Flims Affect on the Way Life is Seen

Many things have an effect on the way we view the world around us. Our opinions are shaped by external forces, and, now, especially in the digital age that we live in, our view of the world is often shaped by the media and the consumer culture around us. We are relying on things that are not tangible- they don’t actually exist- to tell us what is going on in the world. For instance, when we watch a news report on television, we listen to dialogue on a talk radio program, we are not, according to some, actually experiencing the "aura" of these things.

Walter Benjamin in his article, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" defines this so called aura as "the unique appearance of a distance, however close it may be." An example he gives is a branch which casts a shadow over a person. When looking at this branch, you experience its aura. Although when watching a film we are not actually experiencing the original aura of the actors, but we are being presented images by means of a camera. Benjamin contends that when an audience identifies with an actor that they are really just taking the position of the camera, and thus identifying with it. He also points out that often, the product of a finished film can be decieving. We are not always seeing what we think we are, but rather, video can be edited, splicing two shots together, or special effects can be used to portray something that is not really there. This brings up an issue as to how much we would like to be influenced by film. In this day and age when Brad Pitt can be transformed to an old man for the lengths of an entire movie, we need to evaluate the way that film distorts our perception of the world, and if these so called "fabricated" images of special effects are valid.

In any case, however you define the experience that film presents, there is no argument that it presents a view of the world that is juxtaposed with the one we know. In the case of Fight Club, a movie whose story alone can change the way we look at the consumerism and role of males in our society, the actual film has quite an impact on the perception of the world around us. In particular, Fincher's camera, and the dark, bleak, green-tinted cinematography alter the way we perceive the movie, and also the world.

The camera work is unique, original, and very important to the movie. From the opening scene, where we are presented with increasingly bigger and bigger pictures of the brain and then travel out through the narrators nose, and down the barrel of the gun, we are thrown into this world analyzing every detail of the minutia that is our lives. Fincher's shoots small, everyday objects in close ups that fill up the screen, as we, the audience, are taken through a trash can or around an empty room being filled up with possessions. In his article, Benjamin seems wary that an audience does not identify with the original source of an aura, an actor, but rather a camera, which presents the actor to us. In Fight Club, the focus is not always on the people, or the actors, but on the camera work- as we become the camera and are gliding through the stories of a building or down the hall.

In the language of film, we do not need to see something happen to understand that it is occurring. Fincher shows us a sequence of shots of donuts, tea bags, dollars in a basket, and the list of the disease groups over audio from the narrator. We understand the meaning of these shots to mean that the narrator was going to countless support groups. We don't actually need to see it occur. Film, as opposed to real life, does not need to show us the actual sequence of events in real time for us to believe it. It does not follow the rules of the real world, but it still draws us into a world that we want to believe is real.

One consequence of this understanding of a film, however, is that we are subject to the whims of the camera, and in particular, the director. In real life when we look around a room we focus on different things, the way people act, move, touch, look. In a movie, these shots are presented to us, and we understand how the director or main character is looking at the world. In one particular scene where Brad Pitt's character is reading off the rules of fight club, Fincher cuts around the room, alternating shots of Pitt speaking with that of the audience. He shows a man popping his gum, a hand taking off a ring, cracking of fingers, the slide of a shoe on the floor, the whip of a belt as it is being slid through the pant loops of someone's khakis. This shows us, what details the director wants us to see in the room.

In contrast, we see the narrator's boss speaking to him, and do not hear it, as he narrates that "after fighting everything else in your life got the volume turned down." We also see quick glitches in the film, prior to Tyler Durden's first appearance, that illustrate the deterioration of the narrator’s psyche. This is an example of the audience being able to see life through one of the main character's eyes, instead of the directors.

Film allows us not only to escape and become a part of a movie's story, but it allows us to see an alternate view of the world. We can use this alternate view to shape our own everyday way of seeing the things around us.