Bike film

"Barthes' many monthly contributions that made up Mythologies (1957) would often interrogate pieces of cultural material to expose how bourgeois society used them to assert its values upon others. For instance, portrayal of wine in French society as a robust and healthy habit would be a bourgeois ideal perception contradicted by certain realities (i.e. that wine can be unhealthy and inebriating).

I certainly don't deny that Barthes will be right in asserting that there will be covert values inherent in much that is shown, and that it often helps to step back and analyse a little further, perhaps with information gathered elsewhere. For instance, I thought the recent film 'Goodbye Lenin', which I saw with two English friends, contained quite a lot of covert rightwing baggage, and I applied this liberally in my *criticism *of the film--although it did not form part of my interpretation. My friends were unaware of any of my grounds for criticism.

Whether I'd make a full-blown theory out of it I don't know. I find that people often become rigid when trying to follow rules that may have been formulated as an expression of the expertise of a skilled person.

He found semiotics, the study of signs, useful in these interrogations. Barthes explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were second-order signs, or significations. A picture of a full, dark bottle is a signifier relating to a signified: a fermented, alcoholic beverage - wine. However, the bourgeois take this signified and apply their own emphasis to it, making ‘wine’ a new signifier, this time relating to a new signified: the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing wine. Motivations for such manipulations vary from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to maintain the status quo. These insights brought Barthes very much in line with similar Marxist theory"

Why not say, simply, that the object 'bottle' may contain wine, and that wine may evoke different associations in different people. This can be manipulated by a skilled film-maker or by a good script or good camerawork or good lighting, etc. I don't see anything being gained by Barthes' terminology. Am I missing something?

Anyway I digress, and I probably only threw in Barthes to gain a little credibility.

:) Haven't we all?

Perhaps important to note that I don't think the film-maker of 'Perspective Lines' intends a covert imposition of their own values through manipulative means. ;)

You haven't swayed me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Salt_Flats are the Jerusalem of the motoring world, iconic for its involvement in land speed records, but also regularly used for drag racing and speed events.

And would you know, I had never heard of it before. Seriously. The Bonneville sign didn't mean anything to me. I certainly noticed the tyre tracks but didn't connect them to anything beyond them being tyre tracks.

Top Gear very recently went there (not a huge endorsement I know, but you'll take the point).

As far as I'm concerned, they could just have stayed there. ;)

However the filmmaker makes a very explicit reference to this: a sign saying "Bonneville Speedway 1 mile". He also references tyre tracks later on. Whether you know of the history or not, these are laden signifiers. For me this creates an allegory of our experience of riding on the road: the cyclist is riding a place world famous for its association with cars, on even the 'speedway' itself. The environment is desolate, hostile. His exertions are parallel with the exertion of the cars over the decades seeking to go ever faster, set their own stones in the sand for someone to beat the next time. As I said, it becomes an allegory for our experience on the road, our daily efforts to deal with a hostile, deadly enviroment and ultimately survive.

I think a difference between us is that I'm actually blissfully unconcerned with what the film-maker may have meant/intended. I am only concerned whether they succeed in expressing it. One problem with such a short film is that there is no exposition. Dramatically, I think this sort of context should always be explained in an exposition so that thickos like me with little knowledge of speed record history can know what's going on and it is not just synthetic background provided, for themselves, by those in the know, a hit-and-miss affair.

So, if you're right about the film-maker's intentions, I think that making a film with this sort of background without a dramatic exposition is a fail; I do not think that it is enough to dump in some 'signifiers', however obvious they may be to some people. It is in any case not in the film-maker's interest, as it limits his or her receptive audience.

I'm a big traditionalist about dramatic structure. At the same time, I realise that the film-maker may not be and may have had a very different kind of film in mind. Fair enough.

I do like the film, BTW. I wouldn't say I love it, but it's a nice piece to watch.