NOTES: Origins and Context | See Also
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Origins of this content
This texteo mixes (or creates a montage with) three elements: the ideas and images of avant-garde/political filmmaker and theorist Jean Luc Godard, my writing describing lessons learned through my reflections on teaching LFYT 2007, and two dialectically related videos. In my blog post "On Slogans" I write: "I ask you to think of the following slogans—penned by committed artists from long-past revolutions, times, and places, and then followed by my own slogan responses—as a call to arms for how we might better muster today's technology to contribute to an ongoing project of improving the possibilities for presentation, interpretation, and abstract social evaluation, human interaction, perception, and epistemology, through media praxis."
Contextualization
"A pioneer of the French new wave, Jean-Luc Godard has had an incalculable effect on modern cinema that refuses to wane. Before directing, Godard was an ethnology student and a critic for Cahiers du cinema, and his approach to filmmaking reflects his interest in how cinematic form intertwines with social reality. His groundbreaking debut feature, Breathless—his first and last mainstream success—is, of course, essential."[cit]

The explicit linking of art, culture, revolution and philosophy has inspired a great many of the seminal works and theories of cinema history as well as today's new media practices, including this video-book and the LFYT class and other media practices it documents.

One of my ten founding terms for this project is Marx. Those who make and control ideas make and control history. Cultural revolution is integral for social, political, and material transformation.
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More videos related to the content of this page
JLG by Jean Luc Godard (Trailer)
Meeting With Woody Allen (1986) Godard (1)
Film Theory - They Never Told Us It Would End This Way - Version 2

Syrian girl mistakes camera for gun in heartbreaking photo
A THEORETICAL GUN

"Q: How do you explain the camera as a gun?
A: Well, ideas are guns. A lot of people are dying from ideas and dying for ideas. A gun is a practical idea. An idea is a theoretical gun."–Jean Luc Godard [cit]

The construction and dissemination of ideas, even "theory," is critical to a project of deep cultural transformation, just as everyday people's contributions are crucial. While comments on YouTube radically open access for the sharing of ideas, quickly consolidated norms for user interaction have worked to limit the gun-potential of theory through downsizing, distraction, and dumbing-down: "hahahahaha."

On YouTube an idea is a ludicrous pun.