Thursday, September 15, 2005

Is Gollum any less deserving?

In yesterdays lecture, Gabriel made a passing comment about whether or not the actor who played Gollum in LOTR should qualify for a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, due to the CGI involved with his character. While contemplating this I found it difficult to draw any real difference between this and actress Charlize Theron's portrayal as mass murderer in Monster, for which she won Best Actress. Obviously it was her physical self playing the role but surely the extensive make-up and prostheitics used are hardly that much different from the digital rendering used for Gollum. It is still Andy's voice and movements, it's just the external appearance that is different.

Hollywood has always been about smoke and mirrors, so I do not see how this is really any differnt or less legitimate form of film production. Films are not always about true representaion, in fact they 90% of the time they are not so is using digital technology any different from very good characterisation or costuming? Baudrillard says that within the context of the signifier, the signified and the referent, there is no referent. I believe that digitisation and CGI reflects this proposition.

Charlotte

1 Comments:

At 9:52 pm, Blogger Andrew Cozens said...

The academy are all a bunch of old fuddyduddys anyway :p I would be interested to know the demographics of the people who choose the winner, i think the actual nomination comes from all the people at the top of their respective fields nominating people but i could be wrong, haven't really looked it up.

God i am sad, blogging on a friday night. Ok i have the excuse that i am not going out tonight because i need to make sure i get up early to go vote :p

 

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