Movie Special Effects
...s like a bit of an outlandish statement to me. I tend to think that by over-analyzing the presence of a black figure in a movie reinforces racism. Perhaps this “token black man” is just another actor and the fact that people feel the need to represent this person is saying something about the analyzer and not the director’s purpose. There is another point that she raises regarding the movie Outbreak where she feels that black people are pointed to as the enemy (134). The line could be referring to this idea, but it could also be trying to make the people that have to drop the bombs realize that they need to be sensitive to the situation. The other point that Kakoudaki makes is about the over-use of special effects especially in the science fiction/disaster film genre. Special effects are dumbing the imaginations of today and function as “a kind of technological pornography (115).” The example of Titanic compared to Volcano is used. “It is as if the special effects in Titanic are secondary to the love story; in a film such as Volcano, the special effects are the story (117).” Volcano as a movie would not have survived relying solely on the imagination of the audience, without the special effects. Even the directors are aware of this fact. Mimi Leder, director of Deep Impact, says that we need special effects to support some kinds of stories, such as her film. Accepting that a movie could not exist without special effects is a bit of an insult to people. I guess that part of the reason that I feel this way is because I have a guilt complex with wasting my time watching pure entertainment films and then trying to analyze what I consider to be crap in order to squeeze some meaning out if it. But it is also because it seems acceptable to zone out in this society for very large amounts of time. This is proved not only by the low-quality movies that are Blockbuster hits, but by the national average of television watching: 4 hours a day watching, and 7 hours a day with the television on. Lastly, all of these things rely on the way our culture has le...