DaGa Romanowska wonders:


> WebCams seem to be the ideal documentary if you take into consideration
> Flaherty's theory of this film genre. The camera is the key point to
> this new kind of picture. It just records what it sees and doesn't
> interfere. The "subject" creates itself and is taken from the real life.

Of course, that view (which Flaherty violated himself from time to
time) ignores the fact that the very act of selecting what to frame
within the camera's view "interferes" to at least a limited extent.  It
also fails to provide a context for what it sees (which, in contrast,
an earlier film like Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA attempts to
do).


> And here a problem arises. If the WebCam is placed at a private home and
> it's the owner's decision, it's only a matter of exhibitionism. The net
> voyeurs can make advantage of it but they are allowed to, the owners
> "gave" them their permission. Actually, it is another similarity to the
> cinema. Both on your computer screen and in the cinema you can observe
> somebody else's life and problems. The screen in these two cases is
> similar to the key hole... It is more problematic if the WebCam is
> placed in a public place like a park or a street. Now it is a matter of
> protecting your privacy. WebCam becomes a tool of Panopitcon...

There have been a number of commentaries suggesting that the
distinction you suggest is not as sharp as it seems.  A case in point
is the TV documentary series AN AMERICAN FAMILY that followed a
middle-class family day by day, eventually peeling back its various
layers of dysfunction.  But how much of that dysfunction would ever
have surfaced without the camera is problematic, at least.


> I'm curious to find out what is your opinion on WebCams. Do you think
> that WebCams may endanger our privacy? Do you know any publications
> which concern this problem? I've been also thinking of some particular
> films which use a camera as a peeping tool: "The Truman Show", "The End
> of Violence", "Peeping Tom", "Rear Window". Can you think of some other
> titles? What other than mentioned in here similarities and differences
> between WebCams and cinema can you notice?

Also see Albert Brooks' REAL LIFE, which is a spoof of AN AMERICAN
FAMILY, the film versions of Orwell's 1984, and the soon-to-released
Ron Howard film EDTV, which promises to be a different take on the
subject of THE TRUMAN SHOW.  Instead of an unwitting hero in an
artificial world, the previews suggest a protagonist who is quite
willing to let the world in on his own life, like a more concentrated
version of MTV's REAL WORLD series.

If the Italian neo-realists and some of their successors saw cinema as
having the potential for allowing audiences to see the (fictionalized)
lives of "ordinary" people, I think that WebCams will function as
websites have--potentially powerful sources of information and
exchange, but also with a huge potential for self-indulgence and
outright deception.

Don Larsson
----------------------
Donald Larsson
Minnesota State U, Mankato
[log in to unmask]

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