readings for the week

I was amazed at Trinh T. Min-ha's artistic abilities and how she was able to blend those with ethnic culture, theory, and politics. She's a modern day "Renaissance woman" and we need more of them. By having knowledge or talent in various disciplines, we are able to see from different perspectives and we can teach them to the people in our livesand make the world a more enlightened place. From this, we can as Min-ha did, "seek to question existing framework and boundaries" (RFRT 213).

How fascinated I was to see rhetoric from the point of view of films. I actually didn't even think about how the real and the filmed are actually very different in terms of space, time, and rhetoric. She says that truth is actually "produced, induced, and extended" (RFRT 225). From what I read, I think she says most of us are spectators and prefer to watch passively than take action and inform others about injustices. The role of a filmmaker then is to provide the hidden information to the masses. She compares a filmmaker to "the almight voice-giver" who "desire[s] to service the needs of the silent common people who have never expressed themselves unless they are given the opportunity to voice their thoughts by the one who comes to redeem them" (RFRT 229). I agree with that except for the "redeem" part. It makes them sound like they are sinners or in the wrong for not speaking up by themselves.
I was really surprised when she explains that "Reality is more fabulous, more maddening, more strangely manipulative than fiction" (RFRT 231). It's kind of ironic. I think reality can be manipulated into fiction but not vice versa.

I guess I can try to relate Min-ha's reading to the time we made i-movies in Dr. Blair's computer-mediated writing course. We were to make videos observing a colleague while he/she was teaching. We then, had to manipulate an hour's worth of teaching into a 5 minute summary. It was very difficult! Filmmaking or in our case, "super-amateur" film making consists of constant decision-making. What is the focus? What should we show and what shouldn't we show? How can we make something undesirable become desirable? Another problem was transitions. As we were able to insert our own transitions through i-movie, there were so many types. We had to determine what was acceptable or unacceptable. Although I was drawn to the diverse transitions, fonts, and colors available, I knew my final goal was to present a professional video document. I used clear, easy to read fonts and colors. I broke up the course into how the instructor began the course, how students prepared for group presentations, how students presented, and finally, what students think are the ups and downs of a computer-mediated course. After toiling for hours, I was able to create a document that my colleague used for her own electronic portfolio. Thus, filmmaking is time-consuming, takes energy and effort, but is well worth the experience. :)