long drift of seeing what seems to be millions of cars held up by the one before it. Camera and viewer drift on by, taking in the whole scene. Every second of the clip is movement—whether it is the camera, or the cars, or people on the road. There’s a general sense of direction going from left to right, yet there’s no understanding of when exactly this movement will end. The continuum of the line brings to the fore the cars as the site of action and cinema, not as the background or prop, as is usually the case, because the cars dictate the speed and direction of this movement. The cars even dictate our seeing, as we see the line in one long shot, as if the viewer were driving by and looking out her car window. This scene encapsulates car seeing, car moving, car going.
This scene is a traffic jam, and the audience experiences it alongside. Rather than showing a scene of a traffic jam, giving the information that a traffic jam occurred, Godard has the audience experience the excruciating traffic, sitting, waiting, listing to honking horns, anticipating the traffic’s end. The long reel adds to this experience, as it captures the time it takes to get through this particular traffic. Admits the jam of cars, we, the audience, can only see what is immediately in front of the car that is riding alongside the camera view. Instead of panning out, and thus ridding the audience of this anxiousness, Godard keeps the audience in the scene, experiencing traffic.
WHY DOES THIS THING MAKE IT SO DIFFICULT FOR ME TO POST A COMMENT!!! I HAVE TO TRY WAY TOO MANY TIMES!
It's folding into itself. You keep expecting something different but its many folds just fold. The sounds fold in, the cars, the expectations. It is infinitely intertwining. The folding allows everything to be seen and then re-seen again. It allows a new seeing, the seeing of a camera riding along side while you sit and await the multiple "accidents" to subside. Its multiplicity, its infinity, its naught.
This scene performs the act of SEEING the seeing of a camera. As the frame tracks along, where is the viewer? The slow, monotonous crawl of the screen matches the backed up traffic; but it is more than just a camera, "capturing" this scene. With every movement, the viewer sees the unfolding of the camera's eye.
Performance of Absurdity. This scene, through the seeing of the camera's own seeing, performs absurdity. Cars face backward, incessant honking, open and expansive countryside is jammed with a road of honking cars, slicing through peacefulness- this scene moves with unrelenting surprise, despite the fact that it is predictable. After 5 minutes, the fact that it keeps dragging on tacks onto its performance of absurdity.
In performing the absurd, this scene also simultaneously performs the concept of "Weekend" - wherein everyone tries to get away and out of their current situation, but ends up experiencing more stress in the effort to GET OUT. It's absurd.
More than anything, this scene does not tell a story, or paint a picture- with every action, it makes an argument about the way we see, and about the way we see the camera. In doing so, it amounts- as a whole- to a delightfully creepy performance of the absurd.
This series of images may keep the viewers anxious and annoyed. Or this series of images pull the viewers slowly on a leash, waiting for next scene, but at the same time keeping them spellbound on images that are happening right in front of their eyes. The car that drives a longs side with the camera can be seen as the grammar, making a bridge way between people, cars, roads and everything else that are happening in the scene. And that car breaks the rule, fights others, and drive pass others, it no longer travels in a linear line, but in the line of its own.
When you latch on to one particular piece of what’s going on (a wreck, a chess game, a traffic jam), to one idea (is it staged as such?, a situation in a larger scenario?, a challenge for the black car and its passengers?), even to one image (a ball in mid-air tossed between two cars, a monkey out of its cage, bodies on the roadside), when you latch on, you lose.
The fact of the matter is that the whole thing is going on all the time, and all of the pieces are relevant to what the “thing” is. The thing is not the thing if it’s parts are ignored. If it’s impossible to take in and recon all the parts at once, which of course it always is, then the only real option available, it seems to me, is to let it all go on, and to be with it as it goes on, to be, through acts of perception, part of its going-on.
This moving image calls for this type of seeing, this mode of perception. Among the many things that it does, it calls for this way-of-being-with-it from its interlocutors, which makes it a great place to land.
The speed of this image is painfully slow. The camera moves at a consistent, slow speed throughout the clip, regardless of whether the black car is speeding away or stopping as it goes through the traffic. The camera is not following the black car, it is not the subject of this clip. This clip not only depicts traffic, it enacts the affect of a traffic jam. The deafening car horns, the complete lack of anything logical or intelligible happening. The viewer cannot wait for the end to come faster.
Any expectation of explanation is thoroughly unrewarded by this image.
(midway through I realized that viewing this as a build-up to see what caused the traffic would be ridiculous as I would have ignored most of the film itself, my gaze only focused on the end)
The "cause" of the accident is insignificant, barely acknowledge by the camera as the convertible that drives along with the camera's gaze speeds off from the scene.
we too are jammed if we are looking for the cause, looking to escape. Goddard implores us to, in a way, embrace the "traffic jamming" that is watching this in anticipation of the cause of the accident. Some people are making the most of their time, some go on a picnic, some take walks, some toss around a beach ball. After awhile, the honking takes on a musicality.
This film seems to take pleasure in the jam, why can't we?
The video is painfully slow, and the sound of car horns repeatedly blaring does not make it any less frustrating. Despite the irritation that the video illicits, it also compels the viewer to continue watching for the next seven minutes with the hope that something, perhaps the cause of the traffic jam, will be revealed in the end. The linear movement of the camera from right to left also helps give the illusion that there may be something like a linear narrative to the clip, again hinting that the cause of the traffic jam may eventually be revealed.
On a side note, when the page first loaded, the play button on the video was not working, so for a moment, I thought the image was just a screenshot of a youtube video. It would have made an interesting image, since it invokes a habituated response in the viewer to want to click on the play button, even if it was not really a video.
I like what was said about the camera's movement from left to right. We're are literally reading the image, it may not amount to much of a story, but the cars, people, sounds hint that the viewer will eventually stumble upon the cause of all the traffic. Yet it soon becomes apparent that no one incident(or accident) is the cause of Godard's gridlock. As the car( and camera) inch forward there is that brief moment when there is a possibility that we will finally find the culprit of this annoying backup(and cacophony). But each time it is merely a tease, another chance to mess with narration and exectations of the audience. The car horns act as almost a cruel symphony or soundtrack for the image. At times they start to put together a bit of rhythm and melody, which only melts away as we witness the doppler effect in reverse.
Why is this scene taking place? What is the cause for this traffic jam, this stagnant motion? The cars are stagnant, but the people are full of motion and taking in the world. As the camera follows the path of the road, another possible cause arises for this chaos. The camera seems to be connected with the black convertible. The two are a stand in for one another. As the scene begins to unfold and the camera moves alongside the road, it is the black convertible that is maneuvering through this mess as the camera does. There is a brief moment when the convertible stops and the driver gets out of the car, yet the camera continues to move along side its path. But the camera’s seeing is taken over by a large gasoline tanker and the attention of the viewer is directed towards the large red letters: SHELL. As the moment begins to pass, the camera catches a glimpse of the convertible from underneath the tanker and the two “seeings” are reunited again and continue on along this moving seeing-event.
Even those whose cars are turned over and off the road sit in line to hold their places in this loud-seeing. This is not a noisy-seeing, there is noise from the cars communicating with one another via horn, but that is not what is being seen, rather, this is a loud-seeing and what is being said by the image is: “look at how this image can go in its multifarious happenings.” Each car, and essentially each “camera”, can go in infinite directions depending on which seeing it takes up.
The scene ends with dead bodies lying off to the side of the road and the camera picks up the seeing of the white car. The camera stops moving at this point, but continues to roll. This moving seeing-event has come to the end of its life and begins to die. The white car speeds off into the distance and in the last few seconds of its life, the camera catches the convertible again and follows it as it pans from the beginning of the road until it disappears off into the left part of the screen. The scene fades to black and this seeing-event dies.
The black car with which the camera moves sees the traffic jam in a way that is different from the other cars who are patiently (or impatiently, rather) waiting. It moves around them, past them, showing a different way the traffic jam can go. The waiting line is a caravan of all sorts of delights, a feast for the eyes. Its seems to never end. Neither does the shot: the camera steadily passes each vehicle, and by the middle of the scene, the viewer becomes accustomed to and lulled by this slow, constant motion. The gorey image at the end of the line is thereby further striking, because it changes the pace of the scene. The car zooms past the bodies and off into the distance, the camera not quick enough to follow it.
The traffic jam unfolds as is upon a conveyor belt or roll of film. The camera is in constant steady motion, like that of the fixed speed of film recording or an automated conveyor belt. The traffic jam unleashes its chaos upon the controlled and concrete road, and film reel. Images slide upon the fixed stage interacting and reacting with each other. As the images encounter one another they slow eachother down, elicit emotional outbursts or playful entertainment and even death. The images exist on the same reel and are forced to share its space, a traffic jam of images on film all competing to release their affects upon one another. The only direction the images follow is the linear road, film reel, and no external structures, such as traffic rules or conventions, (narrative), have the power to organize the sequence into a coherent steady stream of traffic. But in the end one of the vehicles veers off of the linear track, off the reel, and speeds wildly into an empty landscape, the image has found its escape, free from the control and influence that other images have upon its self definition. Images lose self-autonomy when paired with other images, forming a new relationship and logic that forms as a result of the interaction
This cinematic-web image alternates between continuous and abrupt or variable relationships. The video streams continuously through cyberspace as the camera follows the car weaving steadily through the halted stream of traffic. But who’s leading whom? And where does it lead?
The video doesn’t necessarily stream continuously, completely, with its order intact—or even at all. The viewer has choices, can exercise a will over and with the image. The camera, or, more appropriately, the cinematic force as a whole, exercises its own will as well. The navy convertible is left to catch up or obscured by scenes of greater interest as the camera moves along the road. It speeds up slightly and plays a playful piano tune at the site of an overturned car and running children; strings churn dramatically as text abruptly cuts the stream of road images, and again when passing a Shell fuel truck, and once more when passing wrecked cars and lifeless bodies at the end of the traffic holdup. Does this cinematic syntax indicate a story? The wreckage at the end might be a cause for the traffic itself, but the traffic of the image—its syntax, its interests, its effects—is not entirely beholden to this; it has a hand on the steering wheel as well.
They’ve all got their hands on the steering wheel—the car, the road, the camera, the studio, the traffic events, the video interface, the viewer—but the relationships and differing wills never emerge in continuous, parallel lines of becoming. Multiple forces of seeing direct the flow of image and sound, and infinite seeings of this seeing become possible through the web interface. The seeing is thus immersed into its own body, enfolded in its own circuit of relationships and forces both realized and possible—and this infinitely fluctuating and folding origami network structure ends only to open into an even vaster one, an entire network of such networks, as images appear a the bottom of the screen once the video proper ends.
The movement of the camera performs a ruse on the viewer; panning from left to right suggests that the viewer will eventually arrive at an identifiable source of the traffic that will explain the image. Confronted with a series of disparate activities, one realizes that identifying the cause of the traffic jam, however, distracts one from enjoying the spectacle of those activities. In other words, the image illustrates that focusing on the its effects (i.e. the chorus of honks and the site of children playing in the street) is more important to the experience of the image than discovering its causes (a horrific car accident).
The images begins following a little black car zooming down a country road—it hits a traffic jam, horns blare at variant frequencies for seven minutes as the camera floats along, parallel with the street, sometimes loosing the car as it leapfrogs through the queue, or is delayed, the driver shaking its fist at another motorist in its way. The camera’s slow, plodding course speaks to its independence—its ability as a medium to capture it all—each car, discrete, a self-contained story. The camera could choose any, pan in, draw the viewer to that world for as long as it wants. Its linear path emphasizes the camera’s curious relationship with time—the way it can hold it in place, the viewer can rewind and watch events re-unfold. As it paned past this line of cars, I was overwhelmed by the sensation of time passing that the camera caught indiscriminately—children running around, cars crashing, a old couple picnicking, people fighting, people dead on the ground. All of it going on in the background as the little black car zooms along, the thread the camera compels us to follow, until it breaks away, in an inexplicably nostalgic way, speeding off into the distance.
Though the camera continually moves forward, the eye, in an attempt to understand and view the image, drags and lingers on certain subjects. The camera does this too at times, i.e. looking at the llama, but it still moves forward. This gives the viewer a sense of anxiety caused by the unfulfillment of images and information--"wait what's going on? damn i missed it. wait what's happening now? missed it again!" Perhaps this is performative of the anxiety of the drivers themselves, but nonetheless, this film image is, if anything, stressful. Even as the car drives off into the distance, the suspenseful music keeps the stressed mood, and the din of horns, speech, and other sounds only increase this headache.
In this image tensions exist. One being the tension between individuality and uniformity. Each car/"scene" that the camera passes by is so unique and distinct. I haven't double-checked, but I don't even think there were two similar cars (whereas in real life or America, we often see 3 silver Honda civics belonging to total strangers parked next to each other). Also, what the people doing in, out, around, or near the car are so different and distinct. There are people playing chess, a person on his sailboat, kids running around, people throwing a ball around, etc. Each scene/car/group-of-people seems to be in its own world, not caring much about the traffic jam. Yet there is also a sense of uniformity and flow and connection. On a micro level there is the scene of a grandpa in one car throwing a beach-ball of sorts to a girl in another car. On a more macro level, the continuous shot and the incessant car horns bring a sense of unity, narrative, and coherence.
The image gives individuality to the cars, which serve as stations for the people. Human and the machine are one in the same in this image, which plays on the idea of individualism and automobiles as a pair that are more than coincidentally related. The children play with their balls, the adults do too, it's all human play. The cars for the most part are right side up, one is upside down, perhaps signaling the link to the artist's idea that machines= humans
The scene of a traffic jam in Godard's "Weekend" seems to move linearly and continously in temporal and spatial direction as the car and the camera weave in and out of traffic. The scene announces the camera as a vehicle of permutations, a medium of infinite variety. As the vehicle rolls on, the landscape shifts, and the redundancy of the situation creates a scene that feels like an uncanny reoccurence of the same thing, yet, it is never the same. The character of the traffic jam changes becoming more and more absurd and multifold. The camera is movement, it is narrative and it is constantly morphing.
The road once again in Godard. Both a space of flow and congestion. A landscape of steal to be navigated and played on. The cacophony magnifies as the main car tries to break free of the mire. But the mire is the scene of all the action. In fact too much action with no purpose, just a bump here, a fight there, within this impossible situation is an equally impossible choreography of actions and images. Godard is winks at us to let us know he is in control of this apparent chaos. It is all his show and the stage is real although it is at the same time pure artifice.
"Traffic Jam" - Typically the stop of some flow, yet here in this image it is the gushing of movement. The camera pans across what seems like a never ending line of stopped cars, but they're not stopped at all. The camera keeps them moving. In this strange space of cinema, traffic jams are replaced by with a party. The laws are completely bizarre and unfamiliar, no body seems to care that there are bodies laying about and children running about. What Twilight Zone is this?
The sound being played throughout the entire clip is almost unchanging. Its the generic sound of a traffic jam. The sound of frustrated, fed up drivers beeping angrily. This is generic as it doesn't apply to any particular traffic jam least of all this one. Rarely do the happenings of the image suggest the angry, frustrated feeling that comes through in the audio. This takes a while to notice however. It feels like a traffic jam simply because of the noise, but if the noise were to be turned off the scene might appear quite benign. People playing chess, a ball being thrown back and forth, children running around on the grass. There are actually very few visual indications of anger at all. Any scene that seems to reference a disaster and explain the jam, such as an overturned car or dead bodies, is immediately accompanied by a benign scene which doesn't seem to acknowledge the previous event at all. Small local spheres of activity function on their local levels with no acknowledgement or connection to the other scenes within close geographical proximity. The only things that tie it all together are the one car and the camera which see it all. The movement of the camera ties multiple separate scenes into a lineup of cars, and the noise turns it into an angry jam. These tools of cinema take random scenes and create a coherent product. They make the traffic jam as it has never been seen before. They act conspicuously, not covering their tracks, revealing, teaching the method by which they work. It is as if the film speaks, saying "look at my brilliant mode of construction. Understand it and be affected by it."
The black car works to string together the shots by providing a familiar reference point. One way of looking at traffic is seeing it as a roadblock to be conquered as fast as possible (as shown by the black car’s movement); another way of looking at traffic is looking at it as an opportunity to see things in micro-environments, as they go (as shown by the multitude of other cars). That the black car continues to appear in this film clip does not mean that it is the most important image in the sequence. Rather, its disappearances seem more important. This is because when it is not in the picture, the surrounding environment gains clarity. The surrounding environment elicits a view of more interesting and attention grabbing ways of participating in traffic (like playing ball between cars, or stopping for a picnic).
Each week, we will consider an image. This image may come from anywhere—from a painting, the news, an art photograph, a picture of my child.
Your job is to read this image. You need write only four lines; you may write more. Inflect the image. Give it a spin. Make us see what we may not be seeing. Take up the image, do something with it, then give it back to us—in words.
The goal is multifold. It is to learn to reckon a diversity of images. It is to learn the art of the riff, the spin, the take. And, in the end, I hope we have created an exquisite symphony, a chorus of voices, each distinct, each singing an image in its own register.
ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED. You may miss 3 classes during the semester. For each class missed after that, your grade will be lowered a full grade—from an A to a B.
EVERY weekend, I will post an image on this blog. By Thursday's class, you must write a response to that image as a comment on this blog. -You will have to create a Google account. -Please use your name in your identity so I know who you are when you post your comment. If you already have a Google identity but it does not reflect your name, please create a new one. -Your comment can be brief; in fact, it should be—anywhere from 3-10 lines. Try to make it pithy, astute, sharp. -These are not optional: each one you miss will translate into the loss of a full grade for your class participation grade.
There will be three papers scattered through the semester; they will be @ two pages long. These are not optional. If you fail to do one, you will fail the class.
Grading -Class participation: 30% -Paper 1: 20% -Paper 2: 20% -Paper 3: 30% -I WILL NOT GRANT INCOMPLETES.
Well here we go...nowhere. The road is continuous and we drive sometimes following, sometimes parallel, sometimes leading the camera or the viewer. The camera repositions the viewer as it follows the on screen action. the video has a button that says stop and go. It paces you and allows you to decide volume, screen size and monitor the buffering of the video. The viewer is given control of a movie about a car going nowhere. It gets curiouser and curiouser; the car doesn't go until the viewer presses start. The site of the action is dependent on viewer initiation.
ReplyDeleteAs the image slowly unfolds, the impression is given that the most recent image the reason for the hold up of cars. Yet, as the image continues to reveal itself, the impression given is always incorrect. For example, the image reveals the first upside down car, presumably the cause of the delay. Then the image would reveal more cars in front of the upside down car showing that the initial upside down car is not the cause of the hold up.
ReplyDeleteThings (horses, cars, etc.) are constantly in the way of the event; the viewer is unable to see the human altercation or the reason for the gathering of a crowd, alluding to an anti-narrative structure of this image. This image unsettles constantly by generating an unstable environment where the viewer is never too sure of the circumstance, event, or significance of typical narrative clues.
The beginning of this image mirrors the way a viewer sees images that surround in day to day life. The same road is often traveled and the image could seem the same if close enough attention is not paid. There is no key to focus. The car that stays in frame like the viewer’s eyes becomes common and mundane. The rest of the scene gets more attention but which part should be focused on is never directed. Instead the viewer makes the value call on what to focus on. And still there are moments that break away words that flash on the screen and mean nothing in the context. Times when it acknowledges its existence in film rather than the outside.
ReplyDeleteWow. The seeing of this video warps as the minutes go by. During the first couple of minutes, each jam of cars and people seemed to be the cause of traffic. But after about three minutes of seeing this, the trail seems to go cold as jam after jam are found to be in the middle of things rather than the cause.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, the eyes undergo a kind of vertigo in which the moving camera suddenly stops and the images/events seem to scroll through the screen. Junk just seems to flow by as a single car swims upstream, fighting against the current of cars, people, animals, ships, children, balls, and abrasive horns.
By about six minutes into it, this scrolling becomes a looping. A constant replay. A broken record. As if for a moment, the moving image has magically frozen itself--becoming a canvas upon which a traffic jam is painted. Though things keep moving, they’re all moving constantly the way dry paint does on canvas—it’s constantly reliving itself through stillness. In this video, the eyes undergo a strange sensation where movement takes up this illusion of stillness.
Yet at around seven minutes, this vertigo wears away and the eyes snap back into a stable film structure--the camera pans out and the little black car finally swims its way out of the wild stream and happily makes its way into calm water.
OMG, I never thought the lineup would end. As cars began repeating I thought this was just going to be a loop after a while. But as the half way mark passed I realized that this was just one extensive scene.
ReplyDeleteI have definitely been in some long traffic jams, even ones where people got out and played football, but never any this long. The viewing of it all was far more monotonous than what it must have been like to be there. All of the waiting with none of the excitement. Well, there was some anticipation about what each character that entered the screen would be doing.
I would say that because of the angle that it is filmed and the speed at which the camera moves, the extent of the jam is definitely embellished.
The scene opens as our convertible protagonist approaches an enclave of traffic. Horns are blaring, a car is upside-down, people are arguing; and yet, children are playing.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the cause of the traffic jam? The ostensible cause is constantly deferred until the next one.
The horns become background music. They create a pseudo-rhythmic ambience that matches the disarray of vehicles and misplaced people.
In the middle of farmland is not a traffic jam at all; instead, the stopped cars and alternate modes of transportation are always already enmeshed within the landscape of the moving image. They become the landscape.
As our protagonist escapes the carscape, more familiar music plays and the camera becomes grounded. Our protagonist flees the scene and the image slowly fades into darkness.
Because the traffic and the concomitant noise become part of the landscape, this image redefines the immovable. Rather than the cars, it is the camera's seeing and hearing that creates movement. This image is movement.
This sequence of images can be infinitely broken up. As the cars move, it would seem that the image has some sort of linear sequence. However, with each new image that appears a new conclusion can be drawn just as old conclusions can be confused. Rather than view this image as linear, this image can instead be viewed as an intermingling of a multiplicity of images; this film is not one long incoherent image, but instead a million little images that have been put together. Rather than attempt to understand this image as one long narrative, it then becomes possible to read the image as individual events which exist separately from the rest of the frame.
ReplyDeleteThe movement of this film holds its viewer captive to the screen just as the movement of the traffic therein holds the travelers captive to whatever comes to presence on their screen. The near constancy of sounding horns organizes this clip around the anxiety of the traffic. The anxiety of needing to always get somewhere that is inherent to the linear film medium parallels the anxiety of always needing to get somewhere in an automobile. This clip is a marriage of these parallel anxieties. The stickiness of road and filmic anxieties push and pull forever forward, and so slowly here. Past exotic animals, through fatal car wrecks and the subsequent roadside carnage, the film, like the road, is constantly a becoming as the new and the next are continually admitted onto the parallel screens. The viewer-participant is always only confronted with what is immediately before him on the screen, yet it is a difficult task to see what is present when all is becoming in the anxiety of the push and the pull.
ReplyDeleteHow does this film go? Meanderingly. It goes cautiously (sometimes) and other times not-so-cautiously. It explores the 'pull-over'.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you do if you are driving and your car has mechanical trouble? How about if your monkey got out of the llama cage? If there is something in the road ahead of you moving painfully slowly and you'd like to crack a beer - you pull over, to the side of the road. And pass time. What better way to pass time than with a pastime? Anyone for a childlike game? How about a cuddle?
Unfortunately, if your horse is tired - you have no choice. Stubborn mules seem to pull over wherever they feel the need - eliciting strange behaviors from motorists; evasion, honking and swearing become one convoluted action.
Finally, if you don't pull over timeously - you could be forced to pull over permanently.
So pull over, all the way over - it's the right thing to do.
The image asks questions about the location of the viewer - who is viewing this site of unmoving cars? In what way is the viewer moving? How is she moving?
ReplyDeleteIn addition, the image dispenses with explanation as a tool of providing a reason for the existence of the traffic. We are not presented with a reason for the existence of the traffic jam, as is expected as we proceed through the line of car. Instead, each car and the activities it is engaging in tells its own story, one that is not simply in service of a greater narrative.
Film is the medium of the present tense. The horns of the cars lined along the road continually blare as the camera pans to the right. Sometimes the camera pans quickly to the right and sometimes slowly. Every action is happening just as it appears on screen and that's why you can know what will happen next. Cars line the road along with a horse and exotic animals while children hurry along the other side of the road. A car just happens to be flipped over on the grass as a couple picnics on the road, sandwiched between two stopped cars. This is pure randomness, the pure working and happening of cinema. Nothing is captured or recorded, just always occurring.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of screens. All of the car's windows, the 'long' camera shot itself, the spaces between the cars, and so on are different seeings of seeings. A lot of activities are taking place in the most banal scene. Isn't traffic supposed to be frustrating, mundane, and maddening? Perhaps this shot was maddening, but it was not mundane or anything like the traffic experienced on Highway 101. It is a new experience of traffic. It is a traffic of becoming: always changing, never expected, propelling.
ReplyDeleteCinema, seeing, cars, all ride the flow from one moment to the next. Jump in, put on your seatbelt and sink into the dotty flux that engulfs you, that is you. As the car goes, as the camera goes, as the eye goes, so you go, so the world goes, and not a moment before. What medley of colors, speeds, textures and temperatures will next materialize? Each metallic shelled heap unveils itself for a brief current of now instants and vanishes, every moment a treat stupefying and titillating. A ball flies in and out of view, but how? You can only know when you see. And this seeing goes like a car goes, steady and slow, fearlessly heaving into the unknown, the unborn. Although this image employs the car as its dominant trope, its main mode, it toys and hints at the possibilities of other seeings-- that of a child, a horse, a truck, a blade of grass. So it goes, so it sees. This image is an allusion to its vehicular self and its infinite multifarious fragments. If it can be seen, it can see, but how? How?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the purpose of this clip in which a black car battles to navigate through a
ReplyDeleteseemingly endless traffic jam? One possibly purpose is that moving through the
traffic jam is a necessary step in the achievement of another goal, namely reaching
a destination. The long jam could also serve to build anticipation for and raise the
question of what is causing the traffic jam, in which case the seeing the horrific
accident at the end of the clip should alleviate the viewer's curiosity. However,
rather than serving as an instrument to carry out another purpose the traffic jam
can act as the central event, in turn constituting its own purpose.
As this scene from Godard's "Weekend" progresses, it gets more and more absurd. At one point, a woman is sitting in her car pointed in the opposite direction of the traffic jam honking wildly like the rest of them. One has to wonder why no one else in this controlled scene of chaos has thought to bypass the traffic the way the black car does. The most hilarious aspect of this in my opinion is the toppled-over cars on the side of the road that appear to be entirely abandoned. This incredibly long shot draws attention to how conventional cinema privileges short shots and fast, narrative dialogue. It draws attention to the fact that it's a film as it moves slowly, unwinds, and only conveys the scene within the context of the camera's frame. We are only privy to what the camera allows us access to.
ReplyDeleteThis scene shows how images can speak for themselves, they can make an argument, but to find that argument requires a kind of patience with cinema and a deep understanding of its particular grammars, the way one needs an element of patience in a traffic jam. It kind of serves as a metaphor for this class in a way, we must have patience to gather a complete understanding of how images operate, how they enact events in and of themselves.
This image literally unravels and reveals itself with time; it puts the viewer into a position of having to abide by the image's terms; this image truly dictates its own seeing.
This clip, as one long shot, is one long drift of seeing what seems to be millions of cars held up by the one before it. Camera and viewer drift on by, taking in the whole scene. Every second of the clip is movement—whether it is the camera, or the cars, or people on the road. There’s a general sense of direction going from left to right, yet there’s no understanding of when exactly this movement will end. The continuum of the line brings to the fore the cars as the site of action and cinema, not as the background or prop, as is usually the case, because the cars dictate the speed and direction of this movement. The cars even dictate our seeing, as we see the line in one long shot, as if the viewer were driving by and looking out her car window. This scene encapsulates car seeing, car moving, car going.
ReplyDeleteThis scene is a traffic jam, and the audience experiences it alongside. Rather than showing a scene of a traffic jam, giving the information that a traffic jam occurred, Godard has the audience experience the excruciating traffic, sitting, waiting, listing to honking horns, anticipating the traffic’s end. The long reel adds to this experience, as it captures the time it takes to get through this particular traffic. Admits the jam of cars, we, the audience, can only see what is immediately in front of the car that is riding alongside the camera view. Instead of panning out, and thus ridding the audience of this anxiousness, Godard keeps the audience in the scene, experiencing traffic.
ReplyDeleteWHY DOES THIS THING MAKE IT SO DIFFICULT FOR ME TO POST A COMMENT!!! I HAVE TO TRY WAY TOO MANY TIMES!
ReplyDeleteIt's folding into itself. You keep expecting something different but its many folds just fold. The sounds fold in, the cars, the expectations. It is infinitely intertwining. The folding allows everything to be seen and then re-seen again. It allows a new seeing, the seeing of a camera riding along side while you sit and await the multiple "accidents" to subside. Its multiplicity, its infinity, its naught.
This scene performs the act of SEEING the seeing of a camera. As the frame tracks along, where is the viewer? The slow, monotonous crawl of the screen matches the backed up traffic; but it is more than just a camera, "capturing" this scene. With every movement, the viewer sees the unfolding of the camera's eye.
ReplyDeletePerformance of Absurdity. This scene, through the seeing of the camera's own seeing, performs absurdity. Cars face backward, incessant honking, open and expansive countryside is jammed with a road of honking cars, slicing through peacefulness- this scene moves with unrelenting surprise, despite the fact that it is predictable. After 5 minutes, the fact that it keeps dragging on tacks onto its performance of absurdity.
In performing the absurd, this scene also simultaneously performs the concept of "Weekend" - wherein everyone tries to get away and out of their current situation, but ends up experiencing more stress in the effort to GET OUT. It's absurd.
More than anything, this scene does not tell a story, or paint a picture- with every action, it makes an argument about the way we see, and about the way we see the camera. In doing so, it amounts- as a whole- to a delightfully creepy performance of the absurd.
This series of images may keep the viewers anxious and annoyed. Or this series of images pull the viewers slowly on a leash, waiting for next scene, but at the same time keeping them spellbound on images that are happening right in front of their eyes. The car that drives a longs side with the camera can be seen as the grammar, making a bridge way between people, cars, roads and everything else that are happening in the scene. And that car breaks the rule, fights others, and drive pass others, it no longer travels in a linear line, but in the line of its own.
ReplyDeleteWhen you latch on to one particular piece of what’s going on (a wreck, a chess game, a traffic jam), to one idea (is it staged as such?, a situation in a larger scenario?, a challenge for the black car and its passengers?), even to one image (a ball in mid-air tossed between two cars, a monkey out of its cage, bodies on the roadside), when you latch on, you lose.
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is that the whole thing is going on all the time, and all of the pieces are relevant to what the “thing” is. The thing is not the thing if it’s parts are ignored. If it’s impossible to take in and recon all the parts at once, which of course it always is, then the only real option available, it seems to me, is to let it all go on, and to be with it as it goes on, to be, through acts of perception, part of its going-on.
This moving image calls for this type of seeing, this mode of perception. Among the many things that it does, it calls for this way-of-being-with-it from its interlocutors, which makes it a great place to land.
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ReplyDeleteThe speed of this image is painfully slow. The camera moves at a consistent, slow speed throughout the clip, regardless of whether the black car is speeding away or stopping as it goes through the traffic. The camera is not following the black car, it is not the subject of this clip. This clip not only depicts traffic, it enacts the affect of a traffic jam. The deafening car horns, the complete lack of anything logical or intelligible happening. The viewer cannot wait for the end to come faster.
ReplyDeleteAny expectation of explanation is thoroughly unrewarded by this image.
ReplyDelete(midway through I realized that viewing this as a build-up to see what caused the traffic would be ridiculous as I would have ignored most of the film itself, my gaze only focused on the end)
The "cause" of the accident is insignificant, barely acknowledge by the camera as the convertible that drives along with the camera's gaze speeds off from the scene.
we too are jammed if we are looking for the cause, looking to escape. Goddard implores us to, in a way, embrace the "traffic jamming" that is watching this in anticipation of the cause of the accident. Some people are making the most of their time, some go on a picnic, some take walks, some toss around a beach ball.
After awhile, the honking takes on a musicality.
This film seems to take pleasure in the jam, why can't we?
The video is painfully slow, and the sound of car horns repeatedly blaring does not make it any less frustrating. Despite the irritation that the video illicits, it also compels the viewer to continue watching for the next seven minutes with the hope that something, perhaps the cause of the traffic jam, will be revealed in the end. The linear movement of the camera from right to left also helps give the illusion that there may be something like a linear narrative to the clip, again hinting that the cause of the traffic jam may eventually be revealed.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, when the page first loaded, the play button on the video was not working, so for a moment, I thought the image was just a screenshot of a youtube video. It would have made an interesting image, since it invokes a habituated response in the viewer to want to click on the play button, even if it was not really a video.
I like what was said about the camera's movement from left to right. We're are literally reading the image, it may not amount to much of a story, but the cars, people, sounds hint that the viewer will eventually stumble upon the cause of all the traffic. Yet it soon becomes apparent that no one incident(or accident) is the cause of Godard's gridlock. As the car( and camera) inch forward there is that brief moment when there is a possibility that we will finally find the culprit of this annoying backup(and cacophony). But each time it is merely a tease, another chance to mess with narration and exectations of the audience.
ReplyDeleteThe car horns act as almost a cruel symphony or soundtrack for the image. At times they start to put together a bit of rhythm and melody, which only melts away as we witness the doppler effect in reverse.
Why is this scene taking place? What is the cause for this traffic jam, this stagnant motion? The cars are stagnant, but the people are full of motion and taking in the world. As the camera follows the path of the road, another possible cause arises for this chaos. The camera seems to be connected with the black convertible. The two are a stand in for one another. As the scene begins to unfold and the camera moves alongside the road, it is the black convertible that is maneuvering through this mess as the camera does. There is a brief moment when the convertible stops and the driver gets out of the car, yet the camera continues to move along side its path. But the camera’s seeing is taken over by a large gasoline tanker and the attention of the viewer is directed towards the large red letters: SHELL. As the moment begins to pass, the camera catches a glimpse of the convertible from underneath the tanker and the two “seeings” are reunited again and continue on along this moving seeing-event.
ReplyDeleteEven those whose cars are turned over and off the road sit in line to hold their places in this loud-seeing. This is not a noisy-seeing, there is noise from the cars communicating with one another via horn, but that is not what is being seen, rather, this is a loud-seeing and what is being said by the image is: “look at how this image can go in its multifarious happenings.” Each car, and essentially each “camera”, can go in infinite directions depending on which seeing it takes up.
The scene ends with dead bodies lying off to the side of the road and the camera picks up the seeing of the white car. The camera stops moving at this point, but continues to roll. This moving seeing-event has come to the end of its life and begins to die. The white car speeds off into the distance and in the last few seconds of its life, the camera catches the convertible again and follows it as it pans from the beginning of the road until it disappears off into the left part of the screen. The scene fades to black and this seeing-event dies.
The black car with which the camera moves sees the traffic jam in a way that is different from the other cars who are patiently (or impatiently, rather) waiting. It moves around them, past them, showing a different way the traffic jam can go. The waiting line is a caravan of all sorts of delights, a feast for the eyes. Its seems to never end. Neither does the shot: the camera steadily passes each vehicle, and by the middle of the scene, the viewer becomes accustomed to and lulled by this slow, constant motion. The gorey image at the end of the line is thereby further striking, because it changes the pace of the scene. The car zooms past the bodies and off into the distance, the camera not quick enough to follow it.
ReplyDeleteThe traffic jam unfolds as is upon a conveyor belt or roll of film. The camera is in constant steady motion, like that of the fixed speed of film recording or an automated conveyor belt. The traffic jam unleashes its chaos upon the controlled and concrete road, and film reel. Images slide upon the fixed stage interacting and reacting with each other. As the images encounter one another they slow eachother down, elicit emotional outbursts or playful entertainment and even death. The images exist on the same reel and are forced to share its space, a traffic jam of images on film all competing to release their affects upon one another. The only direction the images follow is the linear road, film reel, and no external structures, such as traffic rules or conventions, (narrative), have the power to organize the sequence into a coherent steady stream of traffic. But in the end one of the vehicles veers off of the linear track, off the reel, and speeds wildly into an empty landscape, the image has found its escape, free from the control and influence that other images have upon its self definition. Images lose self-autonomy when paired with other images, forming a new relationship and logic that forms as a result of the interaction
ReplyDeleteThis cinematic-web image alternates between continuous and abrupt or variable relationships. The video streams continuously through cyberspace as the camera follows the car weaving steadily through the halted stream of traffic. But who’s leading whom? And where does it lead?
ReplyDeleteThe video doesn’t necessarily stream continuously, completely, with its order intact—or even at all. The viewer has choices, can exercise a will over and with the image. The camera, or, more appropriately, the cinematic force as a whole, exercises its own will as well. The navy convertible is left to catch up or obscured by scenes of greater interest as the camera moves along the road. It speeds up slightly and plays a playful piano tune at the site of an overturned car and running children; strings churn dramatically as text abruptly cuts the stream of road images, and again when passing a Shell fuel truck, and once more when passing wrecked cars and lifeless bodies at the end of the traffic holdup. Does this cinematic syntax indicate a story? The wreckage at the end might be a cause for the traffic itself, but the traffic of the image—its syntax, its interests, its effects—is not entirely beholden to this; it has a hand on the steering wheel as well.
They’ve all got their hands on the steering wheel—the car, the road, the camera, the studio, the traffic events, the video interface, the viewer—but the relationships and differing wills never emerge in continuous, parallel lines of becoming. Multiple forces of seeing direct the flow of image and sound, and infinite seeings of this seeing become possible through the web interface. The seeing is thus immersed into its own body, enfolded in its own circuit of relationships and forces both realized and possible—and this infinitely fluctuating and folding origami network structure ends only to open into an even vaster one, an entire network of such networks, as images appear a the bottom of the screen once the video proper ends.
The movement of the camera performs a ruse on the viewer; panning from left to right suggests that the viewer will eventually arrive at an identifiable source of the traffic that will explain the image. Confronted with a series of disparate activities, one realizes that identifying the cause of the traffic jam, however, distracts one from enjoying the spectacle of those activities. In other words, the image illustrates that focusing on the its effects (i.e. the chorus of honks and the site of children playing in the street) is more important to the experience of the image than discovering its causes (a horrific car accident).
ReplyDeleteThe images begins following a little black car zooming down a country road—it hits a traffic jam, horns blare at variant frequencies for seven minutes as the camera floats along, parallel with the street, sometimes loosing the car as it leapfrogs through the queue, or is delayed, the driver shaking its fist at another motorist in its way.
ReplyDeleteThe camera’s slow, plodding course speaks to its independence—its ability as a medium to capture it all—each car, discrete, a self-contained story. The camera could choose any, pan in, draw the viewer to that world for as long as it wants.
Its linear path emphasizes the camera’s curious relationship with time—the way it can hold it in place, the viewer can rewind and watch events re-unfold. As it paned past this line of cars, I was overwhelmed by the sensation of time passing that the camera caught indiscriminately—children running around, cars crashing, a old couple picnicking, people fighting, people dead on the ground.
All of it going on in the background as the little black car zooms along, the thread the camera compels us to follow, until it breaks away, in an inexplicably nostalgic way, speeding off into the distance.
Though the camera continually moves forward, the eye, in an attempt to understand and view the image, drags and lingers on certain subjects. The camera does this too at times, i.e. looking at the llama, but it still moves forward. This gives the viewer a sense of anxiety caused by the unfulfillment of images and information--"wait what's going on? damn i missed it. wait what's happening now? missed it again!" Perhaps this is performative of the anxiety of the drivers themselves, but nonetheless, this film image is, if anything, stressful. Even as the car drives off into the distance, the suspenseful music keeps the stressed mood, and the din of horns, speech, and other sounds only increase this headache.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteImpossible.
ReplyDeleteIn this image tensions exist. One being the tension between individuality and uniformity. Each car/"scene" that the camera passes by is so unique and distinct. I haven't double-checked, but I don't even think there were two similar cars (whereas in real life or America, we often see 3 silver Honda civics belonging to total strangers parked next to each other). Also, what the people doing in, out, around, or near the car are so different and distinct. There are people playing chess, a person on his sailboat, kids running around, people throwing a ball around, etc. Each scene/car/group-of-people seems to be in its own world, not caring much about the traffic jam. Yet there is also a sense of uniformity and flow and connection. On a micro level there is the scene of a grandpa in one car throwing a beach-ball of sorts to a girl in another car. On a more macro level, the continuous shot and the incessant car horns bring a sense of unity, narrative, and coherence.
This seems to be a daydream of sorts.
The image gives individuality to the cars, which serve as stations for the people. Human and the machine are one in the same in this image, which plays on the idea of individualism and automobiles as a pair that are more than coincidentally related. The children play with their balls, the adults do too, it's all human play. The cars for the most part are right side up, one is upside down, perhaps signaling the link to the artist's idea that machines= humans
ReplyDeleteThe scene of a traffic jam in Godard's "Weekend" seems to move linearly and continously in temporal and spatial direction as the car and the camera weave in and out of traffic. The scene announces the camera as a vehicle of permutations, a medium of infinite variety. As the vehicle rolls on, the landscape shifts, and the redundancy of the situation creates a scene that feels like an uncanny reoccurence of the same thing, yet, it is never the same. The character of the traffic jam changes becoming more and more absurd and multifold. The camera is movement, it is narrative and it is constantly morphing.
ReplyDeleteThe road once again in Godard. Both a space of flow and congestion. A landscape of steal to be navigated and played on. The cacophony magnifies as the main car tries to break free of the mire. But the mire is the scene of all the action. In fact too much action with no purpose, just a bump here, a fight there, within this impossible situation is an equally impossible choreography of actions and images. Godard is winks at us to let us know he is in control of this apparent chaos. It is all his show and the stage is real although it is at the same time pure artifice.
ReplyDelete"Traffic Jam" - Typically the stop of some flow, yet here in this image it is the gushing of movement. The camera pans across what seems like a never ending line of stopped cars, but they're not stopped at all. The camera keeps them moving. In this strange space of cinema, traffic jams are replaced by with a party. The laws are completely bizarre and unfamiliar, no body seems to care that there are bodies laying about and children running about. What Twilight Zone is this?
ReplyDeleteThe sound being played throughout the entire clip is almost unchanging. Its the generic sound of a traffic jam. The sound of frustrated, fed up drivers beeping angrily. This is generic as it doesn't apply to any particular traffic jam least of all this one. Rarely do the happenings of the image suggest the angry, frustrated feeling that comes through in the audio. This takes a while to notice however. It feels like a traffic jam simply because of the noise, but if the noise were to be turned off the scene might appear quite benign. People playing chess, a ball being thrown back and forth, children running around on the grass. There are actually very few visual indications of anger at all. Any scene that seems to reference a disaster and explain the jam, such as an overturned car or dead bodies, is immediately accompanied by a benign scene which doesn't seem to acknowledge the previous event at all. Small local spheres of activity function on their local levels with no acknowledgement or connection to the other scenes within close geographical proximity. The only things that tie it all together are the one car and the camera which see it all. The movement of the camera ties multiple separate scenes into a lineup of cars, and the noise turns it into an angry jam. These tools of cinema take random scenes and create a coherent product. They make the traffic jam as it has never been seen before. They act conspicuously, not covering their tracks, revealing, teaching the method by which they work. It is as if the film speaks, saying "look at my brilliant mode of construction. Understand it and be affected by it."
ReplyDeleteThe black car works to string together the shots by providing a familiar reference point. One way of looking at traffic is seeing it as a roadblock to be conquered as fast as possible (as shown by the black car’s movement); another way of looking at traffic is looking at it as an opportunity to see things in micro-environments, as they go (as shown by the multitude of other cars). That the black car continues to appear in this film clip does not mean that it is the most important image in the sequence. Rather, its disappearances seem more important. This is because when it is not in the picture, the surrounding environment gains clarity. The surrounding environment elicits a view of more interesting and attention grabbing ways of participating in traffic (like playing ball between cars, or stopping for a picnic).
ReplyDelete