La Jetée: Critical Analysis and Formulating a Thesis
1) Prepare a one-paragraph statement that answers this question:How does La Jetée convey a message about the impact of technology on humanity?
When you’ve completed the paragraph:
2) Summarize its point in a one-sentence thesis
answering the question.
3) Post the paragraph, followed by the thesis, to
the blog, before 9 am Monday, September 16 so we all have a chance to read them.It will help to consider:
What is the story really about?
How does the plot present the story?
What role do science and technology play in the plot?
What makes this film unusual?
What do these
unusual formal and stylistic features contribute?
Please do not
consult any resources--criticism, reviews, fan pages, etc.--available online or
in print before you write. Rely on your own analysis and ideas.
You
can find a copy of La Jetée to review
here at the class blog and on DVD on reserve in the Corcoran library.
A helpful guide to How to Write a Thesis Statement is available at Indiana University WTS.
13 comments:
The use of black and white still images and voice over narrations in La Jette by Chris Marker, is what makes the film quite unique. The story is of a man who is selected to time travel to the past to help aid or even prevent the present. The story takes place in a destroyed Paris, and the survivors live underground in a network of galleries. While he time travels he discovers love and the mysteries of time travel and his horrible fate. The plot of the story is similar in more modern movies it seems. Some sort of human apocalypse. Whether it be by some sort of massive world war or science/technology harming the human race. Time travel proves to be harmful in the La Jette. Some other movies I can compare the same plot or underlying story/theme are Donny Darko, I, Robot,I am Legend and World War Z. La Jetee and all these other movies have the same underlying message about the impact of technology on humanity. We our basically killing ourselves with technology indirectly. With the development of technology to make life easier on us, it is turning against us with complications we cannot see beforehand. Humans are foolish and greedy. We mess with mother nature. We create some sort of time machine where fate is being altered. Time wasn't meant to be changed. WE create a smart robot. The robot becomes smarter than us and tries to exterminate us. Robots are not a natural creation. Humans cannot alter what isnt ours to alter.
Human nature is foolish enough to alter what should not be altered with the invention of new technologies.
La Jetee is set in a post apocalyptic period with scarce resources (food, water, energy, ect.) and displays the scrambled mad dash to acquire such necessities to maintain a sustainable homeostasis in the portrayed "society". In this society there are two classes of people: prisoners and captors. Obviously being the dominant of the two, the captors are the main engine behind the most basic of evolutionary drives: survival. This pathological need has forced the captors to use the prisoners as tools for "greater good" of society (like the basis for soylent green). Being as this film is set in the future (relative to 1962) technology seemed to be best used in this quest for resources. Challenging the human drive of survival leads to acts of desperation and this is portrayed in the use of the technology in conjunction with the blatant disregard for the lives of the prisoners. Humanity is a somewhat fickle term, which fluctuates from the greater good to the compassion for the individual. In the minds of the Captors they are maintaining their humanity by sacrificing few for the good of many, yet in the minds of the prisoners the captors have no humanity because they are killing or maiming innocent lives. So this raises the question "Is the survival of the species or survival of morals more humanitarian?" This echos the argument of ends justifying means. Throughout history there have been accounts of many loves being used to advance the well being of society. For example, with out the Nazi experiments in concentration camps we would not have had malaria drugs, bone/muscle/nerve transplants, understanding of hypothermia and treatment, chemical burn treatments, and treatment of gang green as expeditiously as we might have. (I am not in any way condoning the acts in the Holocaust I am merely pointing out an historical precedent)As for a more recent, none life threatening example, computers and other technologies are being used on the education and entertainment of children. While providing stimulus and a broad range of culture, literature, ect. it is also limiting social interaction, breeding a generation of sociopaths (considering the fact that mirror neurons (empathy triggers) do not activate when looking at screens). Though this scenario is not a life or death matter, it follows the same basic predicaments of the the Nazi experiments which is Society vs. Individual, Knowledge vs. Compassion, and Growth with sacrifice vs. Stasis without. So as far impacting humanity, that all depends on the definition of humanity.
Technology is not an inherently negative or positive but merely challenges the constructs and precedents of humanity and how we organize our morals, ethics and ambition in society.
La Jatee is set in a time of desperation, when humanity's survival instinct is at its most primal. According the film, when technology is a last resort used as a means of self preservation instead of innovation and progression, humanity will abandon any good, moral, consciousness in the defense that the end justifies the means. A French prisoner is abused through experimentation and presumably psychological trauma, because he is the single valid test subject for time travel. Even mankind in the future decides that in order to preserve their existence by aiding the past with technology beyond its capability of creating (appearing to ignore any consequences this could have later). It is unclear whether the murder of the French protagonist is a power move or a sloppy clean up for a paradox in time, however because they were used to living in a world where survival takes precedent over morality, it is viewed by the audience as a small, insignificant part of saving the greater good. Of course they still pity the protagonist's death, and more so the lack of resolution in his assumed romantic interest, but it is more profound that his death, although tragic and unfair, was genuinely unsurprising. It could also be argued that war itself is caused and further escalated by weapons invented with a “kill or be killed” mindset as justification.
Self preservation and survival takes precedent over the importance of morality, the use technology only amplifies this basic human instinct.
La jetee
The dichotomy between reality and desires pushed for innovations which we thought could solve all humanly problems. Technology was believed to be our savior: There were innovations in science and medicine which we had faith in until they started to cause irreversible problems. This can be seen in La Jetee. The looming figure of the scientist controls the protagonist’s reality. Technology drifts him away into his desired world: The past. A time when airplanes seemed incredible and the most constant innovation was love. When he returns to reality, in an underground prison from the radioactivity above, all sense of faith is lost again. Technology surpassed what it was meant for, it became an instrument of control and power instead of an aiding tool. Even if the protagonist got a sense of attaining his desires by reliving the past, the danger of living through desires and not being aware of the consequences guided him to his ultimate fate. This is the paradox of technology, it promises an easier future yet can dangerously lead us astray.
The faith and dependency that humanity can have on technology can become dangerous when we see it as our savior instead of an aiding tool.
The film La Jétee blurs the distinction between humanity and technology in disturbing ways. The story is told in a series of black and white images with only one brief human moment of motion—a breath and the blink of an eye. This unusual method contributes to the overall theme of the film by rendering it more mechanical and emotionless. The images of Paris after the third world war clearly show the destruction of the physical world by technology. However, it is the effect of that destruction upon the survivors which presents the most disturbing images. Even though he is inflicting untold pain, insanity and sometimes death upon his victims, the head experimenter appears throughout the film as emotionless and detached and the eyes of the camp police are hidden by large technologically enhanced glasses. By contrast, strong lighting is used to emphasize the bone structure of the faces of their human experiments, making them appear almost skeletal. In an ironic plot twist, it is a very human attachment to a vivid memory which allows one human experiment to achieve time travel and bring technology from the future to save the present. The ultimate conclusion of the story is foreshadowed by the images of the future people, who are shown as not fully human, with each having a technological enhancement attached to its forehead. Because the experimenters also wear technological enhancements in the form of specialty lenses, they become visually associated with the people of the future. Ultimately it becomes clear that although the human race survives the physical destruction of the war, its humanity is destroyed by the technology which physically saves it.
Science and technology not only cause the destruction of the physical world, but in a slower and more painful fashion, technological experimentation causes the loss of humanity among the survivors.
Technology represents the cold lack of guilt that many people are capable of in this world. This film was released less than twenty years after World War II: a time where Europe, in this case France, is still highly sensitive toward Germany and German scientific advancements. Technology is allowing humanity to disconnect from each other and develop a lack of morality, which allows people to subject others to something as painful as time travel through repeated injections. In the film, the main character goes to the future and he meets many people, but they are all brief encounters. The future is always presented as a time where technology becomes much more advanced, leading to a colder and technological based society. The man in shown in sunglasses, which doesn’t allow him to maintain that human, soulful connection one has through direct eye contact.
The world is allowing itself to disconnect itself from it’s most human-like characteristics as the advancements of technology continues.
La Jetée embodies the concept of time travel through the lenses of a man that acts as both a captive in a dystopian world and as the audience’s sole source of empathy in comprehending the delicate line between life and death. The film concentrates for the large part on the rapid sequencing of images that depict the destruction of a race, that transitions into the disarray of a single man being experimented upon. This stress caused upon a human body by a foreign force, which we understand to be an incomprehensible technological tool, is felt through the foreign whispering, sounds of thundering heart beats, and the echoes of a cathedral choir. This allows the audience to grasp the fluctuating and agitated state in which the human mind can be prodded by an outside source, which is represented by the head experimenter that appears sterilized from all human compassion. Human compassion is nonexistent in this world where experimentation is seen as a priority. Thus, the film suggests that technology can trigger a lack of compassion. The photographic shots of human statues left in ruins visually summarizes an apathy towards the captives of an unnamed war. As a result, we can understand the distance to which basic human morals can disintegrate when pursuing a solution for “the greater good”. The poignancy of what is being lost when humanity chooses technology over life is best summarizes through the role that love has to play in this film. The man that serves as a psychological testing ground for his captors reclines back consistently into the most basic cherished memory that a human begin can chose to lose themselves in; the memory of a love that they have lived. To end his last memory of his lover with his inexplicable death reminds the audience that the concept of time travel can be attained when one realizes that one cannot fully escape the ticking of time. Consequently, technology is seen as both a friend and foe to a man that doesn’t understand the magnitude of its force.
Science can bring upon the disintegration of human empathy when appearing in a society in an abrupt fashion that inhibits human command and comprehension.
Pearl Freeman sent this comment by email:
Man and machine has always had a relationship since the beginning of the industral revolution yet, even before so. As we develope more and progress through out time the things we create gets better and better. In La Jetée, the flim, it expresses the idea that when humannity is in a crisis, survival is cricial and anything will be used to become th survivor. This means even surrcoming a random innocent person to the will of technology. The way la jetée shows this is by making a person become a gunnie pig for an experiment that has fell countless time. There is no moral when it comes to humans in desperate situaitions. Also, not just in this particular film, but in many films and graphic novels shows us that now and then we rely on our technology, our machines, to aid us in everyday life and when there is a horrible threat to humanity itself.
Technology is pushed more and more everyday because we believe it is our future savoir.
La Jetée is set in this post apocalyptic world, which I believe abstractly references to the holocaust, during which time doctors would experiment on prisoners. To “gain incite on the race or to further medicine”. As people rise to power their use of technology will take a turn for the better or worse. With all the power; they make decisions without considerations or care. From how I experienced La Jetée I saw the “time travel” as brushes with death, euphoria for the afterlife and the past, the experimenters using to technology to control his life in whole between living and dying. As he dies his memory floods with good times, positivity and his love, but the doctors do not yet want to release their prisoner so they bring him back to life to play again another day.
With power and technology comes great control; which can easily fuel a war of cat and mouse.
Everything revolves around technology in our world today. Who says we won't have time travel in ten years? La Jetee based in 1962 was a time where humanity was questioned.
The subjects in the film were used as guinea pigs for the "time travel" experiments as they were sent to their past memories, disturbing memories. The film within itself was disturbing as it rolled through still images and the narrator in the background speaking over creepy whispers, heart beats, and bird sounds, as the repetition of images.
This took part throughout the whole plot of the film adding to the disconcerting events taking place. As I watched this film I had multiple emotions. My mind went straight to thinking about how technology was being tested back than to the present time feeling as if we were the guinea pigs in our present day. I compared the film to a present time movie- Inception- Also a science fiction film focusing on time travel to the past and the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious. These film's are very similar in a sense that when both the "prisoners" in a sense, go back in time the memories have to do with happy but frightening events, they are like a dream; A dream within a dream. The person experiencing these visions are in a state of subconsciousness very similar to events happening in La Jetee. It may have been the awakening of technology idea that lead us to where we are today with our present technology that is ultimately taking over.
In conclusion, La Jetee has many questions to be answered and posed theories to be discussed about.
The film ‘La Jetée’ shows how the two types of people in the world interact with technology. The firsts type of person sees technology, or in this case; time travel, as a way to help mankind by using a “for the greater good” excuse, to say that the needs of many outweigh the needs of the few. The needs of the many within the story happened to be the survival of mankind and the needs of the few are the prisoners and those experimented on by the Germans. The second type of person, the narrator, sees time travel as the only way to make him happy. These unusual film aesthetics, such as the almost complete use of still photos and silent dialog paired with the first person narrative, force the viewer to watch the narrator’s surroundings and thoughts slowly change from a tragic day on the Jetée, to a dark present where he becomes an experiment, then sunny parks in France where he meets the girl from his past, and finally lonesome future where he knows he will never be truly alive without the girl from the past.
The film ‘La Jetée’ demonstrates the impact of technology on humanity by illustrating the two types of people in the world and allowing those people to interact with severe consequences of happiness, success and death.
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