Manifesto: Re Self in Film

Abstract

within rather than imposed from withoutwe are no longer free to choose the self we evolve and create under the tyranny of the fascism of the mediatransforming us also into a commodity. Our identity is created by the media, we are treated as mere consumable objectswe have become a VIRTUAL self even to ourselves. A mockery of self-hood. My putting My-self into the film is quite deliberate-the film is about the theft of the self by Media images-me, Alberta, M. Monroe, Kennedy etc.thus my role in the film is a parody of a self-the self that dares to be a voyeur filming everything and everyone else (many of them enacting performances in theatre, poetry, music, street protests), everything becomes ritual, SACRED PERFORMANCE. Everything and everyone becomes a performance on the virtual stage, the sage of the Media's multiple network of transparent screens ... a kind of collective of submission, collective prostitution. I put the IMAGE of myself in the filmnot myself. A parody of myselfa self so engulfed by the film process I was creating and enacting, a routine which I know is so utterly subversive that I must be seen to be acting/performing(q.v., the film Performance ).2 So I present myself, a sacrifice, as an actor acting in a movie, enacting a naive boy-meets-girl movie love story. (Reminding the audience of the possible illusion that this film cannot be a real film without the predictable romantic narrative thread developed around