Poetry Power

Through viewing this week’s films, doing this week’s reading and viewing Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, I realized several things about the poetic mode that I hadn’t fully grasped before.  I’ll ruin the punch line right now and just tell you what I came to realize.  Basically, the poetic mode has built within it the ability to mesmerize its audience in a way that few other styles have.

I first realized this when watching Laughter, then saw it again as we watched Glass.  Pretty much every piece after that just confirmed it for me.  Basically every element allows for a spellbinding experience.  The usual lack of narration allows the viewer to be sucked in and view in the content in a way that a narrator would prevent.  Narration isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does guide your audience to a degree, while the lack thereof allows for further exploration on the part of the viewer.  Their mind is free to wander in whatever direction they’d like, uninhibited.  The use of music and rhythmic editing also has the power to bring its audience in closer.  Music allows for a subtle kind of narration that at least clues the audience in to how they’re supposed to feel and the predictable rhythm of it often leaves one tapping their toes due to its catchy tune or beat.  The use of juxtaposition in editing is also particularly effective in making the viewers think.  During Berlin, I often found myself thinking why the filmmakers chose certain shots in sequence and losing myself in my own thoughts wondering this.

As I realized the power built within the medium, I found myself wondering how the filmmakers sometimes get away with being so heavy handed without us caring.  Take Glass for instance.  The piece is obviously somewhat more kind to the glass blowers than it was to the industrialized machine babysitters.  Why are we ok with this?  Generally, I think that we accept it because we’re explicitly aware of what’s going on.  In other words, I think I accepted that message because I knew I was being fed a message and it happened to be one that I agreed with.  If the music had been swapped in the piece, glorifying the machine workers and belittling the glass blowers, I think I would be much more aware of how much I didn’t agree with the message of the piece.

To prove this point, I picked something on theyoutube that I feel demonstrates this.  The first time I saw this, I didn’t really know what to think.  I remember thinking it was a really cool commercial and the sentimental value of it was obviously high.  This definitely has several elements of the poetic mode in it.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the entire thing depicted a commercialization of sentiment; a sort of manufactured love, which I wasn’t as wild about.  I’d be interested to see what conclusions you all drew concerning this poetic-esque commercial.