There are quite a few upgraded old films around. It’s remarkable what can be done, but what is the fascination here? There are a number of possibilities such as being made aware that people filmed in 1906 did not inhabit a grainy, colourless world where everyone walked around in jerky steps like a puppet. We were aware of it, but seeing it demonstrated like this is somehow satisfying.
But we knew it anyway, so maybe the film is a more convincing way of knowing something, one which involves the senses more closely and perhaps more emotionally.
In which case we may go on to ask if the moving image may be entertaining and informative but also hands strangers a much more intimate and perhaps emotional contact with our lives. A much closer proximity than those grainy film clips, old photos or the written word. Particularly the written word.
Almost as if this little clip is telling us why things have gone wrong and will continue to go wrong because the technology allows complete strangers into our lives. We knew that too, but as the clip demonstrates, there are various ways of knowing, some more intimate than others. Or at least there are now.
4 comments:
I think the fascination here is that the increased detail is essentially provided after the event, in our own time; the smoothing out of the jerkiness and the colours were never really there. Nevertheless, they give us the possibility of seeing what things have changed, and what has remained constant. French people of 120 years ago act a lot like we do. But presumably we reach a point, sometime back in history, where gestures, facial expressions and postures start to look alien. Presumably, cats in the (say) 12th Century did that dipping for milk just as they do now. But did people smile the same, and point at things in the same way?
Incredible colour here!
Well worth looking out for more - presumably YouTube?
One of the joys of being an old git is that I get to tell my boys (now middle aged men) that I spent my childhood in a world that was black and white. TV (a single channel, later a few) was in black and white, newspaper pictures were in black and white, and society still functioned on class distinctions in a polarised way. And although I encountered little racism, the 'coloureds' lived in separate communities.
The Sixties kicked a multi coloured psychedelic hole in this conformist structure. I'd compare the Sixties to our current decade, the Twenty Twenties. There's probably another ten years or so of social disruption to come. But we lived through the Sixties and were (probably) the better for it.
Sam - it wouldn't surprise me if people in the 12th Century used what to us would be familiar gestures and similar facial expressions. Medieval stone heads often seen in old churches suggest some similarities to my eye, although some look odd too.
Scrobs - yes it is YouTube. If you click through to YouTube and click on the channel you will see more. Give the video a thumbs up and YouTube may also offer similar videos. There are quite a few now.
DJ - I hope there isn't another ten years of social disruption to come, although it does seem virtually certain. To my mind the Sixties kicked a hole in one conformist structure only to create another. I don't think we ever get away from them, we just become familiar with them and learn how to conform to the new one.
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