thuvia ptarth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thuviaptarth) wrote2008-08-24 11:50 pm
thuviaptarth) wrote2008-08-24 11:50 pm
Panel report: In-Depth Vid Review
Usual disclaimer re: reliability and reconstruction. Let me know if you have corrections. {} = my comments after the fact
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sweetestdrain, "Gloria" (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
astolat: "Make her mine" means "make her my weapon".
lierdumoa: There are vids that are meta and vids that are crazy constructed reality and this vid is both.
sanj: It's constructed reality as a comment on canon.
millylicious: It takes the time to allow the story to build.
nightchik: The beginning credits and the end credits are these iconic Terminator sequences, washed pink, transformed.
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untrue_accounts: A lot of people have said the vid "comments on canon." I'm not seeing it. Can people expand on that?
heresluck: Canon crystallizes around "nightmares"--Cameron as terminator, Cameron as machine--making clear some things that had been softpedaled before.
seperis: She objectifies Cameron (who is an object, or whom Sarah sees as an object), it's an object fantasy.
taraljc: Sarah is alone; she has to allow Cameron into her life, this thing she hates. Reese is absent, John appears only as her son and vulnerable, Charlie appears only as something/someone she cannot have. Cameron is all that's left.
lierdumoa: But it's not just about objectification, it's about the two of them affecting each other.
sockkpuppett: This is a vertical vid: everything is up and down (pull-ups!), everything is going forward--until Sarah sees Cameron as a woman to be desired and then things go horizontal, which means exactly what you think. But look at Sarah, striding forward, even sitting down: her spine is straight, she's very vertical.
sisabet: When things spin, watch out. These machines are so badass.
sockkpuppett: There's a low, desaturated palette until the desire kicks in.
sisabet: It's when Sarah watches Cameron bend that the danger comes in, that the desire comes in.
Audience: The audience's confusion evokes Sarah's confusion -- wait, what's going on? What am I seeing? Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?
sockkpuppett: The POV's interesting. At first we're outside, looking at Sarah, then we're in Sarah's head looking at Cameron.
obsessive24, "Climbing up the Walls" (Firefly/Heroes/Supernatural)
jarrow: To me, the most important visual of the vid is the DEAD END sign.
absolutedestiny: The DEAD END sign and the HAVEN sign: incest is both, the family as haven and the family as dead end.
cesperanza: That's the pretest of the incestuous relationships, the entanglements.
Audience: Most of the outside source worked for me, but not the picture of young Alec in the mirror: it's such a significant shot in Dark Angel. {*cough* So significant everyone forgets it's Ben. But yeah, that shot breaks the narrative for me, and it's so significant in the vid, too. I think the problem isn't that it's from Dark Angel, but that Jensen Ackles looks so young, and the narrative I get isn't that Dean was always already a monster, but that committing incest makes him monstrous to himself. It's not supposed to be a flashback shot. It's supposed to be the consequences of what came before in the vid. So I think even more manipulation would have worked better for me--if the image were manipulated so that it was clearly an older Jensen Ackles, clearly a Dean reflection in the mirror, that would have worked better.}
heresluck: That clip of the parents! The horror of the internalized parental eye looking on. And the incredible, intense protectiveness the elder siblings feel.
astolat: There's the recurring imagery of spirals, of bars, the sex superimposed on the car driving past the bars. The vid brings you in by starting off with stills from the source, which prepares you for the later manipulated stills.
bradcpu: It looks so direct and simple, even though it's using three different sources and telling a complicated story.
Audience: There's great delicacy in the setup.
millylicious: It's such a statement on fandom and fandom's mania for incest pairings.
lierdumoa: Everything is in the single image of blood in a downward spiral. Blood is family, family is spiralling: these people are way too wrapped up in each other.
seperis: The stills create this feeling of stasis, entrapment: you're trapped here, you're never going to get out.
ellen_fremedon: I read the stills as an external POV--they bring in the entire outside world. Mom and Dad's eye.
Audience: Nathan looking at his kids seemed so predatory, made me wonder what he was planning.
[Group shudder]
astolat: It opens with scenery, makes you wait for faces.
morgandawn: There's a dip into an external POV, but the end brings you back into the elder brothers' heads.
cesperanza: The lyrics are perfect and horrifying: You can't get away from me, even if you want to.
pharis: The younger siblings we see only from the outside, from the elders' point of view: we see them in pain, you hurt, you hurt, you hurt, I need to fix it, but we don't know why they hurt or what they think.
elynross: The elder siblings are predatory from the beginning.
absolutedestiny: The aspect ratio in everything is cropped to the widest wide-scale, the Serenity source, which is clearly deliberate, since it doesn't take up most of the vid -- it contributes to the feeling of claustrophobia.
{There was some discussion during the review of the lack of an outside world, but I disagree, or rather, I think it's significant that the outside world we see is threatening: the shard of glass that kills Peter, the cup of blood that is summoning a demon, the yellow-eyed demon in the shape of the Winchesters' father, the hands of the men in blue. We see the threats to the younger siblings, and we see the parents, and we see Nathan's kids, whether as echoes of Nathan and Peter or a sign of what Nathan gives up for Peter; and the parents serve this dual purpose, they're the eyes of disapproval and horror, the internal authority, but they're also an indication that the threat is internal as well as external: the threat is incest, is the elder siblings, but the threat is also the powers of the younger siblings, which all three elder brothers are canonically in greater or lesser denial about. The parallels aren't just popular fandom incest pairings or protective elder brothers, but also younger siblings who are endangered by themselves, by their own gifts, and whose parents have been complicit in their children's exploitation: this is more or less explicit in Heroes and Firefly, and has been hinted at pretty heavily in Supernatural. So there's a sense in which the family, the haven from the threat of the outside world, was already corrupted even before the elder siblings had to take on the role of family authority--that that's why the elder sibling takes on too much authority and responsibility.
{I don't see the younger siblings as necessarily more victimized than the elders by the incestuous relationships: I think the vid is deliberately ambiguous on this front. We see them crying or in pain after sex, but we also see them moving towards their siblings, sleeping peacefully.}
sweetestdrain, "Gloria" (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) astolat: "Make her mine" means "make her my weapon".lierdumoa: There are vids that are meta and vids that are crazy constructed reality and this vid is both.sanj: It's constructed reality as a comment on canon.millylicious: It takes the time to allow the story to build.nightchik: The beginning credits and the end credits are these iconic Terminator sequences, washed pink, transformed.untrue_accounts: A lot of people have said the vid "comments on canon." I'm not seeing it. Can people expand on that?heresluck: Canon crystallizes around "nightmares"--Cameron as terminator, Cameron as machine--making clear some things that had been softpedaled before.seperis: She objectifies Cameron (who is an object, or whom Sarah sees as an object), it's an object fantasy.taraljc: Sarah is alone; she has to allow Cameron into her life, this thing she hates. Reese is absent, John appears only as her son and vulnerable, Charlie appears only as something/someone she cannot have. Cameron is all that's left.lierdumoa: But it's not just about objectification, it's about the two of them affecting each other.sockkpuppett: This is a vertical vid: everything is up and down (pull-ups!), everything is going forward--until Sarah sees Cameron as a woman to be desired and then things go horizontal, which means exactly what you think. But look at Sarah, striding forward, even sitting down: her spine is straight, she's very vertical.sisabet: When things spin, watch out. These machines are so badass.sockkpuppett: There's a low, desaturated palette until the desire kicks in.sisabet: It's when Sarah watches Cameron bend that the danger comes in, that the desire comes in.Audience: The audience's confusion evokes Sarah's confusion -- wait, what's going on? What am I seeing? Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?
sockkpuppett: The POV's interesting. At first we're outside, looking at Sarah, then we're in Sarah's head looking at Cameron.obsessive24, "Climbing up the Walls" (Firefly/Heroes/Supernatural)jarrow: To me, the most important visual of the vid is the DEAD END sign.absolutedestiny: The DEAD END sign and the HAVEN sign: incest is both, the family as haven and the family as dead end.cesperanza: That's the pretest of the incestuous relationships, the entanglements.Audience: Most of the outside source worked for me, but not the picture of young Alec in the mirror: it's such a significant shot in Dark Angel. {*cough* So significant everyone forgets it's Ben. But yeah, that shot breaks the narrative for me, and it's so significant in the vid, too. I think the problem isn't that it's from Dark Angel, but that Jensen Ackles looks so young, and the narrative I get isn't that Dean was always already a monster, but that committing incest makes him monstrous to himself. It's not supposed to be a flashback shot. It's supposed to be the consequences of what came before in the vid. So I think even more manipulation would have worked better for me--if the image were manipulated so that it was clearly an older Jensen Ackles, clearly a Dean reflection in the mirror, that would have worked better.}
heresluck: That clip of the parents! The horror of the internalized parental eye looking on. And the incredible, intense protectiveness the elder siblings feel.astolat: There's the recurring imagery of spirals, of bars, the sex superimposed on the car driving past the bars. The vid brings you in by starting off with stills from the source, which prepares you for the later manipulated stills.bradcpu: It looks so direct and simple, even though it's using three different sources and telling a complicated story.Audience: There's great delicacy in the setup.
millylicious: It's such a statement on fandom and fandom's mania for incest pairings.lierdumoa: Everything is in the single image of blood in a downward spiral. Blood is family, family is spiralling: these people are way too wrapped up in each other.seperis: The stills create this feeling of stasis, entrapment: you're trapped here, you're never going to get out.ellen_fremedon: I read the stills as an external POV--they bring in the entire outside world. Mom and Dad's eye.Audience: Nathan looking at his kids seemed so predatory, made me wonder what he was planning.
[Group shudder]
astolat: It opens with scenery, makes you wait for faces.morgandawn: There's a dip into an external POV, but the end brings you back into the elder brothers' heads.cesperanza: The lyrics are perfect and horrifying: You can't get away from me, even if you want to.pharis: The younger siblings we see only from the outside, from the elders' point of view: we see them in pain, you hurt, you hurt, you hurt, I need to fix it, but we don't know why they hurt or what they think.elynross: The elder siblings are predatory from the beginning.absolutedestiny: The aspect ratio in everything is cropped to the widest wide-scale, the Serenity source, which is clearly deliberate, since it doesn't take up most of the vid -- it contributes to the feeling of claustrophobia.{There was some discussion during the review of the lack of an outside world, but I disagree, or rather, I think it's significant that the outside world we see is threatening: the shard of glass that kills Peter, the cup of blood that is summoning a demon, the yellow-eyed demon in the shape of the Winchesters' father, the hands of the men in blue. We see the threats to the younger siblings, and we see the parents, and we see Nathan's kids, whether as echoes of Nathan and Peter or a sign of what Nathan gives up for Peter; and the parents serve this dual purpose, they're the eyes of disapproval and horror, the internal authority, but they're also an indication that the threat is internal as well as external: the threat is incest, is the elder siblings, but the threat is also the powers of the younger siblings, which all three elder brothers are canonically in greater or lesser denial about. The parallels aren't just popular fandom incest pairings or protective elder brothers, but also younger siblings who are endangered by themselves, by their own gifts, and whose parents have been complicit in their children's exploitation: this is more or less explicit in Heroes and Firefly, and has been hinted at pretty heavily in Supernatural. So there's a sense in which the family, the haven from the threat of the outside world, was already corrupted even before the elder siblings had to take on the role of family authority--that that's why the elder sibling takes on too much authority and responsibility.
{I don't see the younger siblings as necessarily more victimized than the elders by the incestuous relationships: I think the vid is deliberately ambiguous on this front. We see them crying or in pain after sex, but we also see them moving towards their siblings, sleeping peacefully.}
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Huh. Are you sure? I think it's Alec from "The Berrisford Agenda" - he washes his face, he hallucinates Rachel in the mirror, and then he punches the mirror. (um. Not that I've watched that episode an ungodly amount of times or anything.) Though I think the image might flipped.
But yes, I found its use jarring.
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(I can't believe I forgot a mirror-smashing scene in my general mockery of DARK ANGEL: SHOJO MANGA! I think I was too overcome by the convenient piano in Joshua's basement.)
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