Up, Up and Away

know it's a late review for the movie Up, it's been 2 months since the first premiere in Cannes, but the movie just screened a few days ago in my country, Indonesia. Okay, here goes my initial thought for it: absolutely beautiful. In my life, I recall only few animated movies that could be considered as 'influential' and/or 'life-changing' (well, in fact, there are only two of them: Brad Bird's The Iron Giant, and Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies) but today, as I've watched Up, I listed it as the third. It's a life-changing experience to see the movie. Yes, the effect brought by the movie was too powerful for me. In a sense, Up is typical of a more modern animated movie: rendered in high-tech CGI, featured in 3D and less dependent of hand-drawn character, but it does have something that modern cartoon couldn't offer: a story.

I know that animation movie shouldn't be compared to those of real-live movies. I mean, originally, animation movie wasn't meant to emphasized in the story. Most of the earliest cartoon were respected not for the story, but rather for their technical wonder and magic, Disney's Steamboat Willie and Silly Symphonies was a few example. They are famous because they pushed human life forward, technologically and culturally. But, it's no longer 1928, it's not the era of a mouse in red pants anymore. It's 2009, a time when 60 frames per second animation movie won't impress anyone. The technical wonderment once associated with animation movie is now getting irrelevant. Today's cartoon movie is not judged by fluid sequence of movement or the complexity of the making, but rather by the story and message it carried. Some successfully done it, and some flawed. For every Iron Giant made, there are more Bionicle: The Legend Reborn. For every Spirited Away, there are more Happily N’ever After. Today's animation movie – especially 2000s – depends heavily in over-simplified story, technological advance, and entertainment value without so much caring about characters, coherent plot and/or important message it could (and should) deliver.

The two top animated movies of mine gave a clear example of the power in visual narrative like cartoon. You don't have to be realistic in cartoon world, for this world is about analogies and allusion. Imagination and big ideas.  In fact, cartoon urged us to gave more thinking in the viewing process, because--like every neuroscientist said--our brain interpret visual stimulus NOT in literal way, but rather through the conception around it. When you see an apple in dinner table, you don't see an apple. The brain 'interrogates' the apple, and create a series of mental models around it according to your collection of discovery through various processing in your lifetime. A baby didn't see an apple like the way adults would have--because babies don't have any understanding of it yet, they are in different stage of cognitive development. And that's that about visual imagery like animated movies: it can be interpreted in so many ways. In the movie like Iron Giant, for example, we could ask, why did the alien have to be depicted as a giant robot instead of monster with fang or wings? The interpretation could've resulted in many hypothetical deductions. Maybe it was an allusion to the fear of technology, or maybe it was simply because robots are cool and could be accepted in larger audience segmentation. The guessing could be endless, the chance to exploration could be limitless and that's the magic of it. In animated movies, virtually, anything could happen. People can fly, cars can talk, clouds do have legs and arms, and so on, and so on. But the most successful animation in my opinion wasn't the one that gave too much room for explorations and wild guessing.  Such animations could be wander aimlessly without any apparent context, that's pathetic. For me, the most successful animation was the one that allow the audiences to imagining things, yet in the same time gave an appropriate context and set some boundaries and mental models, so that the audiences won't get lost in the feast of colorful allusion and analogy it presented. Up did that. Gloriously.

For years and years I've been waited for a movie like Up. Kudos to the makers, they really know something about the power of animation. Up, though took setting in real world inhabited by human, didn't bind us to stay realistic and force us to thinking in linear way. In opposite, Up still gave us a room for imagination and wild wonderment. The very first scene of the movie even depicts an adventurer cruising a lost land--something that won't happen in our ordinary life. The rest of the movie just got better. A shy boy, Carl Fredericksen who had this great dream to be an adventurer, met a boyish-girl, Ellie, a member of Grape Soda club. A spark of love started to grow between them and OMG it's sweet. ("You don't talk much...I like you", said Ellie in one of the most memorable scene in the movie). The first 20 minutes of the movie dedicated to the love life of Carl and Ellie. Their wedding, their domestic life and their old age was told in a very honest and consummate way--and when Ellie passed away, wow, I can't believe I can drop tears again for a movie. After that, the story is getting more interesting.  Carl, now lived alone, became a rude person and develop as strange, eccentric old-man. His meeting with a scoutboy, Russell, was so hilarious you'll laugh your ass off. (Oops, I should stop here, I won't give too much clue about the real story). Just keep in mind: when thousands of balloon popped out from Carl's chimney, you know you're in for a ride.  This is a ride of life for me. Carl, in his old age, finally found his passion and happiness, and that teaches me a lot. There are differences between pleasure and happiness, they're dogs of different breed and Up told me how to recognize one from another. It is a movie about adventure and dream, about visual feast and technological celebration, about coherent narrative and powerful storytelling. Up is a colorful, funny, imaginative and heartwarming experience, the one that'll last in my mind forever.

Society and The Rise of New Media

I was born and raised in my beloved city, Jakarta. Jakarta's air was the first air I inhaled when I born. I ate, walked, drank and educated upon its soil. And that's about being the first: you can never forget it. Yesterday's bombing in two luxury hotels in Jakarta (the J.W Marriott and Ritz-Carlton) was indeed a shock to me and my family. From the news coverage in television by local news stations to the latest tweets in my Twitter, from my friends' Facebook status updates to the text messages sent by relatives in my cellphone, the echoes of bombing incident in that morning was surrounded every corners of my house. We didn't even get out of the house, yet we still got the update. Every frightening seconds of it.

Media coverage. The press. The journalists. The reporters. Every means of publication and socialization, they're the third person of our life. The transcending distributor. I mean, how do we live without any aid by them? Imagine if there's no media, how do we got those news? Mouth to mouth rumors? First-witnessing the bombings? Being the victim? Hell. Let's no mistake upon this, but my opinion is: the means of publication and socialization are one of the fucking greatest forces in human history. Scharrer and Comstock in their book, The Psychology of Media and Politics (2005) gathered some statistical evidences about the effect caused by media to public opinion and perception--and to greater effect, the knowledge-making of public. Let's make a hypothesis for this: our first assumption was that public still have rationality upon what've been shown to them in media coverage. In other words, we may or may not directly influenced by media. We still have resistance to what's been shown to us.

Scharrer and Comstock brought up the evidence: resistance and denial of media sayings only happened in individual level. If, say, you're experiencing the events covered by media, directly, there are greater chances you're resisting the media publication. If you're the victim of the bombing, well, since you've experienced the bombing yourself, there are big chances you stop seeing the TV news again. Because you already know what's going on. Directly. First-hand experience. This is called the Spiral of Silence. (Noelle-Neumann, 1974)
The chances of resisting media coverage are getting less and less when you're among your group. And yes, the cause was only one word long: conformity. When perceiving the data shown by media in your groups, conformity is the norm. The perceived behaviors of others, governing our individual decision. Noelle-Neumann (1974, 1984, 1993) proposed that individuals regularly survey their social environments for cues about the prevailing balance among contending viewpoints. They look around for safety and shelter about which among contending viewpoints had the most support as well as which were rising or declining in public enthusiasm. The Spiral of Silence didn't bring any effect here, since none of the viewers are participants or direct observer of the events. The constituents that act in matter of Spiral of Silence to put into effect was the character of media attention. It must include sufficient argumentation by authoritative
individuals with the consequent legitimization of opposition to the majority to supply the necessary social support. When there is an event that draws public attention and raises public passions, such as a particularly repellant crime in the case of the death penalty, an institutionalized issue may become subject to the influence of the second factor (conformity): it will fall victim to ideological vituperation, and the spiral will be initiated. In the case of Jakarta bombings, the three first reaction I recalled was this:

1. The bomb was suspected as a sabotage attempt to cancel the MU soccer club visit to Indonesia (scheduled on July 20). I said this is being ridiculous, never in my life--in Jakarta--I recalled such devastating sabotage attempt in the level of business/ entertainment/ sport. Some rumors went off about the rival business of the event promoters planted the bomb. I said no.

2. The post-election crisis. This one is still at question. The political climate in Indonesia, I should say, was never in stable condition. It always fiery hot and bloody, with challenge came off, not just from the opposition to the ruling government, but also from the ruling government to the marginalized segment. The official speeches from Indonesian President, SBY, stated something about the 'unpredictable' condition about the post-election political climate. Can't say much about this one, I went fifty-fifty for this.

3. The JI. Jamaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian-based extremist militants (let's avoid the word terrorists), who were linked to the Al-Qaeda led by Bin Laden, was again the number one suspect in this bombing. Unlike the other bombing done in past time (the Bali bomb in 2005 and JW Marriot in 2003), this time I said I'd have some doubt to put JI in the #1 list. JI shared there with the political revolutioners in my suspect lists.

These three initial reactions were all drawn by media. The MU sabotage attempt was first out in some Indonesian internet forum and blogs. The second and the third one was almost official, as it came from the Indonesian government itself (broadcasted through every local TV news). Think about the Spiral of Silence here, I mean, statistically, how much is the percentage of witness, the direct-observer, the people who were experienced the events in first-hand compared to the passive viewers, the sit-in-front-of-TV-or-internet-type-of-people? I proposed, the conformity is playing large here. The third-person was our only reliable source of data. Basically in this situation, people are informed and knowledgeable, but act judiciously in the light of public opinion. The third-person effect glides easily from the support of one to the support of the other. It presents individuals as highly vulnerable to exterior influence.
But, remember it was 2009. Two. Thousand. Fucking. Nine. The new media has arise. Mainstream media such as news station is declining in the terms of public influence. Check Twitter. The so-called 'revolutionary site' of today. The Iranian election chaos was first confirmed in Twitter, and not by mainstream media. It was people, to be exact, the people who fall in the Spiral of Silence, yes, the first-hand experimenter, the direct observer. In Jakarta bombings, Indonesian local news stations are starting to break the news around 08.00, while the bombings happened 15 minutes earlier. In twitter, in the matter of second the bomb blasted, @danieltumiwa, the surviving witness who happened to held a meeting in Ritz Carlton coffee shop, tweeting the event from the exact location. The news delivered. Right on time. By the person who experienced it himself.
By this time, you may think I'm crazy if I said that this is the future of news coverage, but you'll see. What twitter (and other 'new media') did was basically skip our needs for the report from the third person. In this case, I won't say @danieltumiwa was the third-person. He is not. He's the victim and the word-spreader, not the event reporter.
And what good did this type of 'public-supplied' news done for us? It helps in eliminating the ambiguity and irrelevance of governing image in mainstream media publication. The contrast and compare is easily done. Just a click away, just a call away. I, for once, automatically called one of my cousins who happened to be in office in Mega Kuningan estate, seconds after the twitter updates suddenly flooded with Jakarta bombings news. The contrast and compare made here. It's easy, and it's basically skip the necessity to look upon the mainstream media, the so-called third-person. Hours later, calls after calls, tweets after tweets, I switched on the TV and finally look what the mainstream media offered. Well, it is not much different—if it’s not so behind—than what I found on the net.

I said that the bombings was geographically strategic, not in the terms of the destruction or the people who were victimized, but in the terms of media influence and technological advance. Jakarta was the capital city of Indonesia, so you can bet that the citizen of Jakarta are far more sophisticated. Culturally, economically and technologically advanced more than any other cities in Indonesia. There are many twitterers in Jakarta, many Facebook users, many people with megapixel camera phone with 3G and internet access, so yeah, the news coverage can be sourced from everywhere in Jakarta. If the bombings went off in another city, in my opinion, it'll be less talkable. It won't become trending topics in twitter, or made its rank to google news. They weren't legitimized source of news, the tweeps, but boy, do they spread the words? Yes. They are.
Now back to the power and means of socialization and publication, namely, the media. For long, they're a part of us all. The third person--who indirectly control our opinion and perception, but I said, in years to come, their effect won't be that great anymore. Iranian election and Jakarta bombings was the proof. People are the journalists, people are the news-maker. This is the era of history-making, of power-shift and more individual expression. The discourse and ambiguity may still exist, but the chance for contrasting and comparing is also bigger. The mainstream media basically held the old power of 'public influence', but hey, just some people can't do everything, but everyone can do something. Right?

Read also:

Comstock, George and Scharrer, Erica. 2005. The Psychology of Media and Politics. New York: Academic Press

‘Jakarta Bombings: Twitter User First on The Scene’, an article on Mashable.com

and here’s the full text of SBY, President of Indonesia, speeches concerning the attack (translated).

The images shown are via @kompasdotcom