Sunday, July 3, 2011
Reflection on Fashion and Film
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Reflection on the Film
Friday, July 1, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Hot Couture: Brigitte Bardot's Fashion Revolution
- Bardot seems to emulate a very constructed image
- Although she is not a 'Hollywood' star i.e she is originally French, her persona personifies the constructs of a typical Hollywood icon/star
- Married to the director of most of her films-her key conceptual designer of her identity as a public icon
- Era of the 1950's-the boom of the teenager. Bardot emulates a teenage persona which is possibly why she was so popular
- Promotion of body image, clothes, hairstyles-because she became such an icon designers could promote their clothing by allowing Bardot to wear their items and they would be instantly called fashion and become a hit
- Marilyn Monroe seems to have a more mature persona than Bardot's sex kitten child-like body
- Bardot was carefully and purposefully marketed as a sex symbol-why is this so appealing to the demographic at the time?
- For men is she an object to be gazed?
- For women is she the desirable?
- Clothes were specifically designed for Bardot's figure-represents the power and symbol she has at the time and still does
- Child of youth mixed with sex symbol icon
- Stars like Jane Fonda, Catherine Deneuve would copy the Bardot look
- She became the archetypal French sex goddess
- Late 1950's and early 1960's she became the "most photographed woman in the world"
- Brigitte grew up in a wealthy setting with a very fashionable, well connected mother. Started a Childlike fashion revival, including gingham and broderie anglaise. Emblem of youth with overtly feminine dress +radical American youth clothes: James Dean’s jeans. Beatnik Duffle coats.
- Bardot’s generation had economic freedom, but not social, therefore used delinquency and Cinephilia as outlets. She was essentially revolting against the feminine construct which had been presented to her by her mother and her mother's peers.
- Her clothes: child like but ostentatiously sexualized.
- Choucroute hairstyle combined invitation and defiance. Simultaneously said fuck me, and fuck you. ‘Bardot adopted and promoted fashion that liberated the body (and hair) from the constraints of rigid couture outfits, leaving behind bourgeois conventions.’ Simplicity and cheapness.
- Bardot rejected couture as ‘for grannies’ and promoted young designers. Bardot’s clothes easily reproducible, so she was the centre of fashion production and consumption change. Youth and joie de vivre. She was an essential figure in the rise of the teenager and the working class.
- Her ‘highly sexed behaviour lost its appeal in 'the permissive age', her fashion sense was no longer innovative.’
- Bardot in 2011 has formed a completely different identity. Now it is ‘offensive’ to look as if she does not give a toss. Going against the constructed image.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Conceptual Framework-Film
Message: fast fashion is not sustainable or healthy
Concept
protagonist represents the mainstream consumer. She consumes fashion in a unsustainable way. She is always in search of the next trend, the latest release, the hot items. However she is never fulfilled and is in constant search to end her hunger.
Character
Job:
Setting/where does she live:
Age:
Marital status:
Education:
Visual representation:
· Greed: the way she physically consumes the food- grotesque consumption
· Pace of the film- speeding up of the film shots, fast cuts, movement within the shot
· Use of music
Types of shots
· Close up shots of the eating
· Stairs- feet
· Elevator
· Close ups of clothing
Personas
The Interior= food consumption. The private self
Private self, what we hide from view, freedom to eat what they want, grotesque eating
· Dishevelled
· Unconventional style, not current trends
· Mismatched
· Kitsch
· Chaotic
Exteriors= public self
The persona we want the world to view us by
Women have control over their consumption
Women shouldn’t have appetites
Food consumption is controlled. Example eating a single pea, leaving 2 on the plate
Confessionals
· Up to date with current fashions, trendy but not to outlandish
· ‘workwear’ corporate cross evening
Locations
Control, power, glamour/ gloss, money
· Syd uni- new buildings, glass and metal- reflections. Views back towards the city OR building 10, aerial
· City- financial area, blight st
· Double Bay
· Food desire- cupcake shop, bakery, DJ food hall
· Trade halls building
Monday, June 27, 2011
Essay
- Subcultures
- Skinheads
- Youth culture relation to consumerism
- Mirrors consumer culture
- The branding of various items worn by Skinheads
- Doc Martens
- Ben Sherman Shirts
La Grande Bouffe from Erik Liss on Vimeo.
Beyond Hollywood
o For young French women she represented youth, rebellion
o ‘And God created Woman’ (1956)
o By-passing the official fashion industry in France
Catherine Deneuve:
o ‘Belle De Jour’ (1967)
o Deneuve and Yves Saint Laurant relationship
Sophia Loren:
o Star as national symbol
o Italian
o Subversive
Anna Karina
Juliette Greco-Beat knick chic
Jean Seberg ‘A Bout De Souffle’ (Breathless) (1959)-connection to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s W Magazine shoot. ‘Breathless’ made actress Jean Seberg a star
Anti-Fashion:
(Konig, R. 1973. The Restless Image: A Sociology of Fashion)
(Davis, F. 1992. Fashion, Culture and Identity)
Pierre Bourdieu-Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984):
o Taste-habitus
o Taste is a marker of class
o What is considered good taste is simply the taste of the dominant class in the society
‘In the Mood for Love’ (2000) “One could line up all the gown and tell the film’s story” (Adrian-costume designer)
Gong Li resisted being taken up by Hollywood-Star of the new Chinese cinema of the 90’s
Zhang Ziyi
Estee Lauder-Chinese models become more prevalent in their ad campaigns
Group Discussions on Mobile Film
- John Waters-confronting
- Pink Flamingo's
- Articulation of concept
- Arty
- Obsession with food
- Bordering on food porn
- Consumption and food and their relationship
- Material thing
- Be creative with food and the combinations we create
- What could the link be between the food we choose and the fashion the model is wearing?
- 'beautiful jelly'
- Changing banquet
- Do we necessarily need all the different locations? Or could we replicate these types of locations in an inside set. This might be easier with time restrictions and limitations of camera quality and lighting.
- Femininity-identity in clothing
- The notion that women aren't meant to eat
- Could the clothes be contrasted with the types of foods chosen e.g.. a glamourous clothing ensemble while she is eating fast food? Or should they work together to say something?
- Talent/ model
- Make-up
- Props (furnishings etc.)
- Locations/ sets
- Accessories
- Lighting
- Equipment
- Costume
- Crew (models, assistants, camera men)
- Give 4-5 seconds leeway at top and tale of each shot to allow for editing
- Film more rather than less because it is easier to cut things away than to re-take scenes
- Cut aways (feet, hands, close-ups)
- Whose perspective do you want the audience?
- Dynamics and psychologies of shots?
- Street shots
- Establish location
- Model-dress/ clothes
- Focus on clothes
- Strawberries
- Chocolate
- Steak/ meat
- Fish
- Tran/ bus/ transport moving
- Focus on clothes
- Feathers/ clothes
- Pan up body -body image
- Feet/shoes
- Close up of clothing detail
- Street shots
- Identify location
- Goulburn street
- George St
- Red Lantern
- Darling Harbour
- The Rocks
- Close up of lips and hands
- Close up of napkin (part of the style)
- Car (driving)
- Elevator
- Public transport
- Around corners
- Alley-way perception
- Alleys with old style bricks
- Surry Hills
- Inner-west
- Stairs
Change, Identity and Rebellion
o First genuine subculture group were ‘The Zooties’ in the 1940’s, and at about the same time ‘Bikers’
o ‘Rockers’ (1977)
Youth Cultures-1950’s:
o High urban populations and improved standards of living
o Rise of the teenager is a demographic fact as a consumer group
o Disposable income and credits for young people
o Abolition of National Service in some countries
o Not many young people went to university at the time
1950’s:
o The relaxation of the Hays code
o The widespread popularity of television
o Films began to be directed at the youth market which were operated in a different way
o ‘The Wild One’ (1953)
o ‘Blackboard Jungle’ (1955)
o ‘Rebel without a Cause’ (1955)
o Formulaic teen movies ever since
o ‘Easy Rider’ (1969) A seminal counter-cultural film. First film to have music on the sound track that wasn’t scored.
Alienated youth on a killing spree:
o ‘Gun Crazy’ (1950)
o ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967)
o ‘Clockwork Orange’ (1971)
o ‘Badlands’ (1973)
o ‘Natural Born Killers’ (1994)
o ‘Elephant’ (2004)
Hebdige/Hall and Jefferson Subcultures:
o They saw sub-cultures as resistance
o ‘Resistance through ritual’
o Opposing the dominant ideology
o Western consumption involved
o Japanese subcultures
o Working class but having money in style
o Symbolic resistance through style
o “The problematics of lived class existence”
o As un-employment kicks in-how does this affect subcultures?
o The idea of the subculture as young people who have jobs
o Hebdige on Bricolage-“The mods could be said to be functioning as bricoleurs when they appropriated another range of commodities by placing them in a symbolic ensemble which served to erase or subvert their original straight meanings…” (Hebdige, D.)
o Fighting of the synonymous enemies-for the mods it was the bikers
o Union Jacks-Mods utilised this symbol as a unifying symbol of identification
o Male dominated subcultures-Mods, bikers, skinheads
o Mods-influenced by Italians
o Things that are valued in their own right
‘This is England’:
o Finds his friends by hanging out with the local skins
o Looking back at Skinhead subculture
o Skinhead fashion never appeared as re-interpreted form on fashion catwalks
o Link between Skinheads and racism
o Skinheads against racism
o Nick Knight-whether there is anything you can retract
Subculture-Authenticity:
o Style leaders
o Active/creative consumers
o Innovative/original
o Opposing bourgeois values
o Resisting mass consumption/taste
o Picked up by cinema
o Style, taste and self-expression
Subcultures in Australia:
o much more related to consumption
Hebdige-two methods of ‘recuperation’:
o The commodity form-sub sued through commodity
o The ideological form
o ‘The Girl can’t help it’ (1955)
o ‘Jubilee’ (1977) –About a group of girl punks
o Appropriation
o Commodification
Sarah Thornton:
o Subcultures are not necessarily about resistance
o The creative and the commercial live side by side
o The boundaries between mainstream and alternative cultures are not distinct
o Subcultures are defined and created by entrepreneurs
o They are ‘taste cultures’, organised around ‘subcultural capital’
o Subcultural capital
o “While subcultural capital may not convert into economic capital with the same ease or financial reward as cultural capital, a variety of occupations and incomes can be gained as a result of hipness. DJ’s, club organizers, clothes designers, music and style journalists…” (Thornton, S)
Subcultures:
o Link to fashion-power of grunge in 90’s, and the return to authenticity
o ‘La haine’ meaning Hatred
o ‘Clubbed to Death’
Angela McRobbie-girls and subcultures:
o Suggests there were female subcultures, but they did not have the media presence
o Because female youth cultures were often based in the home and school, they were, to a large extent, ignored
o The notion that women, and in particular young girls, are excessively susceptible to domestic and consumer ideologies, has a long history
o Most girls’ magazines over-privilege the spheres of consumption and leisure in comparison to production and work
o Because they are not necessarily threatening or violent, most girl subcultures are often invisible to reporters and academics.
Film List:
o ‘Metropolis’ (1930)-First film to envisage the future
o ‘Blade runner’-Drew on themes in the film ‘Metropolis’
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Exploring Fashion Film
La Prochaine Fois (The Next Time) from A76 PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Group Fashion Film
- Girl who is food obsessed
- Driven by the need for another hit
- Food as a metaphor for fast fashion consumption and how fast fashion is un-sustainable
- Sartorialist escape
- Parody
- Illusion to drug addiction
What are we trying to say?
- Un-sustainability of fast fashion
- Slapstick/ no sound
- Action/ comedy
- Melodrama
- Darling Harbour
- China Town
- Leichardt
- Reverse Garbage
- The Rocks
- Carriage Works
- Train Tracks
- Car
- Elevator
- Fast food store
- Restaurant (Italian, Asian, Japanese, Kebabs, Burgers)
- Gradation of pace
Friday, June 24, 2011
New masculinity in Film
Mobile Fashion Film
- Film making hat
- Audience
- Bold and Simple
- Beginning/ Middle/ End
- Screen/ Viewing audience
- Clips onto a moving thing eg. scooter, bike, wheelie chair, car
- Clips to attach phone to a steady object
- Hardware store for clamps
- Do not clamp the phone without a case
- Continuity
- Eye line
- Body Direction
- Meet and come up with a concept
- Based on audience/ demographic/ resources
- Structure
- Story-board
- Shot breakdown (everything you need within each shot)
- Location
- Actors/ models
- Backgrounds/ sets
- Costume
- Make-up
- Accessories
- Special effects
- Schedual-who/ what/ when
- Panning
- Zoom
- Lighting
- Steady
- Camera quality
Masculinity and Film
o “Streetcar” named desire. One of the first films in the 50’s that had a blue collar hero.
o Starring Marlon Brando and Stanley Kowalski
o Projected a blue collar sexuality
o Very revolutionary for it’s time
American Gigolo:
o A seminal moment in the history of menswear, when you see Julian dressing for a date, in the 80’s
o Lots of gadgets
o Very clever product placement
o Body appearance and luxuriating the male body
o Revolutions around the male consumer
o Caused a stir, and up the sales of Armani
- Is this one of the first films to promote the male body, and male sexualisation?
- Is it true then that male sexualisation has come after the sexualisation of women and feminity, or are there previous examples of the male body as an object of desire?
- The changes in society around masculinity were beginning to be reflected in film.
- Film often represents significant cultural and societal elements
Brokeback Mountain:
o How far cinema has come
o Very slow opening sequence, with a slow build
o Post-Hollywood
o Franchise film around the male body
Masculinity:
o Representations of masculinity through cinema
o “Rambo”, “Rocky”, “Die Hard”, “Terminator”, “Lethal Weapon”
o ‘This here is a snakeskin jecket. It represents a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.’ Sailor Ripley (Nicholas Cage) in “Wild at Heart” (1990)
Laura Mulvey Essay-‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’:
o Written in 1975
o Re-negotiating the dominance of Classic Hollywood
o “According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Main is reluctant…” (Mulvey)
Woman as image, man as bearer of the look:
Masculinity:
Activity
Voyeurism
Sadism
Fetishism
Story
Femininity:
Passivity
Exhibitionism
Masochism
Narcissism
Spectacle
o Women are a problem
o Men are tested in action
o First male pin-up was not butch or muscular-“Son of the Sheik” and “Young Rajah”
o Cary Grant in ‘North by Northwest’ (1959) Wore no less than 12 identical suits in the crop dusting scene
Flugel-‘Great Masculine Renunciation’:
o Since late 18th Century
o “Man abandoned his claim to be considered beautiful” (1930, p. 111)
o “modern man’s clothing abounds in features which symbolise his devotion to the principles of duty, of renunciation and self-control
o Hollander-‘Sex and Suits
o Craik, 1994 ‘The Face of Fashion’
1950’s:
o First questioning of gender roles
o Demographic changes: enormous numbers of young people
o Emergence of youth cultures
o Serious questioning of traditional gender identification
James Dean:
o ‘Rebel without a Cause’
o Dean was bi-sexual
o Characters he played were in touch with their feminine side
o First moment in a police station
o Vulnerable yet masculine
o Rebellious yet romantic
o Early metro
o ‘Giant’ poor boy from the wrong side of the track
o Sartorial aspect of James Dean characters is appealing to the early metro-sexual man
o Marlon Brando-‘Guys and Dolls’
o Montgomery Cliff
o 50’s the age of the chest
o Male torso fetishized
o Burt Lancaster in ‘From here to Eternity’ (1953) Blue collar sexuality
o Paul Newman ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’
o Alain Delon in ‘Plein Soleil’ (1960) First French film where the male body is fetishize
o Steve McQueen-Blue collar boy who became a movie star
o John Travolta in ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977)
o Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun’ (1986) About a love affair between men
o Homo-erotic sub text which gets stronger in the 80’s
Gangster Film and the Suit:
o “Vanity in a man […] came to signify evil degeneracy (the most obsessively…” (Bruzzi)
o ‘Goodfellas’ (1990)
o ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994)
o ‘American Gangster’ (2007)
1980’s:
o ‘Menswear revolution’
o ‘Grooming’ products
o Men in ads and on billboards
o ‘homo-spectatorial gaze’ (D. Fuss, S. Nixon)
o ‘the new man’
o Men can look at other men without spectator
o Nick Kamen in Leiv’s 501 ad (1985)-increased sales by 200% The campaign that propelled the new man
o Legitimating consumption
o Changing gender roles had happened
o The rise of the metro-sexual
o Accustomed to the visualised to the male body
o ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ (2001) Oppositional duo
o ‘300’ (2007) A reaction to the new man
o Persians are the other in ‘300’
Bibliography:
o Bruzzi, S. ‘Fashioning Film Stars’
o Chapman, R. ‘The Great Male pretender: Variations of the New Man Theme’
o Craik, J. ‘The Face of Fashion’
o Flugel, J.C. ‘The Psychology of Clothes’
o Mulvey, L. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’