Charlie+Ebaugh's+Writing+Assignment

I choose Joan Jonas "Vertical Roll". This piece of art carried a continuous hammer-like noise through each frame. From frame to frame the video repeated itself to establish repetition. It digressed from showing her legs, then one leg with two shadows, as she jumped giving the piece a hectic movement. The frames exposed more of her leg, then eventually a dress appeared and the screen shots became blank. Back to the beat her body was introduced after abstract symbols and forms creating a friction. This introduction of her body was broken by the beat and the still frames giving the piece an element of friction. Jonas constructed her face to be ominous in the frame, alluding to a lost sense of identity. The film used technology to recreate the idea of a continuous cycle juxtaposing different parts of her body added an element of repression to the work. The film was not aesthetically pleasing and I do not think she intended it to be. In the 1970s (the video was released in 1974) women were still living mildly suppressed under men. I believe this video recreates this idea of suppression. As the screen shots move in a downward motion the idea that women in general are being pressed down. The only time in the video when the motion is going up is when she is physically jumping, and even then in the video the majority of space inside the frames is blank. Vertical Roll was successful in using the ideas of movement and motion to accurately portray the suppressed nature of the female identity at the time, and the ending of the film was suggestive in my opinion to a suicidal notions, and the idea that the mundane nature of females lives is a form of suppression.