Who’s a Good Boy?: Moonrise Kingdom and Value Judgements

By Emma Gibson

If you have not seen Moonrise Kingdom it is about two children–Sam and Suzy–who fall in love and runaway from their troubled lives together. There is a scene in the movie when the two encounter Sam’s Khaki Scout troop while navigating through the woods. Things turn violent when the Khaki Scouts try and capture Sam and Suzy to bring them back to their families and the Khaki Scout dog, Snoopy, is shot in the neck with an arrow and killed during the altercation. When the Khaki Scouts retreat, Suzy looks over Snoopy and asks, “Was he a good dog?” To which Sam responds, “Who’s to say?” (See clip here.)

This exchange got me thinking about the use of categories like goodness and badness as tools for authorizing one’s personal interests.

Suzy’s impulse to measure the value of Snoopy’s life in terms of “good” or “bad” is a move that reduces a lifetime into a single label, a move that Sam avoids. “Good” is not a universally agreed upon concept. A hunter may believe a dog is good if it is obedient while a family might argue a dog is good if it is loving. Some cultures see dogs as a nuisance rather than pets which would lead to an entirely different approach to the animal’s death. The goodness or badness of the dog’s life may be irrelevant in the moment of death because value judgements are overpowered by the fact that the number of stray dogs in a particular area is causes several problems for the community. The death of the dog may help solve a larger problem of overpopulation.

Sam’s question “Who’s to say?” pushes the viewer to rethink who gets to decide which person, society, or culture gets to define what it means to be good.

Snoopy might be a good dog in the eyes of the Khaki Scouts because he is a faithful companion to the boys all summer, not because his attributes are inherently “good”. If Sam told Suzy that Snoopy was good, Suzy’s idea of Snoopy is influenced even though she never knew him. To acknowledge that he does not have the ability to authorize goodness or badness, Sam avoids marginalizing those who disagree with him. He recognizes the implications that come when one assumes authority over value judgements. To deem Snoopy a good dog ignores the fact that reality is made up of multiple conceptions of goodness. Sam opens the doors for discourse that does not submit to categories, but wrestles with the intricacies of belief, authority, multiplicity, and truth claims.

“Hello, from the children of the planet Earth!” : The Voyager Golden Record and Judith Butler

By Emma Gibson

Before Voyagers 1 and 2 were sent into space in 1977, a golden record was attached to the outside of each. The record includes encoded images, an introduction by the U.N. Secretary at the the time, spoken greetings in many different languages (The title of this post comes from this section.), a compilation of the sounds of Earth, and a musical playlist comprised of twenty-seven songs. It was put together by a small team led by Carl Sagan during the months leading up to the launch and sought to capture the essence of human beings through media created for any form of life that happens to find the record floating in space. (Included in my post are a few of the encoded images on the record.)

This record reminded me of Judith Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself and her claim that accounts given by a subject are tailored around their interests because they are put together in response to a call from the other. Butler asserts that people would not give an account of themselves to themselves. It is only when ‘the other’ requires that we give an account that we are inclined to give one. By ‘other’ she means that-which-is-other-than-ourselves–whether that be another individual or any circumstance that prompts us to reflect on ourselves. An ‘account’ is essentially a narrative given to paint a specific picture for the other, a picture that maintains the interests of the subject giving the account.

 

After passing by Jupiter, the Voyagers are on course to continue their journey into deep space forever (or until they fall apart) which, I believe, acts as the call from the ‘other’. The possibility of a human object venturing into the unknown prompted NASA to try and answer the question, “Who are we?” Looking at the contents of the record, I would argue that the creators wanted anyone who found the record to see humans as peaceful, diverse, and rich in culture. There images are of people eating, human anatomy, objects and beautiful landscapes but none of war, murder, or illness. There are sounds of laughter and heartbeats but none of screaming or weeping (with the exception of a baby crying). Atrocities are left out because, ultimately, accounts are for the people who make them. The account given on the Golden Record was fabricated to satisfy the interests of Carl Sagan and his team: to persuade life in other galaxies to think fondly of us here on Earth.

 

And I am not trying to say the record should never have been created. I love the soundtrack and highly recommend listening to it all the way through. I am only suggesting that it is merely another account that ignores a reality that rests in a slew of experiences and interactions that in no way amount to a single linear, digestible narrative.

First image from Flikr user Ian Burt. CC BY 2.0.                               https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/#

Other images from Flickr user Jerome Gangneux. Public Domain Mark 1.0. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/  

Is Foley Fake News?

By Emma Gibson

In the first episode of BBC’s Planet Earth, David Attenborough opens by saying the series will “show you the planet and its wildlife as you have never seen it before.” Each episode focuses on a specific environment (deserts, rainforests, open ocean, etc.) and captures in high definition what most of us will never see during our lifetime. But does it show us the world?

What most viewer’s do not know is that these cameras—while they are revolutionary for film—are unable to capture sound, which means that almost all of what we hear in the documentary is either manufactured by foley artists or comes from a collection of previously recorded sounds. Foley is the art of using everyday objects and materials to mimic other sounds and is used in the sound production of Planet Earth. A fascinating video by “Great Big Story” gives examples of these techniques. For instance, the sound of crunching snow you might see on screen is actually footsteps on sand or corn starch. The sound of large ocean waves is actually one person splashing their hands in a small pool. Dog footsteps are paper clips attached to the end of a glove. These sounds are paired with footage and presented as though they were recorded together.

The implications of foley artists in film reminded me of Hayden White’s account of the construction of historical narrative. He argues that historians present their accounts of history as true and complete when, in fact, they are highly influenced by their word choice and subjective framework. History can be a way of giving us a better understanding of the past, present, future, ourselves, society, and the natural world. However, this comes with inherent limitations. Historical events alone are not sufficient when seeking to give the reader a clear idea of what is going on. The historian is forced to infer, create, explain, analyze, and make connections to form a digestible narrative. But this becomes problematic because the historian is grounded in a framework formed by their own upbringing, race, religion, language, etc. that determines how they organize their narrative, what they choose to include (since we cannot possibly add everything), and their word choice even when they are seeking to be as objective as possible. And the way the reader takes in a particular account influences the way they understand history themselves.

When applying this argument to foley we should first consider the two options the directors of Planet Earth must face when making the documentary. BBC wants to make a series that is true to reality. Just as we cannot go back in time and experience the past, we will probably never hear the sounds of the rainforest canopy so they aim to give us the next best thing. But what is closer to to an authentic experience of the natural world: watching the footage with manufactured sound or with no sound at all? Either way, we are not hearing the world as it truly is. The directors can be compared to historians because they have material and it is up to them to decide how we, the viewers, get to experience it. They edit and select clips to form an interesting narrative that gives us an opportunity to see the world as we “have never seen it before” and, in this case, they chose to go with foley.

It is not an act of deception, but there are implications to this that should be considered. The limitations of the historian’s language and personal framework can be compared to the limited materials of the foley artist and their own beliefs on what something in nature might sound like. This means that no matter how diligent they are in replicating the sounds of earth, it will never be identical to the natural sounds themselves. Because of this, foley artists influence the way the viewer understands nature. An episode of 99% invisible illustrates my point with the example of elephants in nature. In the wild they are almost silent, but in documentaries they are depicted as making noise because the viewer would find it uncomfortable to watch an animal that weighs over two tons tread silently over African plains. The directors are shaping the series to fit the expectations of the viewer just as historians shape their narrative based on what they believe the reader should know or what they consider relevant.

What if we went into nature and experienced it ourselves? Then we would be confronted with the fact that—like historians—we all have our own frameworks by which we experience the world and this framework would determine what aspects of nature we notice, what parts we find interesting, what kind of connections we make, etc.

We are trapped in endless limitations, but this does not mean that we should give up on our quest for a complete truth. When we recognize that history and documentaries—and most every narrative we encounter—are never fully complete, then we are inspired to investigate these representations and their sources further. Knowing that the sounds in Planet Earth do not match the images on screen opened the doors for me to watch the series from a new perspective. Now I am skeptical of each noise and think critically about the director’s vision for the audience’s experience. Now, I won’t be confused when I hear my first elephant.

Image from Flikr user Brian Lauer. CC BY 2.0.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/