So, the Writer’s Conference has ended now and it was so magic. First I got to spend my afternoons with people who work in film and on film. It’s my favorite screenwriter ever. I gave him my book Heart of Clouds and I really hope that he likes it, because if he does, maybe it can be a very big Hollywood film, and knowing who he is as a man, and the heart I have seen in his films — I think that has been missing for some time now, on the larger screen. So please keep your fingers crossed for me!
So, what I did in that book of mine was teach how a boy and a girl could “talk” to each other in the age of one line text messaging and selfies. I addressed things deeply from an Ecopsychological perspective and this relates to all the stuff I said about cognition and so forth.
Walter was showing us this film called “Stone Fox” that he did — a children’s book thing he adapted and it’s from the 80’s. We started to talk about the herd of cows in the film and how they were real cows. Then there was a kid in there who had never heard of the Dust Bowl era and the WPA and he brought up “digitized” film. So I found an article fro the NYT because I had this total brainstorm about the EMO HEARTS we were looking at, and the pre-scripted games — this part is really important.
Okay so like, what if the “films” along the genogram timeline from this period:
1984—————————————————————————–2014
Got progressively digitized and less and less real? In other words — THE REAL WORLD to some of these kids who spent hours looking at the games is LESS REAL than the FICTIONAL WORLD created by the people that made the movies/games. Here is my thought on that, from NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/movies/how-digital-is-changing-the-nature-of-movies.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
So we looked at the EMO HEART images and I was trying to figure out why they can only see three colors — then it was like a lightening bolt this morning, after I read this:
From there it’s just a technological hop, skip and jump to watching movies on an iPad. That’s convenient, certainly, but isn’t the same as going to a movie palace to watch, as an audience, a luminous, larger-than-life work that was made by human hands. To an extent we are asking the same question we’ve been asking since movies began: What is cinema? “The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent,” the philosopher Roland Barthes wrote. “From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here.” A film image is created by light that leaves a material trace of something that exists — existed — in real time and space. It’s in this sense that film becomes a witness to our existence.
Can they only see what is NOT ALIVE when they are looking at the games? Because in that last paragraph it kind of says that. Movies used to be something where people went OUT in big groups together. You weren’t like alone in your room watching them. People were far less BY THEMSELVES at MOVIES. So if the audience was packed — there would be these times in a movie where the audience might start sniffling if it was sad — or totally burst out laughing if funny. I think that we could always learn about emotion from how the SURROUND was feeling about things.
Anyway — so a kid who was ALL BY THEMSELVES (without the MIRROR of the AUDIENCE) as they were watching stuff?
How could they know HOW TO FEEL ABOUT IT.
So anyway I found this great little film on hermeneutics and the image — and check it out.
So if all the HUMANS are digitized and the animals are as well? Is there a blurring of REALITY between what is real and not real?
Then add in all the psychotropic drugs that have been prescribed to that gen, and what are you going to get but a LOST KID. I really mean that.
So anyway that book of mine HEART OF CLOUDS is a FIRST STEP toward REALITY BASED HUMAN interaction. You can read it over on Apple here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/heart-of-clouds/id806196937?mt=11
So in that quote above — a HUMAN is creating the REALITY SURROUND via what the kids are looking at. If it is all monsters and guns and horror — then WHAT DOES THE WORLD LOOK LIKE?
Again: What is cinema? “The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent,” the philosopher Roland Barthes wrote. “From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here.” A film image is created by light that leaves a material trace of something that exists — existed — in real time and space. It’s in this sense that film becomes a witness to our existence.
So like — what I am trying to get at here…. hmmm.
Was ELLIOT walking in a LANDSCAPE where he felt it was LIKE A VIDEO GAME BECAUSE he could not differentiate from REAL and UNREAL?
If so Omg.
Okay so like let’s put our heads together on this one. Quick. Massive interventions need to be made.
Eff. Okay so one way is FILM, for certain. HEART OF CLOUDS is REAL, to be a REAL FILM about actual HUMANS. It’s going to have some animations because it was written in magical realism style around the turtle — but those are in dream sequences only. Anyway if you read the book let me know your thoughts — I have sent free copies out now to bunches of people and even this morning to a guy who works for the Braille Library as a librarian.
If you want a free copy just email me at valentine@valentinebonnaire and request one for mobi.
xxoo!
from Adrienne
ps: so in the Elliot manifesto he was walking THROUGH A LANDSCAPE as if he WERE A CHARACTER in a video game. You can look at that one way as narcissism, or? We could say there was NO REALITY TESTING. That is what we have to try and figure out — and then cure that.
Am thinking up a second intervention for the Alchemy project. For that HEROIC AVATAR for these kids. We can do a sketch of the left hand — like a tracing and then fill with objects and colors — based on touch and natural objects as sensate.
Here is the link to the movie STONE FOX my teacher made… it’s his screenwriting. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094043/
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 