Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine by Mather Philippe.;

Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine by Mather Philippe.;

Author:Mather, Philippe.; [Mather, Philippe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78320-044-3
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)
Published: 2013-06-14T16:00:00+00:00


Pragmatic Features

Pragmatics concerns the relation of signs to their interpreters, which may be understood as the many discursive contexts that determine textual semiotics. Variations in time and space will affect our reading of a given photo-essay, by modifying the cultural and ideological context in which the reading takes place, which in turn can affect generic conventions. These conventions do not only represent photojournalistic production blueprints, but also a series of expectations, reading protocols or interpretive keys that exist not as empirical, textual constructs, but as mental dispositions in the cultural sphere. Three of the most significant pragmatic concerns in photojournalism include the medium’s realist discourse, the distinction between information and entertainment values, and the issue of poetic licence, that is, the artful staging of documentary material. The relevance of these features to Kubrick’s development as a visual storyteller will be made clear.

Realism in the photo-essay may be analysed in terms of both specific representational practices and the rhetorical effect of these practices, namely the generic expectations associated with the photojournalistic medium. Realist techniques adopted or developed by magazines such as Life and Look can be described as the journalistic equivalent to the Classical Hollywood Cinema’s continuity system, the so-called invisible style of mainstream filmmaking (Thompson, 194). For instance, realist expectations for the narrative photo-essay required photographers to avoid pictures displaying a direct mode of address from the social actors, similar to the Hollywood dictate not to look at the camera (Kozol, 47). This enhanced the perceived candid quality of the snapshots, even if the pictures had been staged and not “caught on the fly.” Non-narrative essays are more amenable to formal portraits, including a direct mode of address, tapping this time into a more self-conscious reading of documentary realism, which highlights the authenticity of the photographer’s relationship with the human subjects. This particular technique is also used in portrait and art photography, indicating a distinction that is pragmatic in nature and not textual. Bridging the gap between narrative and non-narrative conventions of realism might result in slightly transgressive uses of the direct mode of address. In “Glamor Boy in Baggy Pants,” Montgomery Clift never looks at the camera, suggesting that Kubrick’s essay is not so much an authentic portrait, but rather an opportunity for Clift to play another role, an ironic reversal of the standard handsome-movie-star layout. The University of Michigan pictorial (May 10, 1949) includes a photograph of painter, curator and educator Jean Paul Slusser, shown lecturing to an art class. Kubrick chose to position the camera at the head of the classroom, with Slusser pointing in the photographer’s direction from the middle ground and the students examining the object of their instructor’s lecture from the background. This direct mode of address is both reflexive and slightly disconcerting, because the participants do not appear to be posing for the photographer, yet they are nevertheless looking in a direction that collapses the source of the viewer’s gaze with an unknown object behind the frame, indicated by Slusser’s gesture. The reader of Look magazine has been unmasked, and is being interpolated by the University art professor.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.