Self Portrait Film Stills

All Film Stills can be seen at: http://www.personal.psu.edu/kmh5091/WMNST003.htm

This project was a fun one to do for sure. When I first read we could wear costumes, I was overly thankful that Halloween had just passed and I had something to work with. First off, obviously, I am a teletubby in these photos as that was my costume for Halloween this year. Now, at first, the costume was all I had visualized , but after looking at the style and the content in Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, I had an idea of what point I wanted to get across in this project. I chose to publish the photos in black and white much like Sherman's stills to create that Hollywood effect and make it look like a film as much as I could. Secondly, I chose to be in costume as a teletubby because just dressing as my usual self wouldn't be as effective at all in this project.

The theme I tried to accomplish with my narrative of film stills is my anxiety of the "real world". Going to college is great and being successful is a goal of mine and has been for a very long time, but frankly the business world scares the hell out of me. I have many fears of being confined by my job and only being known as "part of the company". This narrative allows me express my feelings towards the subject and mask them through the character of a depressed Teletubby. I rarely come out and say I am scared of what lies ahead in the future, but this project allowed me to do so in a different way than I would think to. The story starts with my character, the Teletubby, getting out of bed and then going to work (shown by the tie and briefcase). The teletubby then gets a shocking revelation at work, by receiving a letter saying he was fired. This startling news causes him to go out to a bar, and get rejected by a woman. Feeling like his world is spiraling downward, the teletubby becomes extremely drunk and the story ends with a shot of the teletubby contemplating his life and about to overdose on unknown pills in the bathroom. This pressure of this tiring business job everyday ultimately lead to meltdown of the main character, in which his life becomes in jeopardy. Now, although I do not, in any way, find my life in jeopardy or wish to overdose on drugs, this narrative through the teletubby can be seen as an over exaggeration of some of my fears.

The project was hard to do as a male, because I couldn't use Cindy Sherman's stills as an exact influence, as she posed as an actress doing feminine tasks in her photos. Also, I couldn't incorporate the "cinematic gaze" because my central character was male and I didn't want to do a project on typical "male" stereotypes. Instead, I wanted to do a reflection of an inner self fear shown through a strange and bizarre character in the everyday working world. Overall, I think I made these stills, like Sherman, look like actual film as much as I could and did accomplish my goal of taking one of my worries in life and turning it on its extreme end to convey my thoughts on my unknown and certainly untold future.