(POP)ulism Film

(Pop)ulism

The process of creating a visual essay is daunting, especially for the beginner. When first presented with the task in my visual research methods course, I found it more than a little daunting. The freedom to create, and critique on endless subjects, within a visual format seems very liberating. Conversely, such freedom is also trying when commenting via a new and unfamiliar medium. Perhaps the most difficult task in this transition from paper to video is knowing where to begin. More specifically, one a might ask, what is expected of an essay that is predominantly visual?

The answer to this question is the most refreshing aspect of the transition from the written to the visual. The visual essay, still in an embryonic stage of use and development in the academic community, is a medium as of yet lacking definitive structure and rigid routine. Whereas the visual essay is moldable, the current expectations of the traditional academic essay are quite established and unyielding. The visual essay has more of an ability to truly express the writers voice because of this freedom to build.

Producing a visual essay was, for me, one of the most engaging and plain fun excursions in my academic career to date. The fact that one has ample room to play with form, voice, reference, and style turns out to be freeing rather than confusing.

It is easier to truly engage the viewer/receiver in a visual format. With tools like sound, framing, and narration emotion is easier to capture. The visual medium makes for heightened suspense, anger, sadness, what-have you, as more of the senses are brought in to play. One does not simply read or look. One must listen as well.

Personally, one of the biggest obstacles I encountered in producing my visual essay was my own technical ability. Although I knew that it was not necessary for the project to be professional level material, my desire to do my best work required me to make my best attempt at editing a short film. I spent countless hours compiling clips and music form the internet and elsewhere and was then faced with the task of creating some semblance of academic form. It was frustrating at first, even a program as simple as iMovie can be challenging when it has never been used. After a few hours of working with the program, however, I was able to mix, mash, and create with much more ease.

Showing the film to the public was another interesting and slightly scary aspect of this project. Most usually, a professor and the student author are the only ones to read a class paper. Part of the idea of the video essay, for me at least, is that it is more accessible, a more operable medium for the public. Thus it was very important to put my work onto the youtube and here on my blog! I hope that my readers enjoy the film, and I welcome any and all comments.

What do Fish and Automobiles have in common?

The title of this entry seems to suggest I'm about to tell a bad joke. Maybe I am!

I can't seem to avoid ending up behind cars touting fish on their bumpers. Apparently some of these fish stand for Jesus, some stand for Darwin (the ones with little legs), and some stand for Christianity eating Darwin (a sticker of a Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish, which seems to

unknowingly say something about natural selection).

This is what I see. This is visual culture on a day to day basis.

We define ourselves by fish on our bumpers. My question is thus, what use does the contemporary left (the people who, I have to assume, sport these Darwin fishes on their cars) have for Darwinism?

I understand that many people who consider themselves politically liberal support Darwinism because they see it as the opposite of the know-nothing brand of Christianity. Marx

himself, while he was quite disparaging about the English literary approach of Darwin, accepted "On the Origin of Species" as a refutation to "the opiate of the masses"-religion.

What is interesting to me is that Darwin polished and presented the idea of survival of the fittest. The idea that the strongest and most adaptable species survive to pass on their seed. Does, as Kropotkin suggested, mutual aid (to put it plainly, helping each other out) have a significant role in Darwin's theories? Do the the social policies of the left (which I myself am a big supporter of) have a role in Darwinism?

I understand the danger of confusing Darwinism with Social Darwinism. But the question remains.

I seem to continuously run into texts that suggest we humans are not so grounded in our political beliefs. Populists on the right and left certainly tend to be birds of a feather, as presented in my upcoming video essay. The hard line creationist religious right and post-modern pushing academic left have forged, in the words of Ricard Dawkins, "a pernicious alliance". Darwinists with Darwin fishes on their Prius and Christians with Jesus fishes on lifted semi trucks seem to both unthinkingly have some perverted things in common. Namely, they both have a love-hate relationship with Darwin (though neither seem to know it).

The right would twist his words to promote social Darwinism, making it alright for the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer. The left twist the same words to eschew religion completely.

My degree in anthropology leads me to this exceedingly erudite conclusion- we are one confused species. Or, even more academically speaking, big brain=big befuddlement.