Response to Family Viewing
After our in-class screening of Family Viewing (1987), directed by Atom Egoyan, the cluster of words you identified to describe the theme of video in the film included confusing and disturbing. Here's your chance to articulate what made the film inspire this unease.
Write a response to the film Family Viewing (directed by Atom Egoyan, 1987) in the form of an essay. Your response should be ~300 words. See this document to find out What is a Response Essay?
posted by Irene Chien @ 7:12 PM
15 comments
15 Comments:
What I found the most disturbing about Family Viewing was the idea of being observed at any point in time. In many different reoccuring scenes, the concept of someone possibly watching you creates an uncomfortable and unsettling feeling. Here are some scenes that explore this theme:
Scenes involving voyeurism
In a repeated scene in the movie, it shows a home camera that the father is recording of the son interacting with the two older women. The women seem oblivious to the fact that they are even being filmed or watched. The fact that he seems to be obsessively recording random scenes in his daily life creates a sense of paranoia for the people being recorded once they find out. I think that is something that is really disturbing about video. You never really know how you are perceived until you see recordings of yourself.
Scenes from the camera’s point of view
The idea that the camera has a life of its own and is its own living agent is presented in this movie as well. There are scenes in the movie where you see the real life happenings as if from the point of view of the camera. This is terrifying because through these shots, it goes back to not knowing when you’re being recorded. You imagine yourself in the shoes of one of the characters, being watched by the camera. This is very unsettling. When real life is presented as a video, it shows how scenes and experiences are perceived and how greatly it is impacted by technology.
Scenes of characters staring straight into the camera
Numerous times the characters in the movie stare straight into the camera, looking straight at the viewer. This is something puzzling because it makes viewers feel uneasy. When you sit back and watch movies, the actors usually don’t acknowledge the presence of the audience and act completely oblivious to the fact that they are being watched. It’s this invisible barrier that separates the actors from the viewers. At the movies, we, as viewers, can just sit back and watch the story and entertainment unfold while feeling safe. However, when the actors look straight into the camera, it seems as if this barrier is lifted. The characters acknowledge our presence with confrontational, straight-on looks. We are now the camera, and we are alive and in the scene with the actors. Now, instead of just imagining ourselves being in the shoes of someone being watched, the movie makes us feel as if we are being watched.
What I found interesting about Family viewing was as Stephanie said the fact that the characters in the movie were able breach the barrier between the camera and the audience. What was most shocking to me was the scene where the young man “switched” his grandmother with the women who passed away. It was not predictable, and I guess that is why it came to a shock to me.
The movie also confused me. I still don’t know what happen to the mother? She shows up in the end and all but it doesn’t seem to be clear. She didn’t simply leave did she? If she did leave in the first place why didn’t she take her mother or take her son along? Maybe it’s just me but I don’t understand how she could just leave her mother with the husband who obviously did not care about her.
Another interesting fact as someone pointed out in class was the fact that he records and yet he never watches them. It seems that the video was taken to record the past, but then again the husband erases and records over it. I mean he could simply keep it and buy a new tape to record on but instead he chooses to erase. Why does he do this? It seems as if he hates the past and yet he uses a camera. A camera can only take pictures and videos of the present which eventually becomes past. It cannot record the future and so why doesn’t he cast of the camera if he is such an extreme futurist.
In his Futurist Manifesto, Marinetti talks about his philosophy about destroying the past so that society can look towards the future and advance. The husband seems to follow in the ideals of Marinetti in that he seeks to destroy the past by destroying the old videos and always talks about the future. If he plans on destroying what he records then why should he record in the first place? Could the reason be that he is obsessed with recording the present because he does not know what would happen next, but that once it is recorded, he knows what will happen and thus he wants to cast it off.
Family Viewing is definitely not a conventional movie. The identities and the background of both the characters and settings of the movie were never explicitly known to the audience. This is the cause of the confusion as the audience tries to identify each character and their relationship with the other characters. The director uses this confusion to enrapture the viewers because this is not like any other ordinary movie in that you can be easily explained the characters.
During this period of confusion, in one of the scenes the boy seems to kiss an older woman that seemed to be a mother figure because of her actions and her shopping bags. I found this to be disturbing because the kissing suggested more intimate relationship between the two. In addition incestuous, relationships have never been condoned by society; therefore, many would find these actions disturbing. Later in the movie the boy switches his grandmother and his friend’s mother to fake his grandmother’s passing away and also gives his friend’s mother a decent funeral. This is disturbing because there is something ethically wrong in preventing a women to be buried under her own name and also to fake his grandmother’s death despite his good intentions.
One word that I thought of when I was watching the movie in addition to confusing and disturbing was surveillance. The movie begins and ends with surveillance. In the opening scene as the boy is changing the channels to the television it seemed like we were in the television looking back at the boy. In the closing scene of the movie as there was a happy reunion among the boy, his friend, his mother and his grandmother there is a surveillance camera sweeping the entire room. As the film ends the camera zooms into that surveillance camera as if to suggest someone is always watching.
Family Viewing is no Hollowman in the sense that Atom Egoyan’s film keeps the viewer in a state of wonder and confusion. What makes Family Viewing so disturbing is the fact that it is so different from what we are used to. On one hand Hollowman is boring and cheesy because it is so predictable. There is no need to see the ending because it is obvious that the protagonists will escape danger and the evil character will perish. On the other hand Family Viewing does not follow the typical Hollywood plot; there are gray areas in the story which are left for the viewers to interpret. A viewer must pay attention throughout the entire movie to get the most out of it.
Among many questions that arose from watching this movie I was very confused by the relationships that Van had with the women in Family Viewing. I can understand a grandson’s love for his grandmother, but Egoyan never explains why or how Armen helps Van feel complete. Furthermore, I don’t understand why Van calls his grandmother “Armen.” Van’s relationship with Sandra is a bit disconcerting. When we are introduced to these two characters we get a sense that they should have a mother-son relationship. However this idea is completely shot out the window when we see Van and Sandra almost kiss. As the audience we never actually see anything physical occur between Van and Sandra, but we know for sure there’s something unusual about their interactions. I found Van’s connection to Aline quite odd, too. Why would Aline agree to live with Van and Armen after he used Aline’s grandmother to fake Armen’s death? Aline was obviously upset with Van since he buried her mother without her presence. Aline seems to go out of her way to help Van, whom she barely knows. Finally, I am left to wonder how Van feels about his mother. Is he bitter towards her for leaving? Why did she leave in the first place? Has she been present in Van’s life?
As a movie watcher I am not used to leaving a film with more questions posed than answered by the film’s content. This unconventional move definitely kept me confused, but maybe that’s how Family Viewing makes an impact.
Family Viewing is in many aspects different from conventional movies like Hollowman. It is clear what the plot and “objective” of Hollowman is; Kevin Bacon is the villain and the goal of the other characters is to defeat him. However, in Family Viewing, the purpose is not so clear. Part of the “goal” of this film could have been Van’s attempt to find a safe home for his grandmother. But because there are so many other strange and disconcerting aspects of the film that occur, like the constant surveillance and the father’s voyeurism, the point of the film is much more obscure.
There were many things in the movie which were unexplained. For example, we don’t know where Van’s mother is. I don’t understand how she was able to find the grandmother at the end of the movie and why she never visited her mother at the nursing home. It’s also strange to me that Van takes such an interest in moving his grandmother to a different home. It’s obvious that he loves her, but there is no explanation of their relationship. Even in the home videos, Van, as a young boy, did not interact with his grandmother much. The entire ordeal of faking her death and moving her away seemed so surreal.
Most of the other relationships between the characters in the film were strange to me also. We don’t know how Van and his stepmother developed a more than innocent relationship, or what the relationship of the stepmother to the father is. It doesn’t seem like she loves the father very much, yet she continues to stay with him. Aline and Van’s relationship is odd too. Why would she trust her mother to his care when they don’t even know each other well? And I expected her to be much angrier than she was about her mother’s death. She didn’t even seem too upset that Van switched Aline’s mother and his own grandmother’s bodies. Later, she even agreed to let his grandmother and Van stay at her apartment.
All the strange, unexplained things make the film interesting yet disturbing. It’s not clearly set out for the viewer like Hollowman, but it leaves a much more lasting impression.
With a confusing storyline, filled with disturbing details that complicate the movie, Family viewing deviates from the conventional Hollywood film. From the beginning, the movie threw me into a state of confusion. The way Atom introduced the cast caught me off guard, leaving me to believe they were part of a show on the TV set within the movie. It wasn’t until later I realized the main character appeared in the series of cuts and channel changes.
The next scene left me perturbed and somewhat disgusted as Atom introduced the relationship between Van and Sandra. At first, they appeared to be a mother and son until they come uncomfortably close together and whispering intimately. Just as they are about to kiss, the whole scene starts to rewind. The only thought I could manage was “what just happened.” I replayed the scene within my head and hoped that the relation was merely an older woman interested in a very young man. I was shocked and disturbed to find out that they not only share an intimate and possibly sexual relationship, but also that she was his stepmother.
The father’s obsession with erasing the past seemed to drive the movie. If he had simply tried to throw away the past and the old family videos, it would have seemed more normal or understandable. However, his obsession grew into trying to replace these old memories with sex sessions. Why would he do such a thing? What would possess him to do so? People generally attribute people on TV as powerful. Does he feel more in control and powerful when he sees himself on TV? I can only cringe at the thought of other activities he engages in after witnessing that one scene sex scene with his wife.
The film Family Viewing, by Atom Egoyan, presents the plot in a confusing way. The clips don’t tell the whole story, leaving the viewer to make guesses and wait until later in the film to find out what is really going on. In the beginning of the film, we don’t know who the characters are and how they are related. The characters are first introduced as if they were actors on a television sitcom. The scene after that, we see Van, a teenage boy, talking with an older woman, possibly his mother. But Egoyan quickly makes it clear that Van and this older woman are in fact in a relationship by the way they sit so close and almost kiss. Then the film rewinds, which makes it seem as if it were a fantasy of Van’s and now we’re going to see what really happens. But we don’t get to see any such thing, leaving the viewer to question, “What just happened?” Much later in the film we find out that they are in fact stepmother and stepson and that they do have an intimate relationship. This is just one of the disturbing things we find out about the dysfunctional family. We also find out that Van’s father calls a phone sex woman and has his wife do what the woman on the phone says while videotaping it all. That in itself is so twisted and out of the ordinary that it is hard to grasp the reality of it even after it is revealed.
The film is also confusing because the story isn’t told form the same point of view throughout the whole film. Some parts of the film are home videos that Van’s father took. Other parts of the film are from the conventional third person view. And then some parts of the film are from the point of view of a character, like for instance when the detective is watching Van and Aline, or an object in the film. In the very beginning of the film the camera pulls back from an old woman on a bed to reveal Van (who we know nothing about at this point) pushing a tray of food towards her. Then Van looks straight into the camera and begins to walk towards it. It’s a little unsettling for someone you know nothing about to look straight at you. At this point I was expecting a narrative similar to Matthew Broderick’s in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But instead Van reaches up and changes the channel, while staring into the camera. It becomes obvious that the screen we are seeing the film on is actually the back of a television screen, as if the camera were inside a television. Whatever my snap judgment was, the film would do something different and surprise me.
From the beginning film credits of watching someone removing treys of food, Family Viewing showed it was not the typical Hollywood film. At first the weirdest part of the movie was when Van's stepmother came in and almost kissed him, while i was thinking that was his real mother, but than it rewinded and went back to the beginning of when she came in. Like a movie would never rewind itself but than all of a sudden it did. But there were weirder things than that like the whole video sex tape thing. The man would videotape him having sex with his wife but would also erase the past. Which than led Van to try to save it by getting the tapes and helping his grandmother move out of the home and make it so she was happier. Was the point of that? You have to try to live life not by tapes and things like that but by memories? Or memories stem from seeing something happen and than you vaguely remember than happening? OR was the movie more about surveillance and control that you get from the surveillance? The father watched what Van did after he moved out. Why? Was there something about the control that came from surveillance satisfying to the father? I did not understand the main points of the movie but i think those were two points that could be elaborated on. I also never understood the significance of the Van's father always videotaping everything, everything single thing like the sex. There was no control in anything there that was significant. Maybe it was the submission of making his wife do everything he said very gratifying to him. He did that also with his first wife where he had her go on tape when they were having sex. Maybe that is the control Van's father wants to have over every aspect of his life from Van to his wife and that is why he is always surveying everything. I was trying to analyze the main points of the movie but came across these two points.
Unease is usually related to one thing: lack of control. In Atom Egoyan’s Family Viewing (1987), the viewer has a distinct lack of control over what is seen and what is not seen. This creates the movie’s “disturbing” and “confusing” properties.
While most films give control to movie directors, whose job it is to seamlessly bridge the gap between his vision and ours, Family Viewing relinquishes control to the camera, phasing out the typical directorial elements that help the viewer understand what is being shown. These elements include: temporal linearity, character development, relevant transitions, etc. In Family Viewing, the camera seems to act of its own accord, free of human direction; the time seems irrelevant, the characters are introduced in fragments, and the scene transitions are made by static, the changing of channels, or by zooming out through television screens.
In fact, much of the film corresponded to Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Eye Manifesto, and his ideas about “new” perception. The camera is positioned on ceilings, in nursing homes, in extremely private areas, on rooftops, in cars, etc. It perceives what a human would most likely not be aware of, and it perceives from unnatural positions. All of these peculiar elements are responsible for Family Viewing’s “creepy” demeanor. It is almost as if the viewer is taken on a rollercoaster ride, where he or she has no control, and comprehension is made difficult by unanticipated jerks and turns.
The first ten minutes of the film, in particular, incorporates all of the weirdness created by the camera. The introduction of the characters goes unnoticed, because they are presented as if they are on the television that Van is watching. Shortly after, the camera zooms in from outside on Van’s apartment, and pans around the room, and then goes static, then of course, it rewinds. Even before the ten-minute mark, I was confused and thrown off-track simply because the camera was tossing me around at its will.
Family Viewing is disturbing in both plot and the way it’s filmed. As the opening credits are played with each of the characters on the TV, you get the feeling that this isn’t your average film. Actually, the whole film is played out as if it were a video being watched by someone (which it kind of is). The second scene shows what seems to be a normal opening for a family sitcom: the mother comes home and is greeted by her loving son. But in this case there seems to be a little more love than what’s appropriate. As the mother is about to kiss the son, the whole scene rewinds and stops. Also, during the scene a laugh track can be heard followed by applause. Although this kind of stuff may be normal for TV shows, they’re rarely found in movies. Many times the screen changes to something else, like a nature show, or has static, further giving you the illusion that you’re watching TV. This simulates changing the channels, something else that can’t be done with movies. All of this is to basically say that this, the subject of the film, is what our families are watching on TV.
Now the plot is even stranger. It starts out normal enough, a boy is visiting his grandmother in a nursing home, but that’s about where normal ends. Although it’s never actually shown, it can be inferred that Van and his stepmother have been sleeping together. Now dysfunctional families are one thing, but this is borderline incest. Van also decides to move in with a phone sex operator after switching her deceased mother with his grandmother. There is something just wrong about that. You don’t mess with dead people to try to pass off your grandmother as dead.
Van’s childhood is presented to us in the form of video tapes. This is presumably because with the advent of video, memories have become blurred with them. There are also certain scenes that seem to be from a camera’s perspective. It’s almost as if the camera were another character in the film.
In our discussion immediately following Family Viewing, the fact that the words mentioned came up is an indication that this film is distinct from the average movie. As described in class, the introduction began with a narrow scope which widened to reveal a fuller picture, a technique opposite from normal. By the effect created by using that inversion of standard film processes and the introductory character of an opening sequence, the feelings of confusion and disturbance are at their highest in the opening scenes.
The extremely narrow scope of the first shot automatically leads a viewer to question what is going on. Once movement begins to take place, in the form of a worker moving food trays, the audience begins to have their confusion assuaged. However, the television provides a deception, which only adds to the viewer’s confusion once the boy moves to reveal himself. Later, the alternating shots of the boy at the nursing home and the girl at the sex hotline provide for more confusion. Why is a seemingly wholesome place shown with a seemingly sinful place? What do they have to do with each other? From then on, the disturbing nature of the film takes over.
In many films, the first sequences introduce characters and set the tone of the film. In Family Viewing the shock of the contrast between and elderly grandma and a young sex hotline talker provide the viewer with a relationship they are not used to and are uncomfortable with. More strikingly, the next shot gives the viewer an onscreen, character to character relationship they are even more uncomfortable with, that of a sexual mother and son.
That "anonymous" posting was mine, I hit the wrong button.
Atom Egoyan, a moderately spectacular Canadian filmmaker, disturbed audiences all across the board with his award-winning film Family Viewing. A combination of the film’s creepy ethereal nature, haunting score, panoptic visions, and eccentric characters make for an extremely disturbing viewing experience.
In Family Viewing, references to the past are pervasively made through video which depict situations in the family that are no longer possible. That ethereal nature combined with the antiquated filmography of the retired video serve to remind the audience of death (or me at least), because the situations in the video, like life after death, are stuff we can never return to. Also, the erasing of the video by Stan, can be likened to his killing of the past.
Another strong creepy component of the film was its haunting score. The periodic beats and the television sequences in the background have an ostensibly mysterious nature. The beats usually play in intense/elevated situations of tenseness, which in the film generally indicate that the characters are going to do something creepy.
Also complementing the score in the creepy department is the camera use, and of course, what it’s used for (kind of like a panopticon). Between the private spy and the father’s sex tapes, the camera is used to monitor people either for submission (the sex tapes) or punishment (Stan attempting to find Armen with the private detective and put her back in an old folks home, presumably). It’s certainly not used for a mode of flattery, but rather in a way to obtain control.
Lastly, and most importantly, the characters are the creepiest part of the film. Aline, the sextress, tells a man to rub his penis on the floor and doesn’t care if it bleeds and goes into a back room to talk to her clients. Related to Aline, the father is making creepy sex tapes with his wife while asking Aline to dictate sexual play. The stepmother is perverting her stepson Van. But most creepy is Van himself, who is inventing the most perverse ways to hide Armen, including swapping her for Aline’s dead mother in a nursing home, hiding her in a hotel, and transforming her into a homeless person, and the whole while not seeming that phased by it.
Altogether, these elements make for an extremely disturbing film – so disturbing in the way of American Beauty, South Park, and Desperate Housewives: the strong dysfunction of the immediate domestic family and close friends scene.
In this day and age of digitally-remastered DVDs, high-definition television, and mind-blowing movie special effects, it’s very strange to watch an old grainy video-like film. One movie aspect from Family Viewing that I distinctly recall was the quality of the scenes. For the most part, it felt like I was watching a VHS tape featuring bits and pieces of a family and their ordeals. The abrupt splicing of scenes made it difficult to figure out when I was watching between the past and the present. The grainy home video look made me feel like I was being very intrusive and nosey. The scenes between the stepmother and the son made me especially uncomfortable because they were very intimate moments that should have been kept behind closed doors. The story line was also very unconventional and unlike any that I have seen.
The whole notion of technology/videos versus our memories affecting our perceptions of the past made me question the way I remember things. My parents used to tape every remotely milestone-like event I went through when I was younger. There have been many times where I’ve popped in a VHS and been completely astonished at the unfolding scenes. Some movies I can barely recall and others seem like they were altered in the ways I remember them in my head. Family Viewing also touched on the sacredness of memories and how the father continuously tried to erase his past by taping over old home videos. Moments last for merely an instant before they are replaced with another or forgotten over time. Videos and photographs are ways to encapsulate moments in all their glory and in a sense, have that moment live on. When the past is “erased,” it dies and with it the essence of people and the significance of their actions in the video.
The insightful ideas brought up in your response essays are rich material for potential future essay topics--the unexplained "mysteries" in the film, the jarring and self-reflexive use of cinematic devices (editing, sound, transitions, camera), and the themes of memory, family, and sex as filtered through home video and television. I agree that family configurations in the film were unsettling. Every family member seemed to be profoundly de-psychologized and we were kept distant from the inner motivations and emotions that we expect from characters in a film. The traditional roles of father, stepmother, grandmother, mother, son and daughter were all played out in some way, but also contorted beyond the boundaries of what might be a "normal," "happy" family. In fact, all of the films and readings that we will be examining this semester, including Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, put up barriers that prevent direct access to the character's inner lives. And some form of technological intervention is often the culprit, inserting a mediating distance between ourselves and what we might consider the most intimate, personal, and true essence of who we are--our bodies, our memories, and our desires.
One point that I wanted to add to the discussion of Family Viewing was about the status of ethnicity in the film. How might Van's relationship to his grandmother, his compulsion to watch videos of his past, and his attempt to create a substitute family with Aline be connected to his desire to re-discover his ethnic heritage and identity? This identity seems to have been banished by his father, who lives in a sterile and anonymous condo devoid of any ties to the past and who seems to have purged all references to his ethnically marked wife and mother-in-law from his and his son's life. Does the film set-up and then disturb an association of the well-to-do but hollow and corrupt world of the father with "white" and the impoverished but warm and human world of Aline and Armen with "ethnic"?
Post a Comment
<< Home