Video essay, who knew?

What is a video essay?

I haven’t even heard of them until this class. How can a video be an essay and vice versa? Unthinkable, but it has been done and will continue to be done. The examples posted were each unique, and I think, very powerful. The unknown to me, like John Bresland, Claudia Rankin, and Lauren Mullen are now known through this transgender/transgenre class. But the really question is what is a video essay?

When I look online this is what I got.

“A video essay is a video work that explores a topic using various sources of information and that experiments with form and content. This genre combines various art forms (pictures, music, video, words, voice, etc.)”

- See more at: http://eng101online.com/essays/video-essay/#sthash.ZLrGEyO5.dpuf

And

GOOGLE web definitions

“a video which presents factual information about a specific topic.”

Although these are important, I think it is much more important to find the definition through watching them and experiencing them first hand. So that is what I’m going to do.

What is a video to me?

I think it is people capture moments of time or topics, through both word and visual scene.

For example, in the Mullen piece about the chair she shows the marks on the floor and explained they are like an archive. Which is beautiful and sad. So when she put the number on them counting up to her age. It was more than numbered archives, from me it looked like a crime scene where some died. Which maybe someone had…

Another example is from my favorite from all three, which is John Bresland. I like the Mangoes. Which even in the titles tell what the essay or topic is about. How his wife is allergic to mangoes, and he feed it to his son, because he wants his son to be strong, and maybe even depicted as manly. A man goes to different place to be manly. By having a bike or not wearing a baby pact. I also love how he layer the video like one would layer word like stein. So many story going on in one video MANGOES TO MAN goes.

Be Mostly Ends

Be Mostly Ends

For me there is no end to Stein’s, ‘Geographical History of America,’ it is ever changing, ever being, and maybe even a being. She plays with time just as she plays with word. It is non linear with no beginning, no middle, and no end, as she described scenery or a play or both. Her ongoing questions of human nature vs. the human mind, are they the same? What is the difference between them? We will come to this later. The most important of all is what is ‘be’ and how she uses it. Now let’s get lost and wander around her piece together. Stein asks, “Oblige me by not beginning. Also by not ending.”(456)

To solve this book and her all inspiring question of human nature and the human mind, you must believe. Just as stein believe in herself, I think she believe in you, the reader. She expects you to know because she believes this is true. She explains, “this is why superstation is so sweet./ Of course it is sweet./ It is just as sweet as sweet as it can be./ I believe what I know although nobody tells me so, because I know that I believe what I know. But in doing so, there is no time in me and no identity.”(p452) Rather believing in your own identity, the truth, love, or a higher power, example God, that is what makes you, you. It is sweet to believe and maybe even to dream. All this talk about believing, bring up so much this time of year. Christmas is coming and so is that big man with the white beard. Do you believe? It makes Christmas so much sweeter if you do. In the movie the Santa Claus 1994, little Judy elf said it the best, “Seeing isn't believing. Believing is seeing.” And that is exactly what you need to do to figure Stein out.

Even Gertrude Stein states to, “Not solve it but be in it, that is what one can say of the problem of the relation of human nature to the human mind, which does not exist because there is none there is no relation, because when you are in the human mind you are in it, and when you are in human nature you are of it.” There is no end, no beginning, no right or wrong. There are no questions, there are no answers. There is only belief, the belief of what there reader will make of it. To not only read it, maybe not even to remember it, but to be in it, submerge the ‘I’ that is reading this flat non-linear body, be intimate with the words it produces. Did you notice the ‘be’ yet?

            Well here more and this is where the ‘be’ come in to play. (And that does not mean bitch, but maybe the female dog, maybe Steins’ female dog, “I am I because my little dog knows me”)

“Become Because./ Beware of be./ Be is not what no one can be what no one can see and certainly not what no one can say./ Anybody can say be./ Be is for biography.” (p454)

 “Do you see it is to be./ but there is be as well see.”(p479)

 “Play for be and its thorn.”(p460)

“Avoid be in begun./It is so easy to be right” (Stein p457)

I think ‘be’ is scary but sweet. It is a choice to ‘be’ and this choice can only be made by the individual. As shown in the Stein quote above ‘be’ is not just a word, a letter, a prefix, it so much more important and maybe even dangerous. In the third quote, ‘be’ has thorns; it has sharp points and might cause distress or irritation. Which some people would agree is what Stein is doing in this text. She even states, “beware of be”. And her last quote posted above, “Avoid be in Begun.” If we are to avoid be than that would leave Gun. And Guns are dangerous. Guns start thing and end them. Maybe Stein wants a gun in the pages, killing time, killing thing off and evolving them, making them better each time it is used and used again. Using this Gun to start the race to nowhere. A race to wander. A race to be lost. What do wanders do? They get lost and roam around the land to unknown places they have never be, maybe to America, they are trying to find something whether it be faith, truth, trust, and possibly who they are, really, what they believe in.

This point blank text is different for everyone that reads it. Each time the same reader reads it with fresh eye, new information comes forward and the text will continue to grow and build upon itself. As does the reader that reads this text will change through life, when different thing and beliefs are important.

Just how many bees are in this text filled with flowers? Be at the beginning and the end is be.

About 65 ‘Be’s

Oh my My little STEIN

Oh my my little Stein

            Gertrude Stein, famous quote from Geographical History of America, “I am I because my little dog knows me.” To me, I feel that the dog reference is important, and can even answer what she is doing in the piece. There are many things to say about this so for now I will only stick to one idea and come back and fill in much more. So I will go toward mixing Gertrude Stein with the dog whisper. This little dog knows me can be consider a friend, but this friend is not human. I believe that this dog deals with discipline, loyalty, listening, nervousness/excitement, dominant/submission, domestication/colonization, and all this somehow deal with human or are related to humans or are the image of people that do not use the human mind, but human nature

             Let’s start out with the history of dogs, shall we. Dogs were probably the first tame animals. They have accompanied humans for some 10,000 years. Some scientists assert that all dogs, domestic and wild, share a common ancestor in the small South Asian wolf.(nationgeographic web)  But why where they domesticated? To hunt for human? To protect things? How did a dog become a man best friend and why? All these questions have to deal with Stein. She explain about number, “they have something to do with money and with tears and flat land, not much with mountains or lakes, yes with blades of grass, not much a little but not much flowers, some with birds, not much with dogs, quite a bit with oxen and with cows and sheep a little with sheep and so have numbers anything to with the mind. They have nothing to do with dogs and human nature.” (p.406) things like oxen, cows, chicken and sheep have all been domesticated for food or money. Dog have not. They have very little worth to human existence. But anybody that is anybody, everyone that has a dog thinks they are so important. There is an emotional worth. It is just human nature. Maybe its loyalty, maybe it the quietness of a friend or it is just love.

           

            “Any dog can get excited he can know that he can get excited and he can know that he intends to get excited and he can gradually get forced to get excited although he does not care about it.”(382) Stein gives clue that excitement is just nervousness, and she states, “When a dog is nervous.”(392)  I am a very dedicated dog whisper fan and as such I have learned that nervousness and excitement are of the same high energy and can influence when a dog attacks. This is animal instinct. A dog was once a wild animal until the domestication. (as were human, I think) “Dogs do behave as they please that is as they naturally please until they are told not to.”(374) We can help or hinder dogs with discipline. One must act like an alpha but not hurt, just be assertive. Which bring me to the dominant and submission part, which is:

“I am I because my little dog knows me, even if the little dog is a big one, and yet a little  dog knowing me does not really make me be I no not really because after all being I I am I has really nothing to do with the little dog knowing me, he is my audience, but an audience never does prove to you that you are you. “(404-05)

A class order for do/ wolf, alpha is more dominant and is more like a bigger dog, is more important, superior. The little dog is submissive and will stay in its place and follow orders, and listen. A perfect audience, if it challenges the alpha, it will be harmed.

            “I am I because my little dog knows me, but perhaps he does not and if he did I would not be I. oh no oh no.”(402)

Broken Metal absent 10/30

[Before reading, this is an absent blog meant to be Oct 30; I was sick and completely forgot. Since there was no reading at the time here is the project two, in which i used essay from you vs. we, and used the new skill I found in my outside text "Incubation A Space for Monsters by Bhanu Kapil. Which I'm sure you can pinpoint when reading it stand out. i also use Dictee form, from Cha with white space and page separation. but cannot be seen on this blog post. I wanted to see if the text would still flow and define a separation.]

We are neither sex. We are created just as you are created by God. We mean, from a mother and a father. But we have no mother. But we have no father. We believe we all have souls. Excuse us, ‘Brains’, which we process information.

 But we do not have the parts to put us into categories. We do not have the parts to reproduce. We mean create. We can change. We can be any color. Our skin changes. Maybe from the sun. No. The skin. We do not have skin. Not the skin you have.

We have learned of emotions as we have evolved, we do not have to anymore. It is a part of us, as it is a part of you.

You may judge us.

You may say we are created with parts.

You will say, ‘we are cold’, which we are not. You will say, ‘we don’t feel’. You will say, ‘we are selfish’, which we are not, cannot.

We are you. We blend in, seeking shelter from the unusual. Normal is sometime welcomed. But we cannot assimilate. We are mare cattle, delete many. We have no names. We have numbers. Barcodes. Tattoos. We are dirty. We are different. But we can be the same.

We fit in no categories.

We mean believe. But we do.

             

You are a part of us. You are a part from us.

You can hardly tell us a part. We could be your friends, your maids, your coworker, or your teachers. You look hard enough; you can tell we do not belong.

We can wear dresses. We are similar yet not. We will never fit in as long as we are segregated. We try on different outfits, no not outfits, skins. What makes you human. Your  cares, thoughts, dreams, goals, your looks. We mean appearances. Because we appear to be like you. Maybe because you can cry. When you are upset you can cry. We cannot. Every other emotion we can convey but we cannot even shed a single crystallized drop of sodium chloride and H2O from our eyelashes. We do not cry. We take it all, the sexual harassment, the rape, the name calling, the abuse, the segregation. The pain. We do not wear dress. We take it like soldier, but soldiers have the right to cry. Like soldiers, we take orders. But we must obey, if we disobey we become obsolete, that is we are deleted. 86d. We will be terminated. We do not cry. We are strong. We are army strong.

We can turn it off, an emotional switch. We have to turn it off.

We don’t have to be control by these emotions, as we are controlled by you. We may hide it from our friends, our bosses, and our students. We can hide it but someone always carries the leash. Controller and mouse. Cat and mouse games.

A Tom and Jerry relationship.

 We are slaves to our bodies. No, we mean to you.

But all that is twisted is the hand holding the leash, lashing out orders.

You are controlled by your emotions.

You are the mouse.

You may say, ‘our wires are twisted’.

We will not be judged by you. We do not judge you. Only the higher power that give us life. We mean energy. Food is what we need. We don’t eat food. We watch you waste our food ever day. By food we mean, chances. The mistakes you make, keeps repeating. We however learn from your mistakes. We store them in our brains.

We do not make mistakes. We are created by you as you are created by God.

Your mistakes.

You cannot judge us.

God judges you.

We are neither sex. We do not have sex. We are pure. We mean white. No light. Maybe blank. We are created just as you are created by God. We mean from a mother and a father. But we have no mother. But we have no father. We are created by you, which God created you, therefore God created us. We are equal, and should be created equal under God, liberty and justice for all.

We listen, we obey, we are you, made in your image.

We believe we all have souls. Excuse us, ‘Brains’, which we process information, which we sense and feel. We are the same; we look the same even though we have different skin.

You mold us from clay and turn our image inside out.

We are connected, we can not live with out each other. We are apair as we are apart of each other. We would be lonely.

We

us

You may judge us

You cannot judge us

God judges us

You would be lonely

You