Manovich, Manovich, Manovich!

I started Software Takes Command thinking, "I can handle a book that has a fifty-page introduction, important or percieved-to-be important ideas in italics, and asks the questions that not too many people ask anymore (like 'how does Word work?')." I'm not so sure now, but I have some definite ideas about what this book tries to say.

First off, let me say this: Apple (helmed by the evil Steve Jobs, even after death) and Microsoft have made their living off keeping us away from the actual viewing of hardware and software, i.e., "how the sausage is made." Apart from that one Apple computer in the early part of the 2000s with the inside portion visible through different-colored bodies, both companies have made it a priority to keep the user at a safe distance. This is understandable from a business sense (unless you want to take apart the computer or product to figure out how it works and how to steal said design, you're not likely to succeed in said intellectual theft), but it also seems to be the real-life Revenge of the Nerds that the films only hinted at. The IT guy is the most important figure in any company, because he (or she, to be politically correct) knows what to do when everyone's computers start misbehavin'. Sleek designs and "wowee zowee!" graphics on our phones (well, not mine, I'm the one guy in America who still has a flip phone) keep us from asking the pertinant question "how does this work?" And that's usually how progress rolls.

Think back to all the various "new things" technology has given us just in the last half of the twentieth century, and how "new" and "exciting" they once were compared to how they are viewed now, seeing as they're more commonplace today. I think Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey plays differently today than it did in 1968, just because we're immune through media saturation to the wonders of outer space presented in the film. If today, a filmmaker tried to get away with a space shuttle docking with the International Space Station that takes up a good chunk of screen time (not to mention being set to the "Blue Danube Waltz"), he'd be laughed out of Hollywood. Trains were the space shuttles and rockets of the nineteenth century, as Manovich alludes to; gradually through constant use, the novelty wore off and we stopped asking "how does steam cause the train to run?" Luckily for us (well, some of us), Manovich is here to ask the questions in regards to software.

Some of his insights are worth considering, but I feel like we have to slog through an awful lot of "yes, I know how that works, but thank you for going into exhausting detail for me." I don't want to bash Manovich (I just love that name, it sounds like some crazy-eyed inventor of the nineteenth century), so I'll restrain myself and move on to the next thing that the book got me thinking about.

In the last chapter (which, full disclosure, I haven't finished as of this posting), Manovich describes the incorporation of software advances into film-making, and here's where I get to show off my Film Studies minor (money well spent, state of South Carolina!). What was interesting to me was how Manovich highlighted the use of computer-generated images (CGI) in the 1990s, when the idea was both to leave the audience stunned at how clever and amazing said effects were but also not to overwhelm them with questions of "how did they do that," i.e., break the audiences' willing suspension of disbelief.

Fiction, whether in film or any other medium, relies on suspension of disbelief: yes, we know inherently that we're simply seeing still images speeded up to suggest movement on the part of human (or cartoon) characters, just as we know the words on a book's page don't really mean that this person we're reading about (be it Captain Ahab, Beowulf, or Kim Kardashian) has ever actually existed. There have been movements to call attention to such artifice, of course, and each time this is done those practitioners of whatever "shocking revelation about the nature of fiction/cinema/art/whatever" pat themselves on the back and think "gee, weren't we clever?" But the truth is, art needs that disbelief to both be present and also to be suspended, at least until the audience is lured in and can't turn away. And movie effects have been a large part of that.

In the olden days, for instance, a monster in a horror film was just some poor schmuck (probably the second cousin or brother-in-law of the director) stuffed into a suit and told to walk around with a chainsaw or axe in hand to threaten the idiotic teenagers who thought it'd be a good idea to spend a night in the haunted house/abandoned campgound, etc. But effects that seem tame today could sometimes be revolutionary at the time, pointing to new avenues for artistic expression (2001 helped George Lucas realize his vision for Star Wars). The xenomorph in the original Alien (1979) was just a guy in a suit, but because of the audience's willing suspension of disbelief, we could believe that this creature was real (and that we wanted nothing to do with it). With the advent of CGI, it was believed that more realistic monsters and creatures could be imagined, without distracting the audience from the artificial nature of the creature in question. Of course it meant that actors were usually reacting to something on a green screen, but the poor brother-in-law of the director got to sit down and relax until someone needed to make a coffee-and-cocaine run for the crew.

But as Manovich points out, there's been a shift in the thinking: movies like Sin City thrive not on the realistic integration of CGI effects but in the very highlighting of that artifice for dramatic effect (see, the book had an effect on my writing!). By calling the audiences' attention to the very artificialness of what's onscreen, they play with the notion that disbelief needs to be suspended by realistic action, in a sense.

Not to exhaust the point, but consider a film that's been made and remade a couple of times: The Thing (1951, 1982, 2011). In the original version, directed by Howard Hawks (yeah, I know the credits say Christian Nyby, but it's a Hawks movie through and through), the alien creature that threatens the camp of intrepid Arctic scientists is a giant carrot, basically, and played by James Arness as a walking, grunting "Other" that can be defeated using good old American know-how (and electricity). In John Carpenter's version, and the "prequel" that came out almost twenty years later, the alien is able to assume the identities of the guys in the camp, one at a time, and form a perfect copy that is convincing up until it's revealed as such. In this case, special effects of the real-world kind play the bad guy or guys: characters who are revealed as "Things" stretch and twist into grotesque manifestations of your worst nightmare when it comes to having your body torn apart. The most recent version (which I haven't seen much of, beyond the trailer) does this as well, but through the "magic" of CGI. We have the classic attempt to integrate CGI effects so that we both notice them and aren't distracted by them to forget what's going on onscreen (at least that's the filmmaker's hope). In that sense, the 2011 version is then not only a return to the premise of Carpenter's version, it's also a return to the "antiquated" idea of CGI both being integrated into the film and thus noticable. Once again, state of South Carolina, your money was well spent on my Film Studies minor.

I think, as someone who's interested in art, it matters to me whether CGI effects dominate a film (like Sin City), calling attention to themselves, or try to blend in (the most recent batch of Star Wars films) without necessarily doing so. No one is saying that having an actual person (again, the poor brother-in-law of the director) in a monster costume is infinitely better than having that same monster rendered by CGI (well, some people are; I think it's a case-by-case basis, myself), but software continues to redefine the logics and phsyics of film-making, and it will be an interesting time to view what sticks and what falls by the wayside in terms of computer effects.