Abstract Film and YouTube

I found Stan Brackhage’s “Mothlight” to be a film that was short but had an interesting message. “Mothlight” questioned the idea of what film was. Brackhage used a dead moth as his subject for the short film. However, instead of filming the dead moth, he crushed it into the filmstrip. This produced a film that was a bit confusing for the viewer. Brackhage’s “Mothlight” makes the audience question the way film examines its subject. Most films manipulate the picture in front of them to create a narrative. Many would argue that this narrative, which provides a narrow scope for viewing reality is often mistaken as absolute reality by mass audiences. Brackhage’s film shows the moth in fragments, an altered piece of a real moth. It’s almost as if Brackhage directly alerts us of the falseness of the reality we see in film.

            YouTube has undoubtedly changed the face of film, particularly experimentalist film. The span of viewership crosses across countries. For experimentalist film, this trend means that artists have a venue to have their voice heard. What one person films in their backyard can be seen millions of miles away. I’m sure that this trend has been to the delight of many young film makers, but I think the philosophy behind YouTube is even more in sync with experimentalists. YouTube is essentially about the experience, about sharing experiences. It’s about how the viewer feels. The viewer is allowed to interact with the video: like it, dislike it or comment it. The viewer can watch a video from the comfort of his own home. These ideals are at the core of avant-guard film philosophy. These abstract films want to teach through feeling, concentrating on the spectator’s reaction to what’s on the screen rather than what’s actually on the screen. Again, this echoes with YouTube, a site where a seemingly pointless video of a double rainbow can hit thousands of views within hours. These viewers don’t really care about the double rainbow, they watch for the reactive emotion it produces. Therefore, YouTube is unconsciously encouraging experimental films just in the very nature of its site. Viewers are subscribing to experimental, abstract, structuralist, and surrealist film philosophies without even realizing it.