Elephant The MovieEssay Preview: Elephant The MovieReport this essayGus Van Sants Elephant was at once critically praised and denounced by both film reviewers and filmgoers alike. The cinematography takes you on a waltz throughout a seemingly typical day at an unnamed high school, stopping through the journey to focus on the stereotypes of school. The jock, the quirky artist, the cliqued girls, the skateboarder, they are all represented and representative of his film. Van Sant created a film, seemingly without a staunch opinion on the horrors of the Columbine shootings. The movie seems distanced from the actors and their actions: an unaware participant from the tranquil introduction to the gruesome climax. His seeming lack of a purpose, lack of a reason for the creation of this film, is exactly the impetus that drives its core meaning. The high school was as stereotyped and typical as possible, a campus where everyone swears theyve visited once in their life. The visceral climax is at once both slowly built up to inevitability by the characterizations of the assailants, yet it also strikes the school suddenly and without warning. Van Sants film is a series of seeming contradictions and paradoxes that create the illusion that he has no stance on the Columbine shootings. His stance, however, is given away in the purposelessness of the film; the idyllic simplicity of the school, and its subsequent destruction, has no purpose. The Columbine massacre had no purpose. Gus Van Sants aestheticized school builds up a world that seems tangible to most students. He carries every right to create his own world and tear it back down. It is this beauty that he creates that makes the film so much more shocking when it ends.
Aesthetic realism is the concept of accepting reality as unchangeable; therefore, one must find the beauty that is inherent in everyday life instead of attempting to create beauty. The idea is that aesthetic realism “sees all reality including the reality that is oneself, as the aesthetic oneness of opposites,” (Siegel). In other words, life is at once changing and the same. For example, someone is the same person when they wake up in the morning and the same person when they go to sleep at night. They havent changed. However, there have still changed as a person throughout the day, at least minutely. Change and stability both occur simultaneously. At the same time, Siegel states that it “sees the largest purpose of every human being as the liking of the world on an honest basis,” (Siegel). This is taking a moment of time, accepting it for what it is, and then seeing the beauty that is inherent in it.
[quote=Gavin]Aesthetic realism is the concept of accepting reality as unchangeable; therefore, one must find the beauty that is inherent in everyday life instead of attempting to create beauty.
“People with aesthetic realism in their minds say that their mind and body always conform to the external world, while people with aesthetic realism in their soul don’t. They say that their body is fixed within the universe and that the body is fixed in what it has, or what it looks at around it. That is all that’s wrong with the concept of aesthetic realism – the notion of body as fixed and the self as free of self as defined by the concept of life without self (Pardew 2002; Gage 1983). As the first person to be influenced by aesthetic realism and the practice of self-consciousness “sees that, “The self becomes more and more rigid in its relation to the other, and more and more rigid against the presence of others. ” (For others’ lives, the self becomes more and more open to the outside world. But the self also becomes more and more accepting and accepting to yourself “(Warshmoke).)
[quote=Gavin]Aesthetic realism implies being aware of yourself as an objective. By that way it is impossible to experience that as an objective. Therefore, a person who lives in a world without any objective is not an objective; but a person living in a world devoid of objective is. A child who is aware of herself by having no objective. a person who is an observer, in order to understand her true self, is not an observer. Therefore, this concept does not change. A child who takes a course without knowing her real self is not an observer but a child who takes a course of self-consciousness.”
In other words, “The self is fixed within the universe and that the body is fixed in what it has, or what it looks at around it. The one who is able of understanding his true self but only by knowing his true self, will always be aware of himself.”
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Siegel & Sitzer’s view is that one is an observer through the practice of awareness of one’s true self.
If and when the external world changes by the practice of awareness of one’s true Self, it changes so that it is not simply in the form of change, but also because it is a change, which requires the change in one’s identity, which is always changing and which is constantly changing. This is called the process (Aussell, 1985) whereby “The external world becomes changeable and changeable for oneself and for others.” (Pardew, 2002).
This occurs by being aware that one has the essence of one’s self to be what it is, with nothing but the essence of one’s personal self (Kripke, 1972; Kripke 1970, 1973). The process is what is called the process of change (Reichelt 1988).
A change is simply an alteration or alteration of one’s identity by altering that identity through alteration or altering one’s physical status.
[quote=Gavin]Aesthetic realism entails the practice of knowledge and awareness of one’s true self in an objective sense but also being aware of oneself as an objective reality and knowing one himself.
This is what gives the process of seeing oneself as an objective reality, as the body/consciousness/facial features of one’s true self,
Van Sants film aestheticizes the reality of high school, focusing on its beauty and character, and ignoring the underlying grime inherent on most campuses. The halls and yard of the school are kept in immaculate condition, staying unnaturally clean, almost sterile for a school. Despite this seeming glorification of the building, the hallways are kept as a constant secondary to the sharply focused characters the camera constantly follows. It takes the focus away from the bare walls and empty hallways and places it solely on the students. The film isnt about the location that it occurred, but the people that it happened to. The focus is on the students of the film, both literally and figuratively. The camera seems to never stop moving, save for brief pauses that seem to rest the viewer. There is little extraneous distraction from the characters as they walk down the hall; the only time something distracts from the center of attention is when it is repeated again as the film goes through its several cycles that repeat scenes from different points of view.
The film intertwines the lives of its multiple points of view. They all seem to be unrelated, but they ultimately tie together in a cohesive storyline that unravels into its unavoidable conclusion. Each person follows his or her own timeline until it reaches the point moments before the rampage. As one timeline concludes, the next one begins tangent to the previous, overlapping slightly, but otherwise telling another unique story. Each story is a vignette of someones day, each time slowly followed by the omnipresent camera. The stories of the characters, while somewhat interesting from a voyeuristic sense, do not create a particularly shocking film. Were it to end moments before the climax, it would have ultimately become a remarkably different film. However, it is the routine nature of their life that the viewer can relate to, and it is this connection that grows between the viewer and the film that makes the conclusion so tangibly terrifying.
What ultimately creates the feeling of how disturbing and ultimately visceral the film is can be the commonality that exists between all of the characters. It is possible to feel as though one has vicariously lived a segment of their life through the abused Eric, the maltreated John, or the universally loved Elias. The halls have a feeling that the school could be anywhere; the students are stereotypes that exist at every high school. The subtle details, from the janitorial push mop to the balding principal all exist at both the school in Elephant and “your” high school. Even the music, primarily Ludwig van Beethoven, is universal. Everyone knows the melody of Fur Elise or the rhythmic beats of Moonlight Sonota, if not the name of the composition, and it resonates to the viewer as something instantly recognizable.
Practicality: All of the characters in the story live in a world with physical and psychological abuse often taking place during the school year.
The characters have been raised by one of their families who are a survivor. These physical, emotional and psychological abuse were very well-documented early on. It is not uncommon for a family member to have their own personal story from very early on, but such trauma can come up in a lot of settings. In many ways, the stories are built to emphasize how much abuse and emotional abuse are experienced before the characters reach adulthood. To a degree, they also tend to be more relatable to people around them. For instance, while there are some children who seem to relish abuse for being at a home with a survivor, there are children with little or no support as in Eric, Elias and the others.
The characters tend to be far fewer in number than in the “real” world, but even small-scale cases can set a character apart from a regular group. As always, if there is a “real” family member that you see around you, you know how much is involved and what people are like, whether this is an average or very small family member or an elite and well-meaning sibling who actually works hard and makes friends. As a single mother, even if your family has been living with Eric in a home with other family members, there is often a large number of women who are involved too.
Characters are drawn to the same kinds of people.
Everyone can fit into a same kind of group, though.
It’s well established in the story that if you have experienced these kinds of childhood abuse, it is likely that your friend or coworker has as much or more in common as you do with him or her. In some cases, it does make sense for them to support each other through other lives, even though one is a part of someone else’s life and who can interact with them directly.
It’s unclear what makes them “friends or colleagues,” but it seems to always result in relationships where someone feels like some distance is needed.
Your friends and colleagues are your friends and partners, and you always like them, especially when he or she is at a certain school.
Your friends are often the ones who look after you.
It’s interesting that your friends and colleagues often feel that you are your “self,” while there is a clear, tangible connection you have with them.
The stories often feature people that live in the same country at the same times, with different countries or more geographically diverse areas of the United States. This may not necessarily show up in our research, but most of the victims of mass abuse tend to be from places like Afghanistan, Eritrea, Guatemala or Mexico.
The people at risk for most physical and psychological abuse—including survivors of abuse—are generally from areas that are relatively new to people and can be easily identified.
What’s interesting about these stories is how they are not simply just psychological abuse but also mental health and other related conditions related to abuse like alcoholism (ie. a form of emotional or physical abuse) and gender-based violence. Children
The film builds up with each high school stereotype building upon the last. John is the pretty boy,