#essaynotes

Saturday 02/04/2020

Whilst writing/doing a bit of research on my essay, I wondered if film maker’s used certain colours for certain scenes because of other meanings besides the obvious.. (red = anger, blue = isolation, yellow = sensitivity/calm) 

Especially for a film like The Lion King, I wondered if colours in the native country it was based off on, had different meaning to colours than what we are used to. I thought this would be 

I decided to look at the cultural meaning behind colours, and found that they do have different meaning. Below is the definition of colour in Africa:

Black:    power, evil, death, mystery

Grey:    security, authority, maturity, stability

Purple:    royalty, luxury, wisdom, passion

Yellow:    joy, energy, warmth

Red:    danger, daring, urgency, energetic

Blue:    peace, calmness, confidence, affection

Green:    life, growth, freshness, healing

Whilst doing some research on how colour can affect and audience, and how it is significant in film - I thought this short video was a good way of explaining how filmmakers can manipulate our emotions with colour. 

This is the second sequence I am going to analyse for my essay. In this sequence, the palette darkens as the story plot turns. I thought it would be a good example, as it’s still  the same film, but as the colour changes, the atmosphere changes along with it. This is a good way to use colour, to manipulate the audience’s emotions and keeping the story flow. 

- Darker tones, for a more dramatic change in the story. 

-Like the previous example, it’s very abstract 

- Bright/florescent green to show the evil within

- Green eyes/ evil, more cunning than Simba

- Ominous feeling

- Colours give more impact to the sequence and sudden personality change. 

- Sudden flash of yellow as the evil/number in evil increases, more alert

- Enhances concentration (yellow)

- Makes the audience feel a certain bad vibe, devious?

- Changes to dark reds, purples.. colours associated with danger, jealousy, harm

- Relates to the older audience because of the darker tones

- Immediately aware of the villain of the plot

So this is the first sequence that I will be analysing in my essay. In this sequence, Simba freely expresses his desires to be the future King, and what he will do when his time comes to inherit the Kingdom. 

I specifically chose this scene, despite the actual dialogue, because I felt that the colours within it, express the character’s personality more. 

- The sequence starts off with more plain, realistic colours and then bursts into more vivid, brighter colours. 

- Rich oranges,yellows, reds and blues: more playful, bold colours which represent Simba’s character. 

- These colours appeal more to the children in an audience?

- Really abstract, making it fun for the audience to watch

- Yellows in Simba’s eyes again represent a more youthful character, whereas in the next sequence (be prepared) Scar’s eyes are green - more evil?

- Colours symbolise courage? Red is a powerful colour that comes up a lot during this sequence, shows that Simba isn’t afraid of what is about to come in his future. 

- Strong colours, for a strong personality/ strong mindset.

During the few weeks of having my film language lectures, I was having difficulty on finding two films to compare, on their use of colour. When I spoke to Mhairi about it, she had asked me what my favourite film was and I had said The Lion King. She said that was a perfect example, as it uses a wide range of colour, and there would be a lot I could talk about - so she advised me to analyse two scenes from the same film instead. I found that I would be able to write an essay on this, and decided that I was going to compare the colours in ‘I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’ and the ‘Be Prepared’ sequence - and discuss how filmmaker’s use colour to manipulate our emotions, and able to connect us to the characters within a story. 

Inclusion in the gallery involves 3 factors:

“the critique of the concept of ‘primitive art’

an associated change in conceptions of what can be called ‘art’

an increased understanding of art as a commodity

“the anthropological myth that classifying works as ‘art’ imposed a Western categorisation upon them”

the desire to be on the right side of the post-colonial/colonial divide - perhaps an anxiety of taking it out of an ethnographic discourse and placing it into an industry in which it is seen as a commodity. are these concerns justified given the quasi-religious status of the art and the practice of creation to the indigenous people?

placing the pieces in the ethnographic discourse and keeping them there “often motived by a desire to increase the understanding of the significance to the producers of the objects” - I agree with this statement, and sympathise with the issue of its inclusion into the western Art industry

however, it provided a great source of income for local indigenous populations.

gave them a voice and perhaps urged a deeper global understanding as to their rights in reclaiming aborigine land.

“viewed as… a license for misinterpretation, through the imposition of universalistic aesthetic concepts”

(8) - inclusion in gallery

RONALD BERNDT ?

Inclusion of the 14 Tiwi artist poles from Arnhem Land “shattering the anthropological paradigm” (40)

the error is in the polarisation of ART/ETHNORGAPHY - post-colonialism un-necessary dived - links perhaps well to bhabha’s HYBRIDITY?  (28) quote from Luke Taylor.

Howard talks about kant's theory of universal aesthetic and viewing being hand in hand and you cannot separate one from the other.

Howard argues that when viewers come into an art gallery they already have an understanding of the narrow western art discourse that they are exposed to (in films, tv books etc) and their viewing is not purely an “universal appreciation of aesethicis” but has some basis in a predisposed notion of what art is. Where as their encounters with aboriginal art is different from this and that they “must also have access to its history and significance.” (43)

“That is why the inclusion of non-european art continues to generate such opposition: it insists on a different kind of art history that threatens to disrupt pre-existing values” (44)

A short history of inclusion:

Didn’t enter too quickly as most of it was TEMPORAL

“much aboriginal art could however more easily find its place in the later slots created by conceptual art, minimalism, performance art and even abstract expressionism” (44)

BARK PAINTINGS Maloon describes as “most analogous” to western art forms in their “pectoral representation.”

TUCKSON —> the aesthetics of aboriginal art (book)

ART AND LAND 1986 SAM

Ruth Philips writing on Native American Art:

“the scholarly apparatus that inscribers the inauthenticity of commoditised wares [is] a central problem in the way that art history has addressed Native art. The authenticity paradigm marginalises not only the objects but the makers, making of them a ghostly presence in the modern world rather than acknowledging their vigorous interventions in it” (30)

(31) —> the collection of bark paintings viewed suspiciously in 50’s-60’s by ethnographers.

Between 1940-80’s aboriginal art moved from non-art to the art category without passing through the stage of being considered as primitive art (pg. 45) “Aboriginal art became art partly through the process of its commercialisation.”

“clearly produced products whose form was influenced by interaction with the market” (pg.46)

Aboriginals used art as “a means of persuading outsides of the value of their way of life as well as a means of earning a living in the post-colonial context” (pg.46)

MISSED THE PRIMITIVE SHIP - notions of Primitive art were being challenged in the 70’s-80’s saw a “breakdown of categories within Western at in general as the hegemony of the Western canon has come increasingly under challenge from non-western and indigenous arts”

“Contemporary aboriginal art emerged as a category in Aus during 70’s and 80’s (32)”

Tourist Art

overtly political art that challenged western notions of “representational spaces” (chapter 8, empires of vision)

Western Desert paintings - newly developed art that employed european materials - became “unproblematically avant-garde” and BARK PAINTINGS which used techniques and materials the were “independent of European art” were accepted into the category of “primitive art.” Yet the two occupied the same space. Thus “simultaneously” avant gaurde and primitive.