Scarlett Johansson Under Her Skin

(This was written a year ago, just re-discovered in my computer.)

Spoiler alert!

Reading a magazine article this morning got me to thinking about Scarlett Johansson in “Under the Skin” that we saw last night. The article discussed the fine points of digitizing real human faces for movies, and it made me realize that her blank look in most scenes was likely intended to suggest a digitized face. She had few expressions, which would be likely if she were an avatar, simply because of the logistics of instilling emotion in such a being—that is, in today’s technology. People are working hard at duplicating human faces in digital representations, but it’s a big job. Not impossible, just hard. (Think of reproducing a five-o’clock shadow on a man who is in constant motion.) The article said that a 3-D scan of a face can take teraflops of computing power. So, I think, they tried to make her look like a contemporary digital avatar trying to look human. It’s all about the intended audience (us, today).

Scarlett is rather stone faced anyway—most of her humanness is in her mouth, and the obvious pliability of her skin. She spends a lot of time applying lipstick to those luscious lips. Only once do I remember her smiling, and that was surely Scarlett Johansson. In retrospect, I’d love to see her in that role trying out different expressions in the mirror, instead of just gazing at herself. But it might look too realistic for her character as we come to know her. In twenty years, audiences will be more sophisticated, and insist on more reality in their digital characters.

My favorite scene was when she discovers she has a vagina. There should have been whoops from the audience. My most disappointing scene was when she (unmasked) sits and contemplates her own avatar face in her lap. It should have been digitized—which given our present level of technology would have looked “close to real,” instead of her real face superimposed in post-production. But the scene reminded me of the scene in Hamlet where he contemplates Yorick’s skull. I noticed a lot of such subtle allusions in the film, but it’s hard to remember them in daylight.

The messy alternative to online learning

David Bromwich, in an essay in The New York Review of Books (“Trapped in the Virtual Classroom” July 9, 2015), posed the shortcomings of the online classroom. While he admits that information (as distinct from knowledge) can be transmitted to large numbers of people, with the resulting advantages to our society, the disadvantages of such forms of education lie in the lack of human contact—human interaction—that so often lies at the heart of real cultural growth.

I’m an amateur photographer, thoroughly enchanted by the latest technology, which has changed my own focus from the skills involved in chemical photographic processes to those of their digital equivalents. I see the tremendous advantages of working on an image in my computer, where little mistakes can usually be corrected with a simple key press and where the instantaneous transformations that take place almost routinely provide me with a huge easel on which to practice my craft.

At the same time, I enjoy the ease with which I can ask questions online to solve the inevitable vagaries inherent in solitary study. Anything I can think of to ask, somebody has already faced and more or less resolved. I’m indebted to the Internet as much as I am to my digital camera. I trust that my skills are improving.

Last week, Judith and I attended an all-day presentation by a well-known photographer and teacher, dealing with techniques for creating well-lit and well-composed portraits. Even though the class numbered over a hundred people with a wide range of knowledge and skills, we came home inspired by the teacher to try some of the methods he had found so successful. I’ve tried to imagine what that workshop would have been like if it had been simply one of the many video courses that are available. Perhaps we could have absorbed the information just as well. I know, however, that I would not have found that inspiration in a video—it needed the human connection, well worth the time and effort of attending a class in a nearby city. There’s something about hearing and seeing an expert teaching skills that goes beyond the skills themselves.

Photography is more than a skill with operating equipment, whether chemical or digital. I have to believe it is an art that I can learn with thousands of hours of experiment and study. The art is in learning to see. Engaging one’s creative impulses is more important than applying the rather mechanistic rules, even of difficult-to-define composition and color. Those impulses are the difference between art and craft. I’ve always considered myself a moderate craftsman, whether with words or pictures. What I lack is that eye—the recognition of the difference between ordinary and extraordinary. And I know that inspiration is the motive force toward being able to express fully what I feel behind these eyes of mine.

Bromwich acknowledges the benefits of learning, especially among the millions of people who would never, without the miracles of digital technology, be able to contribute to the general accumulation of societal advances. But beyond that learning is insight—the mysterious awareness that comes, often unexpectedly, from an emotional connection with a teacher. It’s insights that form the growing edge of knowledge and occasionally of wisdom. It’s the “aha!” that comes unbidden in any field, whether looking at a graphical image or a mathematical equation.

I’ve taken thousands of photographs since the beginning of the twentieth century when I purchased my first digital camera. Every once in a great while does one of them strike me as exceptional. I treasure those occasional reflections of something deeper in my psyche than producing a “good” image. After last week, I’ve been aware of a great lack in my photographic life—the human interaction. I have a small group of friends with whom I regularly share my writing, and I’m indebted to them and to that interaction among us for whatever improvement I may be making with regard to putting words together. Now I know that I need to nurture what connections I have among people with an interest in photography, for the sake of my own growth and satisfaction.

I’ll continue to sit down at my computer and view some of the many video “how to do it” sessions. But none of them will compare with handing a print I’ve made to a trusted colleague and asking, “What do you see in this?”

Falling in Love and Falling Asleep

 

(That is not to say that the two things are identical)

Lying awake at three o'clock in the morning, my mind was agitated - a state with no particular mental content but not relaxed – I was "trying" to sleep. I tried to use my meditation techniques, focusing on my breath and letting everything else go, without success.

The next thing I knew, I awakened from a deep, dreamless sleep. It was two or three hours later. What happened? Obviously, I dropped off—I fell asleep—without knowing it.

That isn’t unusual for me, to “fall” asleep. Usually, I do that only moments after my head hits the pillow. But then often I wake up an hour or so later, in a repetitive cycle that seems my fate these days.

On the other hand, napping on the couch in the afternoon, my mind usually drifts slowly off, accompanied by vague, random (I presume) images, sounds, and thoughts that float by. I'm conscious, but not "awake." I'm resting, not thinking in any deliberate way. I know that I’m lying there on the couch, and there may be sounds from the household that I’m not paying any attention to. Then twenty minutes later I awaken as my phone alarm goes off. I awaken from that deep, dreamless state without any intermediate experience (other than, perhaps, annoyance at the alarm).

It occurred to me that these two ways of going to sleep differ in the control I have over the process. One moment I’m here, and the next moment I’m gone. Or, I float along a river of consciousness on which things just gradually disappear.

I think that perhaps it’s similar to falling in love, versus becoming in love.

I’ve been there in my life more than a few times. I know the feeling of being hit over the head with the discovery that “that person” is suddenly the most important person in my life. Maybe I had a glimmer of something happening to me (and maybe other people around me had more than a glimmer), but I was suddenly out of control. My hormones had taken over. (And don’t assume that I’m talking here about lust. It’s bigger than that. Lust I recognize from its faintest beginnings.)

Just as there’s an experience of drifting off to sleep, there’s an experience of drifting into love, gradually, tenderly, like watching the dawn on a spring morning. I have control over the experience, such as knowing when the object of my growing affection isn’t appropriate for me at that time. I can say, “feels good, but it isn’t right for me—or her—and I’ll stay “friends.”

Or, more profoundly, it’s when I’m already inside that relationship, having gotten there by either path, and the love just grows and deepens over time, every moment appreciated like another sunrise.