He goes on to entertain and defend the notion that the DVD made a movie more like a book.
I think this is appropriate for the blog because he is referring to that point that McLuhan made, "all media work us over completely," a point that we've also been discussing in the classroom.
So now, ironically, we read movies more like books; or, according to Bordwell, we have the ability to do so. How, in light of his insight, should we think about the notion of seeing media as something that "progress?" I'll leave you guys with a quote and then a link to the article:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/05/13/new-media-and-old-storytelling/
This sounds odd, because we think of digital media as replacing print. Yet consider the similarities. You can read a book any way you please, skimming or skipping, forward or backward. You can read the chapters, or even the sentences, in any order you choose. You can dwell on a particular page, paragraph, or phrase for as long as you like. You can go back and reread passages you’ve read before, and you can jump ahead to the ending. You can put the book down at a particular point and return to it an hour or a year later; the bookmark is the ultimate pause command.
Hey, he brought up Choose Your Own Adventure novels! We're so cutting-edge.
ReplyDeleteI find it perplexing that he doesn't bring up what I think is the prime example of this--Youtube. My favorite movie, which is that one French film they named after me, has been uploaded to Youtube at various times by various people, and I have my favorite scenes favorited. I don't know how odd this is, but I know the movie so well that I can just pick out a particular scene that fits my mood and watch it like I would a track on a CD. Well, I don't watch tracks on CDs, but, you know.
And sometimes, actually, I'll just LISTEN to a scene. I'll be doing homework and for some strange reason want to hear people talking in French. Or I'll want to hear a musical number from Moulin Rouge, or that part of Inglorious Basterds where the action pauses and Samuel Jackson says "HUGO STIGLITZ". Makes me happy every time I hear it. So yeah, I do think movie-watching has become more fragmentary--within the confines of my dorm room, at least.