I am really not fond of watching movie. I mean, I am not making an effort to watch a movie on cinema, if there is a chance then,ok, and that only seldom happens. I only can watch movie on tv- HBO, cinemaone, starmovies and the likes and also in film showing in school. Whenever I watch films, especially when it’s an action film, I couldn’t help myself but to sleep. Sound’s ironic but it’s true. There is one thing I will confess… I had not watched even a single movie of Harry Potter. I had confessed this because I know that to everybody Harry Potter movie is such a big deal and I don’t even bother to watch it even though I have the resources.(a pirated dvd…pssshht..).

Yes, I am not a movie fanatic but somehow,  I know how to appreciate a movie. I know even just a little how to watch a movie and say whether it is good or bad but then of course that was just superficial It is because I always focus myself on the story, never minding the manner it was presented, the technicalities per se.  I am not so particular and actually I am not looking with how the camera was moving, what is the shot, if there is any framing or what, I am so engaged with the story especially if the story is of my interest.As an amateur, All I can say is that Kubrador is a good movie because it appears as real and natural to me. I don’t still have that true critic’s eye, but I will try my best with the help of my friends Carroll, Mulvey, Cavell, and Sesonske

A Synopsis 

An ordinary meaningless existence can suddenly be challenged by the perplexing game of life, luck and death. Amelita or Amy is an aging jueteng kubrador (bet collector). Despite the regular crackdown on the illegal numbers game, she clings to the job she has known for more than 20 years. She walks around the poverty-stricken squatter’s neighborhood collecting bets from her regular patrons everyday. Her husband Eli, who is equally aging, can only manage to help by manning their small sari-sari (variety store). Amy’s grown up children have all left home. Her eldest daughter Mona works as a domestic helper abroad. Her second daughter, Juvy, who is always pregnant, lives with her in-laws. Amy’s youngest son, Eric, a young soldier, recently died on combat duty in Mindanao. While collecting bets three days before All Saints day, Amy is apprehended by a police officer. She joins the other kubradors in the police station until their kabo (handler) bails them out. The following morning, Amy returns to the streets and continues her clandestined activity. She meets the parish priest, who informs her of a young neighbor’s sudden death from an accident. The priest asks her to collect abuloy (donations) from neighbors and friends. When Amy remits her afternoon jueteng collection to her kabo, she finds him sick at home. He then asks her to attend the next jueteng draw on his behalf, Amy being a trusted ally of the jueteng network for a long time. Amy and the other kabos await the arrival of the table manager (supervisor) of the draw in a secluded location. But when the table manager arrives, he announces that the draw is cancelled and informs everyone the winning numbers from the jueteng financier.  When Amy goes home that night, her husband Eli tells her the bad news. He failed to hand over a bet from a neighbor whose numbers, to Amy’s surprise, won the rigged draw. Pissed off, she has no choice but to go to her kabo and borrow money in order to pay out the neighbor. That night, the neighbors have lighted candles in front of their houses to welcome the feast of All Saints Day the next morning. A mammoth crowd greets Amy and her family as they approach the cemetery. At Eric’s grave they see Glenda, Eric’s girlfriend, offering flowers and prayers for her dead boyfriend. Still pissed off with Eli, Amy leaves and wanders around the cemetery to cool off. Suddenly she hears a commotion. Two vehicles figured in a collision. The two drivers engage in a heated argument until one of them pulls out a gun and fires a shot. The bullet goes pass Amy and hits a teenage boy behind her. Amy shouts for help. Police arrive and arrest the suspect. Other bystanders help load the bloodied body of the boy in a vehicle. Still in a state of shock, Amy follows gaze as the vehicle speeds away from the crime scene.

 http://kubrador.mlrfilms.com/synopsis.php 

 Kubrador exemplifies a good movie for many reasons. Among all the movies that I have seen and “heard”, Kubrador didn’t have those special effects like what is dominant now because of the emergence of sci-fi and fantasy movies. Generally, I love independent film since it not profit oriented; it really has a story to tell not just have a predictable plot. Like many other independent films, Kubrador brought a new story since it deviates from the norm. In Kubrador we can see the reality of how life is moving in the Philippines. It presents the real state of life- the bad one. One can judge from the appearance of the film that it has a very low budget considering the effects and other technicalities involved. The film was shot in a squatter’s area with real squatter people around (or they are hired people who look like they really lived there). The whole place, the house, the streets, everything was so realistic. Realistic in the sense that it does not make anything to make the bad one looks good but presented it how it should be. Like the real squatter’s area scenario, it really was that messy and noisy and crowded and dirty in reality. 

There were scenes that took place in the streets like when Amy met her neighborhood and talked about the latest gossip, talked to her son-in-law who was selling his newspapers, there is a scene where she passed by into her god daughter who is leaving to the states with her foreign husband. Many people were passing and interrupting especially those who bought the paper with the son-in-law scene, also with the god daughter’s scene where almost the whole bid goodbye to her. Even when that scene was so muddled because there were many people passing by and talking, still, it appeared very realistic since in real life, this is what you can see. When you’re in the streets, expect people to interfere. Scenes like this, which give important messages, normally appear orderly and clear on screen. But in this particular film, it’s as if order and clarity were not put in priority. The more chaotic it is, the more realistic it appears. 

 Indie films is more realistic, and it presents a new breath of air and it somehow shows some ideas which is simple we may think but is a very essential to be aired, these are the lives of the ordinary people, the real situation of our country, the small details that we always neglect. With these, Indie films are more effective in soliciting sympathy from the audience. Everything appears very natural. One goal of this movie maybe is to make the viewers feel how it is like to be a bet collector. And the approach of the movie, if I may say, is effective. The movie effectively shows what happens in a Kubrador’s daily life,  how she convince people to bet, how she interprets events that is happening around her and convert it to numbers, how she struggles with the risk of getting caught by cops anytime,  how she fights poverty, how she handles all matters; family, community, and life itself. 

Movie, as what Plato is saying, can move you that as if you are part of the film. It indeed brings you to the world projected on the screen, to the reality the movie is portraying. It makes you laugh, when the characters are laughing, makes you cry when they are crying, It makes you feel nervous, afraid, tired when they also feel that. It will let you feel that you are one of the characters, mingle with them and want to do something to make everything in the story fall into place. When these things happen to you in watching movie, you are indeed under the power of movies. When I was watching Kubrador, I was also got carried away with what is happening in the film. At the start of the film, when the cop is running after the man , (the habulan factor) I felt also like I am the one running and being chased after. I also got nervous when there is an alarm of a cop approaching. I also feel for Amy; her everyday struggle, her cough (which is so realistic), her problems especially with the guy who must have won. Except that it was related with Erap, I know nothing about jueteng but the movie was able to get my attention stick to it. 

To support Plato’s idea on how powerful films can be, Noel Carroll in his Power of Movies explains further why motion pictures are well-appreciated by the viewers. He commented that movies are more accessible than other genres like drama, ballet, and opera because of its superior accessibility and intensity. And also, he added that movies have the power to direct the audience’s attention. We can assess this claim in the movie Kubrador. The way the movie was produced really made the messages clear to us audience.   He also said that in movies, through variable framing, the spectator is perceiving exactly what she should be perceiving at the precise moment she should be perceiving it. in the Movie Kubrador, no matter how messy and cluttered some scenes may have been, still, the movie makers were able to make use of variable framing in sending messages to us viewers. There were scenes that show close-up figures of the actors and actresses and even of the setting sometimes. Through this, the audience can read that emphasis must be put on that particular person or thing brought in bigger view on the screen. Similarly, the audience can tell if something is irrelevant to the story if it has not been put into focus. Variable framing is done in three ways. Indexing is one of the three wherein a camera is moved toward the object. This is seen in the movie Kubrador when the camera directed and moves toward the picture of a young man until it was focused on the picture alone and everything beyond the frame is excluded-this is another technique called bracketing. Scaling or making the photograph appear bigger was also done together with indexing and bracketing. Another instant that I noticed indexing is used was when Amy was listing the numbers and the camera moves toward her hand while writing down digits. 

 Another reason behind the power of movies, according to Noel Carroll, is that movies are fictional narratives. He said that the fact that movies tend to be narrative, concerned primarily with depictions of human actions, immediately suggests one of the reasons they are accessible. For narrative is, in all probability, our most pervasive and familiar means of explaining human action. Of course, movies depict stories and from these stories, we can feel familiarity and sometimes we can even relate since what we usually see are things we do in the real world. In the movie Kubrador, particularly, the scenes were very familiar to us especially because the setting was in a normal, natural world with normal and natural people. Also, the daily activities shown are very familiar to us viewers as they also happen in our own living. But the best thing about the narration of the movie is that the arrangement of the pictorial representation makes sense—it tells a story, a story of a bet collector.  This story is stated in the movie as narrative, as what Caroll describe. This narrative is achieved through different ways of directing the audience’s attention. Techniques used in variable framing actually give you the idea of what is going to happen. For instance, in indexing, bracketing and scaling of the photograph tells you that the photo is important and it first introduced that Amy has a son. I immediately grasped that Amy had a son who died, we can say this without it being mentioned before and even before the appearance of the ghost of his son in the film you already had an idea of it because of the indexing and bracketing of the photograph. It worked effectively. Noel Caroll also said that earlier scenes be related to later scenes as questions are to answers. In this scene, the focusing of the photograph sets a question in the watcher’s mind who is this person, shortly after that scene you see the guy in the photograph, then he suddenly disappears, thus letting you know that he is already dead, he’s a ghost. It also directs you to the last part of the story where Amy and her family went to the cemetery visiting his son’s grave. In the scene when the camera moves toward the paper in Amy’s hand, It made me think that this paper, this particular scene has a significant meaning or it will lead to something. It was confirmed later on as the story unfolds, she got caught by the police and the paper in her hand was the evidence. Also, at the start of the film, Amy was praying to the saint that she won’t get caught. Get caught from what? Then, next scenes answered this question as you see Amy collecting bets. The prayer scene of Amy also let you think if Amy is really is religious.The dead son thingy, was put again into emphasis when Amy cried upon seeing the relative of the dead person cried, you will ask why is she crying then as the story develops as it was fully revealed when Amy and her family went to the cemetery to visit his dead son. She cried because she remembered her son.

 So much of Carroll’s variable framing, and narrative, let us talk about how Maulvey describes woman as an image an man as the bearer of the look in the movie. She says that traditionally, a woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen. If that is the case, then Kubrador is really deviating from the norm, the lead actress, and other women in the film does not exude an erotic aura, they are not viewed as an erotic object by any male character and by the audience. There were no scenes or any sight that suggest of the woman be viewed as an erotic object. Although it is true for some films that women are viewed this way, it just doesn’t apply with Kubrador. In fact, there’s no single taste of eroticism in the film. Though there is a scene wherein Amy take off her dress to change another; she only wear bra her boobs were showing, but it’s not erotic at all, maybe because she’s not young anymore and she’s not that sexy. So, I guess, somehow, the film tried to show what Maulvey was saying, but they failed to and it’s not their concern anyway. The director maybe wanted to present the film to be beautiful as what it was not because of presence the erotic object. The entire film revolved around Jueteng and the life of Amy as a wife to her jobless husband, a mother of a dead son and irresponsible daughter, a trusted neighbor, and a bet collector. And among other characters also, they were no erotic scenes or any scenes that could lead to erotic desire.

Also, it is said that males are the dominant characters in film even when women’s presence tend to put some scenes in suspension and they tend to catch the audience’s attention more than men do. But in this particular film, the lead character is a strong female, Amy. Although there were also men characters, they are not as dominant as what Gina Pareno portrayed. Even though the dominant character is a woman, still the film cannot deny that our country demonstrated a patriarchal society. Although Amy, the bet collector, is a strong woman who does not depend on anyone for her needs and even feeds her family when she should be relaxing at her age, the heads of the Jueteng system are male. His subordinates are also male; Mang Carding for one. The women are just bet collectors. Though male dominance is not the main focus of the story, still it is inherent in the film.

In terms of Cavell’s idea about stars in movies, I have proven it to be true because as I was watching the movie, I am thinking not of Amy alone but of Amy played by Gina Pareno. It is really hard to isolate Gina Pareno from the character because she is indeed a star. Anyway, Gina had done a very good job because she was able to act as if she was part of that community and she was in character as a kubrador.

Another friend of mine who is talking about film is Sesonsky, stated that the cinema’s formal categories are space, time,and motion. Sesonske also discusses how shots and camera movements help in creating the ‘feel’ of the space in film. This implies that space in film can be created. in the category of time, there is also duality expressed in his concept of viewing time and dramatic time. In dramatic time, which the Kubrador was focused, a filmmaker can show past, present and future within three hours or less in our viewing time. He can combine several distinct temporal periods in a single shot, show past and present in a single frame, or leap from the prehistoric past to a distant future without interrupting the continuity of motion. An example of this is the appearance of the Amy’s dead son. He came from the past and appears in Amy’s present time. Also, in two hours of watching, we have witnessed the three days of Amy’s life.  Motion, on the other hand is also as significant, as we see objects move in film the way objects move in the natural world. But what we see on screen, the movement, is in relation not only to surrounding objects but also in relation to the frame. Small movements that we do not often notice in the natural world could be the center of our attention in film. We have the sense of moving within the action space, within the frame but still remains in our seat. In kubrador, it was able to bring us to the squatter’s area, the crowded, packed space which really made you feel that you are in the slum since you are deprived of space. As Amy is walking in the narrow alley, I can also feel the motion. The camera was following her, which is sometimes makes me feel dizzy because of the fast movement. There we can see that movie has the concept of time, space and motion.

As a whole, Kubrador is a very good film not just because it garnered many awards here and abroad but also it exudes the element that is inherent in Movies so that it can be powerful.    

At the first day of the class in our Aesthetics class, we are asked to define beauty according to our own understanding about it. I have not answered anything but to say that beauty is something that pleases our eyes. Beauty is beautiful. Nothing more, nothing less. So I was baffled why we need to study about beauty when in fact its as easy as that. When you see something that pleases you then that’s it. Why worry to study about it, just a waste of time. But then, I was thinking, the university will not offer this subject if it’s not important and so I allow myself to be immersed on what is really beauty; is it something that is beyond what I know. What is really the word beauty means, what is really is aesthetically pleasing?Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is a branch of philosophy, a species of value theory or axiology, which is the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. Aesthetics is closely associated with the philosophy of art

The term aesthetics comes from the Greek αισθητική (aisthetike) meaning “sensation” from αίσθησιν (aisthesin) or “sense.” It was appropriated by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1735 to mean “the science of how things are known via the senses.”he term aesthetics was used in German, shortly after Baumgarten introduced its Latin form (Aesthetica), but was not widely used in English until the beginning of the 19th century. However, much the same study was called studying the “standards of taste” or “judgments of taste” in English, following the vocabulary set by David Hume prior to the introduction of the term “aesthetics.”

Judgments of aesthetic value clearly rely on our ability to discriminate at a sensory level. Aesthetics examines what makes something beautiful, sublime, disgusting, fun, cute, silly, entertaining, pretentious, discordant, harmonious, boring, humorous, or tragic.Immanuel Kant, writing in 1790, observes of a man that “If he says that canary wine is agreeable he is quite content if someone else corrects his terms and reminds him to say instead: It is agreeable to me,” because “Everyone has his own (sense of) taste”. The case of “beauty” is different from mere “agreeableness” because, “If he proclaims something to be beautiful, then he requires the same liking from others; he then judges not just for himself but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things.”Aesthetic judgments usually go beyond sensory discrimination. For David Hume, delicacy of taste is not merely “the ability to detect all the ingredients in a composition”, but also our sensitivity “to pains as well as pleasures, which escape the rest of mankind.” Thus, the sensory discrimination is linked to capacity for pleasure. For Kant “enjoyment” is the result when pleasure arises from sensation, but judging something to be “beautiful” has a third requirement: sensation must give rise to pleasure by engaging our capacities of reflective contemplation. Judgments of beauty are sensory, emotional, and intellectual all at once.Judgments of aesthetic value seem to often involve many other kinds of issues as well. Responses such as disgust show that sensory detection is linked in instinctual ways to facial expressions, and even behaviors like the gag reflex. Yet disgust can often be a learned or cultural issue too; as Darwin pointed out, seeing a stripe of soup in a man’s beard is disgusting even though neither soup nor beards are themselves disgusting. Aesthetic judgments may be linked to emotions or, like emotions, partially embodied in our physical reactions. Seeing a sublime view of a landscape may give us a reaction of awe, which might manifest physically as an increased heart rate or widened eyes. These subconscious reactions may even be partly constitutive of what makes our judgment a judgment that the landscape is sublime.Likewise, aesthetic judgments may be culturally conditioned to some extent. Victorians in Britain often saw African sculpture as ugly, but just a few decades later, Edwardian audiences saw the same sculptures as being beautiful.Evaluations of beauty may well be linked to desirability, perhaps even to sexual desirability. Thus, judgments of aesthetic value can become linked to judgments of economic, political, or moral value. We might judge a Lamborghini to be beautiful partly because it is desirable as a status symbol, or we might judge it to be repulsive partly because it signifies for us over-consumption and offends our political or moral values.Aesthetic judgments can often be very fine-grained and internally contradictory. Likewise aesthetic judgments seem to often be at least partly intellectual and interpretative. It is what a thing means or symbolizes for us that is often what we are judging. Modern aestheticians have asserted that will and desire were almost dormant in aesthetic experience yet preference and choice have seemed important aesthetics to some 20th century thinkers. Thus aesthetic judgments might be seen to be based on the senses, emotions, intellectual opinions, will, desires, culture, preferences, values, subconscious behavior, conscious decision, training, instinct, sociological institutions, or some complex combination of these, depending on exactly which theory one employs.A third major topic in the study of aesthetic judgment is how they are unified across art forms. We can call a person, a house, a symphony, a fragrance, and a mathematical proof beautiful. What characteristics do they share which give them that status? What possible feature could a proof and a fragrance both share in virtue of which they both count as beautiful? What makes a painting beautiful may be quite different from what makes music beautiful, which suggests that each art form has its own system for the judgement of aesthetics.A collective identification of beauty, in the willing participants found in a given social spectrum, is at times perhaps a conditioned response, built into a culture or context. Is there some underlying unity to aesthetic judgment and is there some way to articulate the similarities of a beautiful house, beautiful proof, and beautiful sunset? Likewise there has been long debate on how perception of beauty in the natural world, especially including perceiving the human form as beautiful, is supposed to relate to perceiving beauty in art or artifacts.It is not uncommon to find aesthetics used as a synonym for the philosophy of art, although it is also not uncommon to find thinkers insisting that we distinguish these two closely related fields.How best to define the term “art” is a subject of much contention; many books and journal articles have been published arguing over even the basics of what we mean by the term “art”. Theodor Adorno claimed in 1969 “It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident any more.” Artists, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists and programmers all use the notion of art in their respective fields, and give it operational definitions that are not very similar to each other. Further it is clear that even the basic meaning of the term “art” has changed several times over the centuries, and has changed within the 20th century as well.The main recent sense of the word “art” is roughly as an abbreviation for creative art or “fine art.” Here we mean that skill is being used to express the artist’s creativity, or to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities, or to draw the audience towards consideration of the “finer” things. Often, if the skill is being used in a lowbrow or practical way, people will consider it a craft instead of art, yet many thinkers have defended practical and lowbrow forms as being just as much art as the more lofty forms. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way it may be considered design instead of art, or contrariwise these may be defended as art forms, perhaps called applied art. Some thinkers, for instance, have argued that the difference between fine art and applied art has more to do with value judgments made about the art than any clear definitional difference. Even as late as 1912 it was normal in the West to assume that all art aims at beauty, and thus that anything that wasn’t trying to be beautiful couldn’t count as art. The cubists, dadaists, Stravinsky, and many later art movements struggled against this conception that beauty was central to the definition of art, with such success that, according to Danto, “Beauty had disappeared not only from the advanced art of the 1960’s but from the advanced philosophy of art of that decade as well. Perhaps some notion like “expression” (in Croce’s theories) or “counter-environment” (in McLuhan’s theory) can replace the previous role of beauty.Proceduralists often suggest that it is the process by which a work of art is created or viewed that makes it art, not any inherent feature of an object, or how well received it is by the institutions of the art world after its introduction to society at large. For John Dewey, for instance, if the writer intended a piece to be a poem, it is one whether other poets acknowledge it or not. Whereas if exactly the same set of words was written by a journalist, intending them as shorthand notes to help him write a longer article later, these would not be a poem. Leo Tolstoy, on the other hand, claims that what makes something art or not is how it is experienced by its audience, not by the intention of its creator. Functionalists like Monroe Beardsley argue that whether or not a piece counts as art depends on what function it plays in a particular context; the same Greek vase may play a non-artistic function in one context (carrying wine), and an artistic function in another context (helping us to appreciate the beauty of the human figure). ‘Art can be tricky at the metaphysical and ontological levels as well as at the value theory level. When we see a performance of Hamlet, how many works of art are we experiencing, and which should we judge? Perhaps there is only one relevant work of art, the whole performance, which many different people have contributed to, and which will exist briefly and then disappear. Perhaps the manuscript by Shakespeare is a distinct work of art from the play by the troupe, which is also distinct from the performance of the play by this troupe on this night, and all three can be judged, but are to be judged by different standards.Perhaps every person involved should be judged separately on his or her own merits, and each costume or line is its own work of art (with perhaps the director having the job of unifying them all). Similar problems arise for music, film and even painting. Am I to judge the painting itself, the work of the painter, or perhaps the painting in its context of presentation by the museum workers?These problems have been made even thornier by the rise of conceptual art since the 1960s. Warhol’s famous Brillo Boxes are nearly indistinguishable from actual Brillo boxes at the time. It would be a mistake to praise Warhol for the design of his boxes (which were designed by Steve Harvey), yet the conceptual move of exhibiting these boxes as art in a museum together with other kinds of paintings is Warhol’s. Are we judging Warhol’s concept? His execution of the concept in the medium? The curator’s insight in letting Warhol display the boxes? The overall result? Our experience or interpretation of the result? Ontologically, how are we to think of the work of art? Is it a physical object? Several objects? A class of objects? A mental object? A fictional object? An abstract object? An event?Many goals have been argued for art, and aestheticians often argue that some goal or another is superior in some way. Clement Greenberg, for instance, argued in 1960 that each artistic medium should seek that which makes it unique among the possible mediums and then purify itself of anything other than expression of its own uniqueness as a form. The Dadaist Tristan Tzara on the other hand saw the function of art in 1918 as the destruction of a mad social order. “We must sweep and clean. Affirm the cleanliness of the individual after the state of madness, aggressive complete madness of a world abandoned to the hands of bandits.”Formal goals, creative goals, self-expression, political goals, spiritual goals, philosophical goals, and even more perceptual or aesthetic goals have all been popular pictures of what art should be like.Closely related to the question of what art should be like is the question of what its value is. Is art a means of gaining knowledge of some special kind? Does it give insight into the human condition? How does art relate to science or religion? Is art perhaps a tool of education, or indoctrination, or enculturation? Does art make us more moral? Can it uplift us spiritually? Is art perhaps politics by other means? Is there some value to sharing or expressing emotions? Might the value of art for the artist be quite different than it is for the audience?Might the value of art to society be quite different than its value to individuals? Do the values of arts differ significantly from form to form? Working on the intended value of art tends to help define the relations between art and other endeavors. Art clearly does have spiritual goals in many settings, but then what exactly is the difference between religious art and religion per se? Is every religious ritual a piece of performance art, so that religious ritual is simply a subset of art?It might be objected, however, that there are rather too many exceptions to Dutton’s categories. For example, the installations of the contemporary artist Thomas Hirschhorn deliberately eschew technical virtuosity. People can appreciate a Renaissance Madonna for aesthetic reasons, but such objects often had (and sometimes still have) specific devotional functions. ‘Rules of composition’ that might be read into Duchamp’s Fountain or John Cage’s 4′33″ do not locate the works in a recognizable style (or certainly not a style recognizable at the time of the works’ realisation). Moreover, some of Dutton’s categories seem too broad: a physicist might entertain hypothetical worlds in his/her imagination in the course of formulating a theory.The philosophy of aesthetics has been criticized by some sociologists and writers about art and society. Raymond Williams argues that there is no unique aesthetic object but a continuum of cultural forms from ordinary speech to experiences that are signaled as art by a frame, institution or special event. Pierre Bourdieu also takes issue with Kant’s aesthetics and argues that it represents an experience that is the product of an elevated class habitus and scholarly leisure.For Baumgarten aesthetics is the science of the sense experiences, a younger sister of logic, and beauty is thus the most perfect kind of knowledge that sense experience can have. For Kant the aesthetic experience of beauty is a judgment of a subjective but universal truth, since all people should agree that “this rose is beautiful” if it in fact is. However, beauty cannot be reduced to any more basic set of features. For Schiller aesthetic appreciation of beauty is the most perfect reconciliation of the sensual and rational parts of human nature.For Hegel all culture is a matter of “absolute spirit” coming to be manifest to itself, stage by stage. Art is the first stage in which the absolute spirit is manifest immediately to sense-perception, and is thus an objective rather than subjective revelation of beauty. For Schopenhauer aesthetic contemplation of beauty is the most free that the pure intellect can be from the dictates of will; here we contemplate perfection of form without any kind of worldly agenda, and thus any intrusion of utility or politics would ruin the point of the beauty.For Hutcheson beauty is disclosed by an inner mental sense, but is a subjective fact rather than an objective one. Analytic theorists like Lord Kames, William Hogarth, and Edmund Burke hoped to reduce beauty to some list of attributes. Hogarth, for example, thinks that beauty consists of (1) fitness of the parts to some design; (2) variety in as many ways as possible; (3) uniformity, regularity or symmetry, which is only beautiful when it helps to preserve the character of fitness; (4) simplicity or distinctness, which gives pleasure not in itself, but through its enabling the eye to enjoy variety with ease; (5) intricacy, which provides employment for our active energies, leading the eye “a wanton kind of chase”; and (6) quantity or magnitude, which draws our attention and produces admiration and awe. Later analytic aestheticians strove to link beauty to some scientific theory of psychology (such as James Mill) or biology (such as Herbert Spencer).Early twentieth century artists, poets and composers challenged the assumption that beauty was central to art and aesthetics. Various attempts have been made since then to define a Post-modern aesthetics.Croce suggested that “expression” is central in the way that beauty was once thought to be central. George Dickie suggested that the sociological institutions of the art world were the glue binding art and sensibility into unities. Marshall McLuhan suggested that art always functions as a “counter-environment” designed to make visible what is usually invisible about a society. Theodor Adorno felt that aesthetics could not proceed without confronting the role of the culture industry in the commodification of art and aesthetic experience. Hal Foster (art critic) attempted to portray the reaction against beauty and Modernist art in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Arthur Danto has described this reaction as “kalliphobia” (after the Greek word for beauty – ‘kalos’)All these things is what I learned from my Aesthetics class. They are so complicated and too many to absorb so I have some of ideas that I really believed in and what I think Aesthetics is all about.

• Beauty, and the judgment of it is subjective
• No reasoned argument can conclude that objects are aesthetically valuable or valueless.
•   Objects are aesthetically valuable if they possess a special aesthetic property or exhibit a special aesthetic form.
• Objects are aesthetically valuable if they have the capacity to convey meaning or to teach general truth.
• Objects are aesthetically valuable if they have the capacity to produce pleasure in those who experience or appreciate them.      
•  Objects are aesthetically valuable if they have the capacity to convey values or beliefs central to the cultures or traditions in which they originate, or important to the artists who made them.
•  Objects are aesthetically valuable if they have the capacity to help bring about social or political change. standards are subjected to change, because social class, culture, educational attainment, age, gender, period and customs change.therefore, what may be aesthetically pleasing now may not be aesthetically pleasing tomorrow.
•  Objects are aesthetically valuable if they have the capacity to produce certain emotions we value, at least when the emotion is brought about by art rather than by life.
• Objects are aesthetically valuable if they have the capacity to produce special non-emotional experiences, such as a feeling of autonomy or the will suspension of disbelief.
• Subjectivity, though said to be filtered in the artist’s reality (social class, culture, educational attainment, age, gender, style, period, and customs), is based on the reality where the artist is not the only inhabitant, thus, subjectivity can be shared, and the judgement of beauty standardized….
•  Pure knowledge (texture, color, shapes, context, composition) is helpful in judging what is aesthetically pleasing and valuable in your reality, 

sources:

http://www.weatherscapes.com/photo.php?cat=photo_month&id=w-882-30

  Honestly, I don’t have any background in Photography. But I certainly appreciate those which appeared beautiful in my eyes; like the Bolt from the Blue by Harald Edens. But for now, I have to base my judgments on my understanding of our lesson in aesthetics in photographs.  We have discussed that a photograph must have three contexts- these are the internal, external and original context. According to Barret, these three contexts must be considered in interpreting a particular photograph.  

Internal Context

It is the information evident within the picture. It represents the Photograph itself. When I searched the net, I have found out the gallery of Harald Edens.  Among all those photographs, what really captures me is his Bolt from the Blue.  As what the title suggests, the photo shows a bolt from the blue, as this type of lightning is called – negatively charged cloud-to-ground lightning evolving from an intracloud flash and jumping out of the side of the cloud. It was shot Last August 8, 2007.  

 External Context 

The photo was obviously taken when there was a storm in New Mexico. The Magdalena Mountains was so great and suitable place where for this kind of “lightning event” must be captured. The place and environment is indeed affecting how you see the photo. It adds on the excitement.  

Original Context

This was Edens story on how he came up with this photo- “On August 8 the weather in New Mexico was quite boring storm-wise due to a very dry atmosphere at mid-levels. Almost no cumulus succeeded in becoming a storm, and those that did manage quickly dissipated. This changed in the evening as the atmosphere destabilized due to radiative cooling at high altitude. A few storms started to the W, NW and NNW of Langmuir Laboratory. I drove along the ridge of the Magdalena Mountains to South Baldy, a vantage point at 10,782 ft altitude, and managed to photograph some splendid lightning in front of the twilight arch. I photographed it with Nikon FE, 85mm lens at f/4, on Fuji Provia 100F. Unfortunately I missed two other bolts from the blue flashes in this storm because they appeared in different places and the frame size was limited; I had forgotten to bring a more suitable lens.”

Color

As what I can see in the photo, the color was so great. I was stunned with the effect on how the color was plot in the nature. The contrasting color of the dark blue sky and the brightness of the lightning produce a dramatic effect; and then, added by red orange as the base. Wow! This natural phenomenon is so terrifying, but upon watching the photo with its beautiful colors, I got in love with it.  The color indeed gives life to it.

Texture

This photo is has texture because of the clouds wherein its “curves” was emphasized.  Also, at the center, wherein you can see where the lightning came from, it has dimension. It is not flat at all; there is that something that bulging where you can say that this is where the lightning came from.

Shape

As what I can see it, the photo has no certain shape. But, there is something spiral in the middle. I guess, it is because of the brightness of the light that it forms like a ball of light. But other than that I believe the photographer has not taken into consideration what certain shape he must take in capturing the phenomenon. He is so engaged with the phenomenon itself.

In general, I can say that it is so stunningly beautiful. You certainly can see beauty in terrifying things and it was very well captured by Harald Edens.

With the “butterfly” sculpture of Kublai Millan, we can see that it is somehow  a butterfly because of its wings but not actually like a butterfly since it has a human body. With this we can see what Gombrich is saying that an artwork is not  a faithful record of the truth. For all we know, there is no such  element as that. Kublai with this sculpture and other of his works has to say something other than creating those pieces. He includes his interpretation on what he sees, on how he interprets his reality for is Gombrich  saying that in artwork you can see the artist’s particular point of view.  Like Kublai, he just doesn’t make a butterfly like what we see but made something beyond reality because he interpreted something and want to say it to his audience. He has a message to tell and want to convey it through his works. Maybe this is also the style of Kublai like having his sculptures larger than life size and that it reflects the Mindanao culture. As what Gombrich said, it is the artist’s style. Which is already established in Kublai’s work is. His works also reflects his selective preference and his personality. 

 Kublai grew up in Mindanao that is why all his works represents its culture. It is inherent in an artwork even though he wants to reproduce nature faithfully. According to Gombrich,  “there is no seeing which is purely innocent & unaffected by the artist’s personal history, interests & visual vocabulary”.  What he makes is based on reality where he is in.  He is from Mindanao, he sees what is in it and put it in his work. He want to emphasize the richness of Mindanao and the nature in particular and it  is clearly seen in his “Butterfly”.

Artworks, indeed are not just a mere representation or copy of nature alone but  products of the artists’ perception of his nature.

http://sallytrace.com/2007/oceandeep.htm

On the Sulime:
With Burke’s “on the Sublime and Beautiful”, i believe that he was able to explain what is really sublime is.; on what is the feeling behind the word itself. he have said that it is caused by something that can feel us nothing but astonishment. It is the feeling that you are so amazed with an object that it seems you’re world has stopped. you have nothing in mind but only that object. as defined in the dictionary, sublime is the most exalted, grandest, and noblest kind. hmmm…who will not be starstrucked with that?
with that, you can have a conclusion that sublime is always positive. that is what i thought at first. But, as i have read Burke’s article, it’s not. According to him, you can feel sublimity not just with the positive things but also find sublime in negative, in horror. Isn’t it ironic? for me, it is. But hey, its true. he equates terror and horror with sublime. He explained that , when you feel terror, you too will be astonished, as what is caused by the sublimity. So, when there is terror, there is sublime.
It is also sublime when things are obscure, not clear. because it will tickle your mind and start to think of that thing that sometimes lead you to horror. so, it produces terror on the mind, which is to BUrke, sublime.It is because when things are not clear, we become interested with that thing; we wwill be curiousabout it, which made it great. conversely, when things are laid before our eyes, then there is no challenge about it. you will not be amazed anymore. The more enticing the object is, the more it is enticing to our senses.
Moreover, power, privation, vastness and infinity cuses sublime. for the same reason that it causes terror.
Therefore, sublime is anything that will capture your senses for a moment. Astonished with its greatness and also with the terror that it bring; sounds odd at first, but when you think of it, it is. For terror, same with amazement, filled up your senses, which is the commen denominator of all things you consider sublime.

Of the Standard of Taste
If we talk about beauty, we will also be talking about taste. Different people have different percption about beauty, it is because they have different tastes. so, Hume suggests that it people must have a universal perception when it comes to tatse. He said that we must follow a standard, and what does not conform with the standard is of course not beautiful. But for me, I think, it will not work; it is because, eventhough you will set a standard, if it is not really beautiful to a certain person, then it’s not. you cannot dictate human’s perception. though yes, in media, it influences. but not all people were blinded by the media. they have different view swhen it comes to taste and i think it is innate with that person. so, there is no such thing as standard taste, as standard beauty.