Ecophenomenology of Fashion in Spike Jonze's Fashion Film
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ZoneModa Journal. Vol.10 n.1S (2020) Essays S.I. Be Cool! Aesthetic Imperatives and Social Practices https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/10557 ISSN 2611-0563 “Hey Siri, Play Me Something I’d Like!” Ecophenomenology of Fashion in Spike Jonze’s Fashion Film Adriano D’Aloia* Published: May 20, 2020 Abstract Based on a theoretical framework that combines media studies, fashion studies and philosophy of mind, this contribution adopts an “enactive” perspective to analyse the relationship between audio- visual media and fashion. The application of the enactive approach highlights the centrality of the in- teraction between body, space and technology in the construction of the media experience intended as an extension of human physical and mental limits. The analysis of two recent fashion films by the American director Spike Jonze — Kenzo World for Kenzo and Welcome Home for Apple — will con- tribute to clarifying the ways in which the combination of dance, music, fashion, advertising and film narration can give life to enactive media experiences. Keywords: Fashion Film; Spike Jonze; Media Ecology; Media Enaction; Embodied Cognition. * Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” (Italy); [email protected] Copyright © 2020 Adriano D’Aloia 99 The text of this work is licensed under the Creative Commons BY License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ecophenomenology of Fashion in Spike Jonze’s Fashion Film ZMJ. Vol.10 n.1S (2020) Introduction I would like to start from a philosophical quote that traces in an ideal way the thread of the argument I will develop with respect to the intimate relationship between audiovisual media and fashion within an epistemological framework that crosses fashion studies, media studies, film studies and cognitive sci- ence. In the essay from which it is taken, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is writing about painting, but his words are of more general interest since they concern the phenomenology of the relationship between the body and the environment and can therefore also be useful for the purposes of this contribution: Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is one of them. It is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it sees and moves itself, it holds things in a circle around itself. Things are an annex or prolongation of my body; they are incrusted in its flesh, they are part of its full definition; the world is made ofthevery stuff of the body.1 The idea I want to put forward is that the use of a vocabulary referable to the field of fashion can be more than simply suggestive. In fact, a first element of interest in this passage concerns the use ofterms such as “fabric” and “stuff” (étoffe in the original French edition) to describe the “cohesion” that puts the body in a relationship of mutual implication with the world. Let me also anticipate a second fun- damental aspect: as the site of subjective experience, the body is a living and sentient organism that is not a mere thing among things, but the fulcrum of the perceptual experience around which things are arranged, they become “encrusted” and in doing so they are an “annex” and a “prolongation.” As we will see through recovering the work of the pioneers of media ecology, the concept of medium as an extension of man’s physical and mental faculties becomes more relevant than ever in a scenario in which technologies markedly — yet increasingly often inadvertently — modulate our relationship with the world. Perhaps it is no coincidence that a neo-cognitivist (or even post-cognitive) approach that is gain- ing ground in cognitive science, and which is also of considerable importance in the study of the media experience, insists on the “extensional” nature of cognitive processes, or rather on the ability of some — both material and cultural — artifacts to delocalize and extend the physical and mental faculties of the individual. To describe this dynamic, I will refer to some fundamental assumptions of the so-called “enactive” theory of mind, importing them into the field of media experience through the analysis — partly comparative — of two fashion films recently designed and directed by US director Spike Jonze. Laser Beams and Dancing Houses Spike Jonze is best known as the screenwriter and director of acclaimed feature films such as Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), Where the Wild Things Are (2009) and Her (2013). These are all works of great inventiveness, capable of triggering a fertile cultural and theoretical debate on narrative forms and on the impact of new technologies on the individual and social life. Less known is Jonze’s activity — beginning in the early 1990s — as an author and a director of music videos (for artists such as Sonic Youth,Beastie Boys, REM, Björk, Fatboy Slim and many others). The vocation for and experience in the music field also influenced Jonze — since 1995 — on a third audiovisual creative front, thatof commercials (for Nike, Wrangler, Nissan, Sprite, Lee, Levi’s, IKEA, Adidas, GAP, Miller, SoftBank). Here, I will take into consideration and analyze two commercials that are characterized by a number of similarities and that can be also considered fashion films. The first is a commercial commissioned by the French fashion house Kenzo to advertise Kenzo World, i.e. the perfume of the year 2016. The eponymous video, lasting about 4 minutes, was released on August 25, 2016 via the official Kenzo YouTube channel2 and immediately registered an impressive number of views (2 million in a few days, and today more than 29 million), positively shaking up the advertising industry. 1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Primary of Perception, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern Uni- versity Press, 1964), 163. 2. The video can be watched at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABz2m0olmPg. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/10557 100 Ecophenomenology of Fashion in Spike Jonze’s Fashion Film ZMJ. Vol.10 n.1S (2020) The video consists in an interpretive modern dance piece performed by actress and model Margaret Qual- ley (the daughter of Andie MacDowell) playing the role of a young woman at a formal gala ceremony in a sumptuous theater (Fig. 1). The woman walks away from the family table just as a man (perhaps her father) is giving an acceptance speech, and reaches the hall, where she performs a wild and visceral dance transported by the frenetic rhythm of an instrumental music song composed by Sam Spiegel (brother of Spike Jonze) and Ape Drums featuring Assassins. Not surprisingly, the song is entitled Mutant brain. The choreography is a work of Ryan Heffington, who is behind numerous acclaimed music video performances.3 Wrapped in an elegant forest-green gown designed by Heidi Bivens, the woman walks thoughtfully and sighing down the foyer corridor, while the male voice can still be heard, now distorted, coming from the the- atre. Framed frontally in the foreground, she stares straight at the camera; a smile appears on her face and suddenly she turns from a bored “dad’s daughter” to a wild rebel. In fact, as the song starts, the mu- sic seems literally to take possession of her body and to force her to a series of eye movements, blinking, grimacing and twitching that extend quickly from her face to the entire body. The camera also shows the woman from her side, from above and from below while she stretches her arms and legs uncontrol- lably, making the skirt of the dress flutter. The woman turns the corner and runs along the mirror wall interacting with her reflected image, until she reaches a bronze bust of an old man and desecrates itina sort of cheeky gestural dialogue: she grabs it and mimics the act of licking its nose and forehead (Fig. 2). The song’s pace is increasingly insistent and the woman frantically climbs a staircase with mirrors that multiply her moving image (Fig. 3). Upstairs in the hall, among imposing crystal chandeliers, she comes across a man on his cell phone, behind a column. She engages with him in a fight, quickly defeats him and exults over her victory, showing her biceps, in a typically male pose. Now she walks down a new corridor with a decisive step, and laser beams radiate from her fingers destroying walls, ceilings and an ancient vase (Fig. 4). Figure 1: Kenzo World (Spike Jonze, 2016) Standing on a small table in front of a floral tapestry, she tries, in vain but amused, to hold backthe spasms of one arm, bringing it down with the other. In the following shots, from the top of the gallery of the desert theater, the woman is shown at a distance in the center of the stage. The shot approaches her as she performs some classic dance steps, while piano notes sneak into the electronic body of the music piece announcing its ending. The woman approaches the edge of the stage and, in correspondence with a loud “beep,” she drops towards the stalls area, disappearing from view below the level of the stage floor. 3. The most famous is perhaps the performance of young dancer Maddie Ziegler for Australian songwriter Sia’s music video for the song Chandelier. The video can be watched at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vjPBrBU-TM. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/10557 101 Ecophenomenology of Fashion in Spike Jonze’s Fashion Film ZMJ. Vol.10 n.1S (2020) Figure 2 Figure 3 https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/10557 102 Ecophenomenology of Fashion in Spike Jonze’s Fashion Film ZMJ.