Glassicfilm and

AnthonyEasthope

Filmtheory had to strugglea surprisinglylong time obviouslycontaminated with unprocessedsensation, beforeit couldbecome a proper theory of . Diffi- too liableto documentaryappropriation, too easily cultyarosefrom the very feature which ensured cinema turnedto usefulsocial purposes. itsuniversality: ever since the earliestaudiences flung themselvesout of the way of an oncomingscreen locomotive,film hasstunned us by itsseeming capa- Glassicfilm theory cityto reproducereality transparently, immediately, directly.Because of this realism,serious analysis of As Aaron Scharf(1 969) shows in convincingdetail, the filmwas con{ronted from the first by antagonismfrom early impact of photography on painting and notions thesmothering inheritance of Kantianaesthetics. of was enormous. Although encouraging some (1 ln Ihe Critigueof Judgement 790)Kant contrasts artists into innovation and experiment, photography sensationand contemplation,singular and universal, alsoserved to strengthenand substantiatethe opposi- interestedand disinterested (useful and useless).Aes- tion between art and craft.the aestheticand the useful. theticexperience isopposed to merelysensuous grat- As'moving pictures',produced when light isprojected ification(eating, for example)because it combines through strips of celluloid onto a , cinematic sensation-through hearing and vision-with contem- images have a double intimacywith realitysince they plation.The aesthetic object is focused on asa singu- are both caused by it (light from these objects marked larity,not as an instanceof a generalconcept, for its photosensitivefilm) and also resemble it. lt was only ownsake and not for any kind of usefulnessor social too tempting to deny cinema a statusas art. purpose.All thiskicks against what cinema appears to In the face of a seemingly incontestablenaturalism, do best;its renderingof the real seemsjust too the labour of classicfilm theory was to designate the E CRITICALAPPROACHES specificvalue of cinema-what has allowed it to pro- which the photographed image originates.Yetthough vide such a compelling representationof . he arguesthat film exceeds ,Arnheim does not Forthistwo main strategiesemerged. The creationists challengethe view that film is powerfullylnfluenced by (orformalists),including RudolfArnheim, SergeiEisen- its photographic resemblanceto reality.The realists, stein, and 86la Bal5zs,defend cinema as an art form led by Andr6 Bazin,make that relation the essential which goes beyond realism,while the realists,partrcu- virtue of the medium, as,for example, in this passage: larly Siegfried Kracauerand Andr6 Bazin,apprecrate Theobjective nature of photographyconfers on it a quality cinema just because it does provide such an exact of credibilityabsent from all other picture-making. Inspite of representation of reality. anyobjections our criticalspirit may offer, we areforced to Creationism iswel I representedby RudolfArn heim's acceptas realthe existenceof the object reproduced,actu- book Film(1933), which setsout'to refutethe assertron ally re-presented,set beforeus, that is to say,in time and that film is nothing but the feeble mechanicalrepro- space.Photography enjoys a certainadvantage in virtueof duction of real life' (1958:37). Arnheim points out first thistransference of realityfrom the thing to itsreproduction. of all how the experienceof sitting in the cinema differs (Bazin1967:13-14) from ourempiricalperception of theeverydayworld. In This passagemakes it clearthat Bazinis aware that in everydayexperience the world is three-dimensional, 're-pre- cinema filmed objects are not presented but while in the cinema all we get is a flat screen;our life is sented'. And elsewhere he exolains how he varues lived colour with sound, while cinema is black and cinematic reality because it has an almost Brechtian white, and silent (or was, up to 1929);in our ordinary effect in leaving the viewer free to criticize, when world we can look whereverwe want within our field o{ more obviously constructed cinema (Eisenstein,for vision,while cinema limits what we see within the instance) aims to manipulate the viewer's under- maskedframe of the screen. standing. Formalisttheory (Arnheim)and realisttheory (Bazin) Formalisttheory (Arnheim)and realist appear to oppose each other. But what is crucial,and what marks off classicfilm theory, is the assumption theory (Bazin)appear to oppose each they share. Formalist theory values cinema to the 'the other. But both positionssuppose that extent that it is, in Arnheimt phrase, more than cinema,based as it is in the feeble mechanicalreoroduction of real life':realistthe- 'a photographic process,must be ory values cinema to the extent that it adheres to which man assessedas in part a mechanical mechanicalreproduction in the making of plays no part', as Bazinsays (1967: 12).Both positions reproduction,whether feeble or supposethat cinema,based as it is in the photographic convincing. process, must be assessedas in part a mechanical reproduction, whether feeble or convincing. lt was 'l not until the 960s that this view-the naturalist,or Arnheim celebratesthe many effectsthrough which reflectionist,fallacy-began to be finally overthrown cinema transformsand constructsa reality,including in . cameraangles and movement, focus, lighting effects, framing, altered motion, superimposition, special lenses.And, in addition to these features pertaining mainly to the single shot, cinema works through 1968 and after sequencesof shots edited together, producing daz- zling and significanteffects of contrastand repetition, Film theory was able to develop into a fully fledged metonymy and metaphor. Editing makes something account of cinema because it staged what Stephen 'the availableto someone in the cinema that could never Heath refersto as encounter of Marxism and psy- be seen by any empiricalviewer of what was originally choanalysison the terrain of semiotics'(1916: 11).Of filmed. these three theoretical interventions, semiotics (or Arnheim is one of the first to codify the specific semiology)arrived first. In a posthumouswork, Course resourcesof cinema and the many ways it produces in General ,published in 1916, Saussure meaningsbeyond anything present in the realityfrom introduced into the study of language a number of E CLASSICFILM THEORY AND SEMIOTICS

'Yesterday dreoreticaldistinctions, of which two in particurar since bites man' is not a meaningful sen- provedfruitful when carried over into film theory. tence. Fromancient rhetoric, Saussure revived the dis- In other words, it was possible to think of the syn- tinctionbetween signifier and signified to analyse tagmatic axis as a consistent structure which would 'words'. dre naiVeconcept of In any utterance the remain the same even when different paradigmattc levelof the signifier is made up from the sounds terms were substituted along it. ln 1928 Vladimir (phonemes)selected for use by a particular lan- Propp applied this principle to the analysisof narra- guage,arranged in a temporal order; while that of tive, discerningacross 115 Russianfolk storiesa com- 'functions'. the signifiedconsists of the meanings assigned to mon structure consisting of thirty-one 'The anygroup of signifiers.Signifiers consist of entirely Thus, function (Propp 1968: 11), hero leaves 'lvan arbitrarysounds related only to each other in an home', can be realized as easily by is sent to 'Dmitri internallyself-consistent system, and it is purely a kill the dragon' as by goes in search of the matterof conventionwhat set of signifiersgive rise princess'. to a certainmeaning. In modern English, for ex- A semioticanalysis of film narrativewas initiatedwith 'mare' ample,the sounds represented by can enthusiasmand some effect,notably by Raymond Bel- 'female (1972) openonto the horse' or possibly lour in his study of fhe Birds(USA, 1963)and by 'municipal leader'(mayor), while a very similar group PeterWollen (1982),also discussingHitchcock, in his (USA, of signifiersin French ('mer'l'mdre') open onto the account of North by Northwest 1959). Bellour 'sea' 'mother'. meanings and discussesthe Bodega Bay sequence shot by shot, while Wollen aimsfor a Proppiananalysis of whote A principleis implied by Saussure'sdistinction, that the movie. Both examinations, thematerialorganization of a languageisontologically plausible as they are in detail, suffer from what are now recognized as the priortoany meaning it produces. During the 1960s inevitable assumptionsof formal narrativeanalysis- semioticshad a decisive impact upon film theory by that there isonly a singlenarrative and not a number of concentratingattention on the questionwhat were the simultaneousnarrative meanings, that the narrativeis specificproperties of film, its specifica differentia, dis- 'out fixed once and for all there' in the text and not tinguishingit from other forms of signification(novets constructed in a relation between text and reader. anddrama, for example). Narrativeanalysis of film on the precedent of Propp Thereare certain problems in detail, however. For had the definite benefit of shiftingargument awayfrom whileSaussure's distinction between signifierand sig- any question of the relation or correspondence nifiedapplies perfectlyto a language,it is much harder between a film and some real it might be supposed togetittoworkforavisual medium suchasfilm. In any to reflect.lt focused on film as text but did so only by famoussequence, such as that at the end of Ford'sfhe incurring a concomitant limitation. Narrative is an Searchers(USA, 1956) when the John Wayne figure is effect which runs across many different kinds of text, leftoutside the door, what exactly takes the place of so detailing it in filmsdoes not advanceunderstanding the signifierand the signified? This is a question of what is specific to film. Nevertheless,the overall addressedby the work of Christian Metz, as we shall consequence of semiotic attention to cinema was ro weaken concern with the issue of realism ano A seconddistinction put forward by Saussurewas strengthen attention to the cinema as a particular alsoexpanded in .Language works oy kind of textuality.After 1968 these tendencies were movingfonnrard in time so that in English (as in Chinese; reinforced from a somewhat unanticioated ouarter. 'Dog syntaxcan draw simply on word order to make ClassicMaxism theorized that the economic oase 'Man bitesman' mean something different from bites and mode of production determines the politicatand 'syntag- dog'.Naming this linear axis of discourseas ideological'superstructure'.However, during the matic',Saussure pointed out that at every point along 1960s the French Maxist thinker LouisAlthusser nao thishorizontal axis terms were selected and rejected argued that notions of base and superstructureshould froma potential corpus lying in a vertical dimenslon be rethought in terms of practices-economic, politi- 'associative' 'Snake' (the or'paradigmatic'). Thus, is a cal, ideological-each of which was'relativelyautono- 'specific possibleparadigmatic su bstitution for'Dog'or'Man' in mous', each with its own effectivity'.Carried 'Yesterday' eitherof the previousexamples but is not, over to the analysisof cinema after the revolutionary E CRITlCAL APPROACHES eventsof 1968(by, for example,the journal Cahiers du problemof decidingin the first place what constituted cin6ma),Althusserian Maxism was as rigorousin an autonomousshot or segment. excludingapparently non-political approaches to From the wreckageof the grande syntagmatique, cinemaas it wasin rejectingfilm theorywhich began MetzMark ll turnedto the conceptof codes,describ- from literaryor theatricalmodels. As Jean-Louis ingsome as shared between cinema and other kinds of ComolliandJean Narboniassert inCahtersdu ctn5ma representation( and dialogue, for in 1969, it isthe case that'every film is politica l' andthat example)and othersas specificto cinema(editing, 'cinemais one of the languagesthrough which the framing,lighting, and so on).Metz Mark lll is already worldcommunicates itself to itself'(1993: 45,46). To partlyanticipated in his previousprojects, for he had understandcinema is to understandfilm as film. nor madethe point, a littleenigmatically and without proP- 'the somethingelse. erlydeveloping it, that in a film imageof a house "house", "Here doesnot signify but rather isa house"' (1974a: 116). Ghristian Metz The radicalimolications of this distinctiondo not becomeapparent until Metz Mark lll pulls Lacanian The interventionof both semioticsand Althusserian psychoanalysisinto the orbit of his effortto theorize film criticismbrought the narrativeof the developing cinema,notably in hisessay'The lmaginary Signifier', discussionof filmto a pointwhere it wasready for the firstpublished in 1975.Lacan distinguishes benveen cavalrytoride overthe hillwith a moreor lesscomplete the ordersof the lmaginaryand of the Symbolic,the theory.This role was taken by someonewhose work is lmaginarybeing the worldas the individualego envi- characterizedless by brilliant insightsthan by a sagesit, the Symbolicbeing the organizationof sig- doggedwillingness in a seriesof essayswritten over nifiers which makes this possible (for this, see nearlytwenty years to try,fail, and try again:Christian especiallyLacan's 1964 account of vision;1977: 67- Meu (1974a,b, 1982).Although the conscientious, 119). Lacan's account enables Metz to arguethat ima- overlapping,and exploratorynature of his projectis ginary presencein the cinematicimage must be thus compromised,it is convenientto divide Metz's thoughtof as resultingfrom a signifierthat standsfor writingsinto three main attempts. somethingwhich is absent. Cinema provides'unaccus- The first, today perhaps better known through tomed perceptualwealth, but unusuallyprofoundly refutationsthan in the original (see Cook 1985: stampedwith unreality':the morevividly present the 229-31; Lapsleyand Westlake1988: 38-46), was cinematicimage appears to makeits object, the more the theory of the grande syntagmatique.In the it insiststhat objectis actually lacking, was once there 'made 'in searchfor a notion of film language,it became but isthere no more, present',as Metz says, obviousthat cinemahad no equivalentto the untr the modeof absence'(1982:44). of sound (phoneme)which combinedto make up Thatthe cinematicimage is an activemaking-Pre- the particularsignifiers of a language.lmages in the sentclarifies retrospectively the view that in the cinema 'the "house", cinema are as infinite as photographablereality. imageof a housedoes not signify but Metztherefore decided to concentrateon the single rather"Hereisa house"'.Whatthisaffirms, of course, is shot and treat it as a primitivesentence, a state- the ontologicaldisjunction between perceived reality ment, on this basisconsidering how effectswere and anyrhingthatis supposed to be a representationof built up syntagmaticallyby organizingsegments, it. Representation,regardless of whetherthat repre- beginningwith the autonomousshot, into a hierar- sentationderives by a photographicprocess from rea- chy (he discriminateseight levelswithin this hierar- lity,is an intervention,an actof signifyingwhich reality chy) (Metz 1974a: 1O8-46). itselfcan never make. Although obviously you haveto Tosome extent Metz Mark I wasfollowing Arnheim, knowabout housesin orderto recognizea shotas a becausehe lookedfor the specificityof cinemain its shotof a house(just as you haveto knowabout houses narrativizationof what is photographed-the fact that to followa poemabout a house),photographic dertva- 'realitydoes not tell stories'.But objectionspile up tion isneither here nor there in relationto the statusof againsthis account-not onlythe difficultiesfaced by the cinematicimage as utterance, statement, a mean- semioticnarratology in general (its formalism, its belief ing introducedin a semanticcontext in which it is 'Here thatthere is always only one narrative), but crucially the alwayssaying isa . . .'.

\ CTASSICFILM THEORYAND SEMIOTICS

Representation,regardless of whether external reality but as an effect the text produced that representationderives by a through a specificsignifying organization. MacCabe's first move is to concentrateon classicrealism, exclud- photographicprocess from reality, is an ing from hisaccount such texts asthe novelsof Dicrens intervention, an act of signifyingwhich or the Hollywood musical.His next two moves specify realityitself can never make. realismin terms of a discursivehierarchy and empiri- 'A cism: classicrealist text may be defined as one in which there is a hierarchy amongst the discourses 'Concluding At the end of his famous Statement: which compose the text and this hierarchyis defined Linguisticsand Poetics'(1960), tells in terms of an empirical notion of truth' (1993:54). thestory of a missionarycompla in in g about nakedness All texts consistof a bundle of different kinds of dis- amonghisflock, who in turn asked him why he did not course:realism, MacCabe argues,arranges these into wearclothes on his face and then told him thev were two categoriescorresponding to the relationbetween 'in faceeverywhere. Similarly, Jakobson argues, poerry metalanguage and object language. Introduced by anyverbal element is converted into a figure of poetic Alfred Tarski,this philosophicdistinction refers to what speech'(1960:377). On a comparable basis,breakrng happenswhen one languagediscusses another, as, for withreflectionism, the achievement of film theory ro example, in a book written in modern English called Metzis to establishthe principle that in cinema any Teachyourself Japanese. Japanese is placed as the visualelement may be turned to expressivepurpose, object language and modern Englishas the metalan- 'poetic convertedinto speech'.This rendersthe whole guage, situated outside, as it were, and able to take visual,aural, and narrativeeffect of cinema available Japanese as an object of study. In the classicrealist to inspectionfor its significance, the meaning it text,the words held in invertedcommas (what the char- produces. acterssay to each other) become an object language which the narrative prose (what is not marked off as cited) promisesto explainas it cannot explain itself. Thecritique of realism

An immediate 'A consequence of this theoretical brear- classicrealist text may be defined as throughwas to reopen in a much more suggestiveand one in whichthere is a hierarchy radicalway the whole question of realism in the cinema.While film theory was committed to a reflec- amongst the discourseswhich compose tionistview that the text was to be assessedagainst the text and this hierarchyis defined in someprior notion of the real,comprehensive analysis terms of an empirical notion of truth' of realismwas blocked. The moment reflectionism goes,the way is open to consider cinematic realism essentiallyas an effect produced by certainkinds of the The relation between the two modes of dis- text. courseis said to be empiricistbecause while the object RolandBarthes had alreadypointed in this direction. language is seen to be rhetoricallyconstructed-the And so also, back in the 1930s, had . partialityof the points of view of the representedchar- Dismissingconventional naturalist or realisttheatre as actersis all too apparent-the metalanguagecan pass Aristotelian,as finished,easily consumed commodity, itselfoffasthough itwere simplytransparent,the vorce 'The Brechtpromoted his own version of modernist, anti- of Truth: unquestioned nature of the narrative 'epic' illusionist drama, on the grounds that this form discourse entails that the only problem that reality waspolitically radical because itforced the audienceto poses is to go and see what Things are there'(1993: confrontthe text and think for itself. 58). In realistcinema, MacCabe concludes, dialogue Drawingon both Barthes and Brecht, Colin Mac- becomesthe object language,and what we see via the 'Realism Cabe,in a wonderfully compact essay, and cameratakes the place of the metalanguageby show- theCinema: Notes on Some BrechtianTheses' (1974), ing what'really'happened. This effect invited the spec- put forward an analysisof realism which was wholly tator to overlook the fact that film is constructed 'internal': realismwas explained not with referenceto (through script, photography, editing, sets, and so E CRITICALAPPROACHES on) and treat the visualnarrative as though it revealed they are alwayspaft of, a processimplying change and what was inevitablythere. Realismfor MacCabe (asfor which is the condition for any senseof coherence and Brecht)is conservativein that this givennessnecessa- stability. rily cannot deal with contradiction,which containsthe Inthese ways MacCabeand Heath intend to fulfilthe possibilityof change. promiseof bringing together semiologyand ideology, Stephen Heath's(1 976) discussionof realismas'nar- a close analysis of the fundamental operation of rative space' follows on from MacCabe's theory. Heath cinema as a signifying effect with an understanding begins with the system of visual representation on that cinema is alwayspolitical. There is, however,one which cinema, as photography, depends, that is, the imoortant difference between the two accounts. Ouattrocentro tradition develooed to deoict three- Heath's argument is that realism and the effect of dimensional objects on a flat surface in such a way narrative space try lo contain the process of significa- that the image affectsthe viewer much as the natural tion, while for MacCabe realismeffaces the signifierto objects would have done (for a brilliant development achieve transparency.lt is arguable that MacCabe is of this thesis, see Bryson 1983). Ouattrocento space stillwriting from an essentiallystructuralist conception relies not only on linear perspective but on vanous in which realismis an organizationof the signifierwhich strategiesfor placing the viewer at the centre of an necessarilyproduces certain effects on the viewer. 'impos- apparentlyall-embracing view. Heath, in contrast,asserts that transparencyis 'moving Cinema, however, is pictures', a process sible' (1993:82) and assumesfrom the start a concep- which constantly threatens the fixity and centring tion of process as a process of the subject. Subjectivity aimed for by the tradition of the still image. does appear in MacCabet account but is not integral Figuresand objects constantly move, moving in and to it as it is to Heath's. Heath, then, looks beyond out of frame, likelytherefore to remind the spectatorof structuralismto a post-structuralismwhich draws on the blank absencewhich actuallysurrounds the screen. psychoanalysisto discusscinema in relationto subjec- Mainstreamcinema seeksto make good this danger- tivity,including, in the work of LauraMulvey, gendered ous instabiIity through narrative,a narrativizationwhich subjectivity.After Metz, after the redefinition of realism 'contains the mobility that could threatenthe clarityof as a textual effect, that is where film theory goes next. vision' (1993: 76) by constantly renewing a centred perspective for the spectator. Heath cites in detail the proceduresadvised by the film manuals-use of mas- tershot, the 180-degreerule, matching on action,eye- BIBLIOGRAPHY line matching,avoidance of impossibleangles', and so on-and affirmsthat all of this isdesigned to ensure Arnheim, Rudolf (1933/1958), Film; repr. corr. as Fiim as 'the Art (London:Faber). that spectator's illusion of seeing a continuous Barthes, Roland (1953/1968), Writing DegreeZero, trans. piece of action is not interrupted' (Heath 1993: 80, '1 AnnetteLavers and Colin Smith (New York: Hill & Wong). quoting Reiszand Millar 968: 216). *Bazin, Andr6 (1967), What is Cinema?,2 vols., trans. (USA, A perfect example is the beginning of Jaws HughGray, i (Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress). 1975):'a beach party with the camera tracking slowly Bellour,Raymond (1969/1972),'The Birds: Analysis of a right along the line of faces of the participantsuntil it Sequence,trans. Ben Brewster(London: British Film stops on a young man looking off; eyeline cut to a Institute). young woman who is thus revealed as the object of Brecht, Bertolt (1964),Brecht on Theatre,ed. and trans. his ; cut to a high-angle shot onto the party that JohnWillett (London: Eyre Methuen). showsits generalspace, its situationbefore the startof Bryson,Norman (1983),Vrsion and Palnting:the Logicof (London: the action with the run down to the ocean and the first the Gaze Macmillan). Comoffi, Jean-Louis,and Jean Narboni (1969/1993), sharkattack' (1993: 80). Through such narrativization, 'Cinema/ldeology/Criticism(1)', trans. SusanBennett, Heath maintains,conventional cinema seeksto trans- in Antony Easthope(ed.), ContemporaryFilm Theory form fixity into process and absence into presence by (London:Longman). promoting (in Lacanianterms) the lmaginaryover the Cook, Pam(ed.) (1985), The Cinema Book (London: British Symbolic. An alternative or radical cinema would Film Institute). refusethis kind of coherence;it would open itstextual- Heath,Stephen (197 6a),'Jaws, ldeology and FilmTheory', ity, compelling the viewer to experience the process TimesHigher EducationSupplement,26 Mar. E

|' CLASSICFItM THEORYAND SEM]OTICS 'Nanative -(1976b, 1993), Space',in AntonyEasthope -(1971a/1974b), Languageand Cinema,trans. D. J. (ed.),Contemporary Film Theory(London: Longman). Umiker-Sebeokffhe Hague:Mouton). 'Concluding Jrkobson,Roman (1960), Statement:Linguis- -(1977/1982), Psychoanalysisand Cinema:The lma- ticsand Poetics', in T.A. Sebeok(ed.), Sty/e in Language ginarySignifiet trans. Celia Britton (London: Macmillan). (Gmbridge:Mass.: MIT Press). Propp, Vladimir (1928/1968),The Morphologyof the Folk- fGnt,lmmanuel (1790/1952), The Critique of Judgement, taie, trans. LaurenceScott (Austin: Universityof Texas tnns.James Meredith (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress). Press). Laon,Jacques (1964/1977), The Four FundamentalCon- Reisz,Karef, and Gavin Millar (1968),The Techniqueof ceptsof Psycho-Analysis,trans. Alan Sheridan(London: FilmEditing (New York: Hastings House). Hogarth). Saussure,Ferdinand de (1916/1959),Course in General rtapsley, Rob, and Mike Westlake (19BB), Film Theory: Linguistics,trans. Wade Baskin(New York: Philosophical An lntroduction(Manchester: Manchester University Library). Press). Scharf,Aaron (1968),Art and Photography(London: Allen 'Realism filacCabe,Colin (1974/1993), and the Cinema: Lane). Noteson SomeBrechtian Theses', in Antony Easthope Wollen, Peter (1976/1982),'Northby North-West:A Mor- (ed.),Contemporary Film Theory(London: Longman). phologicalAnalysis', Film Form, 1/1: 19-34; repr. In rMetz, Christian(1971a/1974a1, Film Language:A Semio- Readingsand Writings(London: Verso). ticsof Cinema,trans. Michael Tavlor (New York:Oxford UniversityPress). Formalismand neo-formalism

lan Christie

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Formalismis the usual,if somewhatmisleading, name Shklovskyand Tynyanov found themselves not of a criticaltendencywhichhas survived forovereighty only theorizing the new forms of Soviet cinema, but years, despite misunderstandingand even persecu- acutually working as scriptwritersand advisers.The tion. Firstused by opponents, the label was reluctantly scene had been set for a dangerousslippage between 'the adopted by Russian exponents of formal critical and political disagreement. When the Soviet method'-although they protested that it was neither leadershipbegan to regiment cultural life at the end 'Formalism'-now a single method, nor confined to what is normarry of the 1920s, meaningany commit- 'form'. considered But asidefrom these localdisputes, ment to artisticexperiment, or resistanceto an author- 'socialist the tradition of Formalism could well be considered itarian realism'-became an all-purposererm '1 the twentieth century'sdistinctive contribution to aes- of abuse, and during the purges of the 930s it could thetics.For itwas born, historically,of the desiretofind carrya death sentence. an objective or scientific basis for literary criticrsm, Unsurprisingly, surviving Russian Formalists fell partly in order to respond to the novelty of modern silent or recanted, and it was not unlike the 1960s, art-specifically Futurist poetry-and at the same time amid renewed Western interest in the early Soviet to revitalizeappreciation of the classics.In short, itwas era, that many key Formalisttexts were translatedfor a critical position which uniquely responded to the the first time and began to exert a wide cultural influ- peculiar challenge of the modern era; and one that ence.Once again,the linksbetvveen Formalist criticism 'new would later be echoed by the American critics' and cinema were revived, as semiotics became the of the 1930s,as well as by structuralistsand semioti- basisfor a new theorizationof film-and for a revival crans. of avant-gardefi lmmaking,wh ich partlydrew on Soviet But if itsfocus was literature,how did Formalismfirst Formalist models. The Russianstructural or cultural become involvedwith film?This is largelyexplained by semiotic movement which emerged in the late 1960s the peculiar status that cinema acquired during the counted the Formalistschool as one of the influences early years of the Soviet regime in Russia.With film- on its wide-ranging analysisof different cultural and makerslike DzigaVertov and SergeiEisenstein making artistictexts; and this continues to produce valuable large ideological claimsfor their work, film aesthetics work on cinema. Formalist critical tools are also still 'Neo-Formalism', became a subject of intensepublic debate, and even- used, under the banner of by film tually a political issue.In this heady climate of polemic theorists concerned with analysing the structure of and innovation,leading Formalistcritics such asViktor narrationand by criticswishing to sharpenour percep- E FORMALISMAND NEO-FORMALISM

'roughening' perception by a deliberate of normal lan- guage. For Shklovskyand hisfellow members of the St PetersburgSociety for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOYAZ),the poetic use of language involved a 'devices' whole range of techniques or which are not confined to poetry as such, but may also be found in literaryprose. He tracesan inexorablemovement from poetry to prose, from novelty to routine, as language becomes automatic, and compares this with the way old art is'covered with the glassyarmourof familiarity' as we ceaseto experience it in a truly artisticway. What is lost in this transition is ar1'scharacteristic purpose of making the familiar screenstrange (ostra- 'defamiliarizing' nenie),or of what is normallytaken for granted-an influential idea which would later oe echoed in Bertolt Brecht's'alienationeffect' in theatre. Forthe Formalists,art isless an object or a body of work than a processby which perception isslowed down, or even obstructed. Hence what the critic studiesare the forms and devices which achieve this effect. As 'l Shklovskyput it, provocatively; know how a car is made; I know how Don Quixote is made.'

For the Formalists,art is lessan object or a body of work than a processby which perception is slowed down, or even obstructed. Hencewhat the critic studiesare the formsand deviceswhich achievethis effect. octohet(L9281 undermines the Tsarist invocationof .Godand country'by showinE an otherwiseunmotivated montage sequenceof incleasinglybizarre folk-gods Although the Formalistsdrew much of their inspira- tion from the contemporaryenergy of RussianFuturist art,which they saw astypically'laying bare the device' 'defamiliarize'-main- tionof-or in Formalist terms in its radicalnew forms, many of their most influential slreamcrnema. analyseswereof the classicsseen from a revealingnew angle. Shklovsky,in particular,delighted in drawing 'l examples from a wide range of sources,and his 925 Thebirth of a poetics essayson Sterne'sTristram Shandyand Cervantes' Don Quixote (Shklovsky1990) established the basic form- Formalistpoetics developed rapidly in the highly alistapproach to fictionalnarrative. The crucialdistinc- chargedatmosphere of Russianavant-garde art in tion to be made in narrativeis between what Formalists 'story' theyearsimmediately before and afterthe revolutions call fabulaand syuzhet,usually translated as and 'plot' of 1917.Futurist poets were experimentingwith (Bordwell 1985: 49-50 provides the clearest inventedlanguage in an effort to return to the very modern definition of these as applicable to cinema;. rootsof speech in sound and gesture,and Viktor However, these translationscan be misleading (and Shklovskytook this as a particularlyvivid example of indeed contradictsome usesof theseterms in English). howartists play a vitalpart in sharpeningour habitual For fabula, in the Formalist sense, is an imaginary E CRITICALAPPROACHES sequenceof events narratedby the syuzhet,which attractedthe LeningradFormalist critic Yuri Tynyanov providesthe actualnarrative pattern of the worr, or to the irreverentFactory of the EccentricActor (FEKS) 'story-as-told'. Thus,in literature,Cervantes' and Ster- group.Having already worked on the useof parodyby ne'snumerous digressions, abrupt shifts fonrvard and such writers as Gogol and Dostoevsky,he adapted backwardin time, repetitions, and withholding of infor- Gogol'sThe Overcoatfor FEKS in 1926as a polemical 'anew mationare all deviceswhich constitute the syuzhet,or intervention,to pose the questionof "the clas- plot; and the Formalistsregarded the relationship sics"in cinema'.The film functionsas a radicalcom- between Ihe syuzhetand fabula,rather than one or mentaryon the originaltext and its conventional the other,as the essenceof literaryart. accretions.And in the FEKS'ssubsequent historical 'literariness' Such an analysisof the of literature , SVDand New Babylon(1929), Tynyanov saw a clearly could be developed for other , and welcomechallenge to the merelypicturesque in the Shklovskyled the way in applyingformalist analysis elaborateuse of metaphoricaldevices to produce to cinema(Shklovsky 1923). His discussion of Chaplin ironyand pathos. 'Charlie', notedthat the samebasic character, appears The culminationof RussianFormalist engagement in manyfilms, and that these all use similar cinematic withcinema came in 1927,wihhthe publicationof an 'stunts'such devices,which are asthe fall,the chase, anthology,The Poeticsof theCinema, which included and the fight. In eachfilm someof thesedevices are BorisEikhenbaum's major essay'Problems of FilmSty- 'motivated', inthat they appear to ariseplausibly from listics'(Taylor 1982). Amid manyshrewd observations the specificplot's characters or props,while others are whichmake this one of the most sophisticatedearly 'unmotivated'-the typical'Charlie'gestures and textsin film aesthetics, Eikhenbaum focuses on Wvo key actionswhose familiarityhad made Chaplina star. featureswhich can perhapsbe consideredthe filmic The criticalissue for Shklovskywas whetherChaplin equivalentsof fabula and syuzhet.From the French would succeedin going beyondthe self-referential criticLouis Delluc he borrowedthe conceptof 'photo- parodythat was alreadyevident by 1921-2;and he geny' to describethe photographicraw materialof predictedthat Chaplin might move toward the'heroic cinema-what makesfilmed imagesof people and comic'-which, in fact,he did in laterfilms such things intrinsicallyattractive-and from the Soviet 'montage' asThe Go/d R ush (1 9 25)and fhe Gre at Di ctato r (19 40). avant-gardehe takes as the fundamental TheFormalist insistence that poetic and prosaic lan- principleof syntaxfor combiningthese images (plot guageare not confinedto the literarygenres of poetry construction).Filmic utterance then dependson the and prosecould also be appliedto cinema,with inter- creationof film phrases, which require the construction estingconsequences. Amid the passionatedebates of of an illusory,yet convincing,impression of continuity the earlySoviet era betweenadvocates of polemical in spaceand time. fictionand those who opposedall film drama as intrin- Eikhenbaum'smost original contribution is his sicallyfalse, Formalists were able to arguethat the use answerto the question:what links film phrases?Or, in 'factual' of documentarymaterial by DzigaVertov did Formalistterms, how do transitionsappear motivated, not in itselfmake his films factual. Having rejected the ratherthan arbitrary?He suggeststhat the vieweris fictionalstructures of the novel and drama,he had promptedto supplylinks through internal speech, by effectivelyfallen into those of poetry the lyric,and completingor articulatingwhat is implied by the 'red the epic: versewith the rhythmsof cinema'.Simi- sequenceof (silent)screen images. This idea is most larly,a Formalistcomparison between Chaplin's drama easily illustratedby examplesof visual metaphor. A Woman of Paris(1923), Vertov's One Sixthof the Eikhenbaumquotes the sailorin The Devil'sWheel World (1926), and Pudovkin'sfhe Mother (1926), (Chdrtovokoleso', FEKS, 1926), who hasdecided to basedon the idea that poetry usesmore arbitraryfor- stayon shorewith his girl and enters a tavern,where we maldevices than the semanticones of prose,suggesrs seea billiard-ballfal/ into a pocket,thus triggering the 'prose' that Chaplinis hereworking in cinematic and ideaof his fal/from duty.Another example would be 'gods' Vertov in poetry, but that Pudovkinhad created a the famous montagesequence in Eisenstein's hybrid form which movesbetween prose and poetry October(1928), in whicha seriesof imagesof increas- (Shklovsky1927). ingly bizarrestatues of folk-godsare intended to 'poetic' This hybridquality, making full use of the underminethe Tsaristinvocation of 'God' by showing devicesthat appearedin earlycinema, was also what thisto be a heterogeneousconcept.

ti FORMALISM AND NEO-FORMALISM

ql rl fl.'

SorfsEikhenbaum linked the falt of a billia.d-ball in the tavern scene in The Devtt'sWheel (L926) with the sailor's ,fall' from duty as an crampleof inner speech'reinforcing filmlc metaphol

Appearingas it did on the even of the sound revolu- ClaudeL6vi-Strauss's use of it in hisstudy of myth,and tion in cinema, Eikhenbaum's concept of internal consequentlybecame a corner-stoneof the emergent speechattracted little interest until the 1970s. In the structuralistmovement. In line with the Formalists' wakeof ChristianMetz's (1982) combination of semi- ahistorical,scientific spirit, Propp's analysis of a booy ologyand ,it was then taken up agatn, of Russianfairy-tales took as its modelthe biological notablyby Paul Willemen (1974-5, 1994a), who ideaof morphology,or the studyof a plant'scompo- arguedthat it need not be confined to silent cinema nent partsin relationto the whole.By identifyingthe 'literalizing' ortoexamples of metaphor as in the Dey- full rangeof fairy-talecharacters and their narrative 'moves' ilb Wheel example. Might not this discourse of functions,and determiningthe whichconsti- 'thought work'accompany a// and viewing, tute each story Propp was able to show how these heasked, and be subject to the same processes of could all be reducedto variationson a singlebasic abbreviation,condensation, distortion, and the like formula. thatFreud identified in dreams, so that it could func- In adaptingthis structural approach to the studyof tionas both a constituent and a product of the filmic a filmmaker'sbody of work, PeterWollen (1972:93) text-a kind of unconsciousof the filmic system? notedthat there is a dangerin mappingresemblances 'to Anotherbranch of RussianFormalist researcharso of reducingall the textsin question one, abstract hadto wait nearly forty years before it began to be and impoverished'.He drawsa distinctionbetween 'formalist', appliedto cinema, although Vladimir Propp's (1968) this result,as and the 'truly structuralist' 'a Morphologyof the Folkta/e was already becoming aim of comprehending systemof differencesand knownin the early 1960s through the anthropologist oppositions'.Thus, for Wollenand otherstructuralist E CRITICALAPPROACHES

'transtextual' film critics, a measure of success is to bring works artistic (this last expanded to cover which may at first seem eccentric or deviant within allusion to other texts). 'opposi- an enlarged system of recurrent motifs or Bordwell'smany detailed examplesof this enhanced tion s'. and systematizedFormalism at work show how, for Despite this rejection of morphology as a goal, the example,the typical operationsof and melo- terms of Proppt narrativeanalysis have proved valu- drama can be distinguished in terms of different pat- able in otherwaystoo. (1981) recallsthe terns of syuzhet and stylisticconstruction-gaps and function of marriageas a means of narrativeclosure in retardation,the deliberatewithholding of information, all the tales studied by Propp in her discussion of different motivations-and how a broad sampling of Oedioal oatternsin the western.But unlikethe Russian films made within certainproduction regimescan lead folk-herowho rnustmarry to concludethe tale satisfac- towards a'formal ist' historical classif ication. Thus'clas- torily,the western hero may choose not to marry for a sical Hollywood' (the subject of Bordwell et al. 1985) different, though no less common, closure. Mulvey's can be described in more dynamicterms than usual,as 'normalised explorationof these alternatives,discussed in terms of having options for representingthe fabula The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Duel in and for manipulating the possibilitiesof syuzhet and the Sun (1947),again points away from Propp'sessen- style'. Art cinema, by contrast, can be defined by a tially descriptive enterprise, but none the less draws oarticularset of orocedural schemata which underlie upon its characteristicFormalist clarity. widely differing narrationalstrategies. Both Thompson and Bordwell make use of the term 'parametric cinema', adapted from Burch (1973) to Neo-formalism take their neo-formalistanalyses into more challenging terrain.This isdefined asthe foregrounding of an artis- The most substantial and influential modern use of tic motivation in a systematic, structuring fashion. Formalism in the film study has been that of David Examples discussed range from Jacques Tati's P/ay Bordwelland KristinThompson, notably in the former! Time (1968),and Michael Snow's Wavelength (1967) Narration in the Fiction Film (Bordwell 1985) and the (wherestyle completely dominates syuzhetas the film's 'essays latter's in neoformalistfilm analysis',Breaking vestigial narrative is subordinated to an overriding the G/ass Armour (Thompson 1988). In defending continuouszoom structure),and also include films by 'merely' Formalismagainst claims that it is formal, Robert Bressonand Jean-LucGodard. seeking to isolatetheory from either detailed textual Like Shklovsky'sfamous comparison of literary his- criticismor social and historicalinterpretation, Bord- tory to the knight's move in chess, Formalism'sinflu- well and Thompson arguethat, on the contrary only its ence outside its Slavic homeland has largely basic tools can contribute to building an adequate depended on the erratic progressof translationand, historicalpoetics of cinema. indeed, fashion.Thus, it was not until the 1980s that Formalism,they believe, unlike some structuralist translationsbegan to appear of the long-neglected and psychoanalyticmethodologies, crucially implies work of Mikhail Bakhtinand his colleagues,who were an active spectator, and to supply this important criticalof the Formalistsin the late 1920s but can now 'constructivist' subject Bordwell proposes a theory perhaps be seen as extending Formalism's range which links perception and cognition. Drawing on through their critique of its ahistoricismand dogma- cognitive psychology, he identifies a hierarchy of tism. schemata by which the individual's perception is Bakhtin'smost influentialconcept is probably that of 'dialogism', organized. Thus, following a film-like many other which emerged particularlyfrom his study everyday yet complex activities-routinely involves of Dostoevsky's novels. Put at its simplest, in a 1929 the use of already learned prototype and template paper (Matejkaand Pomorska1978), this involvesdis- schematato identify basic situations,characters, and tinguishingbetween an author'sdirect speechand that 'approach events. Individualfilms then involve mobilizing (or of his characters,which can the relationship learning)procedural schemata, at the level of narra- between two sides in a dialogue'. Bakhtin's wide- tive, and stylisticschemata. These art- or film-speci- ranging analysisof novelsfrom many periods and cul- 'polyphony' fic schemata correspond in part to the Formalists' tures reveals degrees of among the concept of motivations as compositional, realistic,or discourses present and, by implication, validates E FORMALISMAND NEO.FORMATISM

zuchdialogism for its complexity and richness.From Tsivian'sevidence is drawn from journalism, litera- hiswork on Rabelais ,car- comes another key concept, ture, and memoirs,and itsextent showshow widely the nivalism',denoting 'folk the persistenceof a tradition forms and devices of cinema had permeated Russian oflaughter'and parody characteristicof the carnival. cultureby the 1920s.Although 'dialogism' this was alsothe lf 'carnivalistic' and have become quite that produced Formalism,his work has wider metho- widely usedterms of criticalapprobation in film as well dological rmplications.And togetherwith that of otner literary as and culturalcriticism, two of Bakhtin,sother contemporary cultural semioticians,Neo-Formalists, contributions seem even more pertinent to cinema. In and assortedfellow travellers,it provesthat the Form- tacklingthe 'speech varietyof /encountered in alistimpulse continues to provide sharp,versatrle tools everydayas well as artisticdiscourse, Bakhtin showed for both criticaland historicalanalvsis. howthese interact with literary genres to define a 'genre memory'which sets limits to each genre. lvanov (1981)suggest that this is directly applicable to BIBLIOGRAPHY 'chronotype,. cinema,as is Bakhtin'sconcept of the 'Discourse Bakhtin. Mikhail (1929/1978), Typology in Thisterm,taken from mathematics,is used bv Bakhtrn Prose', in Problems of Dostoevsky'sArt (Leningrad); (1981)torefer to the specificinterrelationship of time trans.Richard Balthazar and l. R. Titunikin Ladislav andspace in differntforms of narrative.Thus, he iden- Mate;kaand KrystynaPomorska (eds.), Readrngs 'romance in Rus- tifies'adventuretime' and time, in the Greek sianPoetlcs (Ann Arbor: MichiganSlavic publications). novel,with their characteristicelisions and transitions; - (1981),The Dialogic lmagination (Austrn: University of andlvanov proposes that similardistinctions may be TexasPress). madewrthin the main film qenres. - (1986),Speech Genres and Other LateEssays (Austin: Despitethe promise of Bakhtin's Universityof TexasPress). ideas, it must be *Bordwell, David (1985),Narration in the Fiction admittedthat relativelylittle has been done by non- Film (London:Methuen). Russiancritics to apply them widely or systematically. -Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson (1985),The Exceptions,however, are Robert Stam's (1989) survey ClasstcalHollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of ofthe tradition of reflexive, carnivalesqueworks from a Productionto 1960(London: Routledge). specificallyBakhtinian paul perspective, and the use Burch, No6f (1973), Theory of Film Practice(London: Willemen(1994) makes of Bakhtin'sconcepts of dia- Secker& Warburg). 'Functions logue,otherness, and genre as'afragment of collective lvanov,Vyacheslav (1981), and Categoriesof memory'in hiswork on . Within the Rus- Film Language',in L. M. O'Tooleand Ann Shukman (eds.), siantradition, Maya Turovskaya(1 989) has used the RussianPoetics rn Translation,viii (Oxford 1976). Lotman, (1976), conceptof the chronotope to illuminate Andrei Tar- Yuri Semiotics of Cinema (Ann Arbor: 'imprinted MichiganSlavic Contriburronsl. kovskytidea of cinema as time,, and a - and Boris Uspensku(1984), The Semioticsof Russran Bakhtinianinfluence is discernible in the work of yuri Cu/ture(Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions). Lotmanand hiscircle in culturalsemiotics (Lotman ano Metz, Christian(1977/1982), Psychoanalysis and Cinema: Uspenskij1984). The Im agi n ary Signifie r, trans.Cel ia Britton(Bloom in gron One of Lotman's followers, Yuri Tsivian (j994), IndianaUniversity Press). 'texts definescultural semiotics as studying as they Mulvey, Laura (1981/1989), 'Afterthoughts ,,Visual "through" on areprocessed people', so that faulty trans- Pleasureand NarrativeCinema"', in Visua/and Other missionisas much itsfocus as'successful,communrca- P/easures(London: Macmillan). tionwithout interference. Tsivian's pioneering study of Propp,Vladimir (1 968), Morphology of the Folkta/e(Aus- theearly reception of cinema in Russraranges from tin: Universityof TexasPress). Shkfovsky,Yiktor (1923/1988),'Literature considerationof the architectureof cinemas and the and Cinema,, extractsin Taylorand Christie1988. practiceof projection(including mishaps), to the social - (1925/1990),Theory of Prose(Elmwood park, lll: receptionof films as coloured by prevailing cultural DalkeyArchive Press). assumptions.Most radically,he arguesthatthe bouno- - 'cinema (1927),'Poetryand Prosein the Cinema',in Taylorand aryof the text' is inherently unstable, since Christie1988. non-{ilmicelements could, and often did, prove cul- Stam, Robert (1989), SubversiveP/easures: Bakhtin, Cul- turallymore significantfor spectators than the firms tural Criticismand Film(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni- themselves. versityPress). CRITICALAPPROACHES

*Tayf or, Richard(ed.l (1927 /1982), The Poeticsof Cinema, Turovskaya, Maya (1989), Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry RussianPoetics in Translation,ix (OxfordComplete trans. (London: Faber). 'Reflections of the originalRussian anthology, with essaysby Eikhen- Willemen, Paul (1974-5), on Eikhenbaumt baum,Shklovsky, Tynyanov, and other Formalists). Concept of Inner Speech in the Cinema', in Screen, - and lan Christie(eds.) (1994), The FilmFactory: Rus- 15/4 (Winted, 59-70. 'Cinematic sianand SovietCinema in Documents1896-1939 Qnd - (1994a), Discourse:The Problem of rnner edn. London:Routledge). Speech', in Looks and Frictions (London: British Film Thompson, Kristin ('1988) , Breaking the Glass Armor: Institute). Neoforma/istFilm Analysis(Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUni- - (1994b1,'The Third Cinema Ouestion', in Looks and versityPress). Frictions(London: British Film Institute). Tsivian,Yuri (1994) EarlyCinema in Russiaand its Cultural Woffen, Peter (1972), Signs and Meaning in the Cinema Reception(London : Routledge). (3rd edn. London: Secker & Warburq).

E t POETRYAND PROSEIN CINEMA

Poetryand prose in cinema 'Poetry VlKotShklovsky from Viktor Shklovsky, and Prosein Cinema',in RichardTaylor and lan Christie(eds.), The Film Factory:Russian and SovietCinema in Documents(revised edition London and New York,Routledge 1994).

Inliterary art poetry and prose are not sharply differentiated for one of Grimm's fairy-tales, The Twelve Swans, and the fromone another On more than one occasion students of story The Seven Viziers.But there may be another way to proselanguage have discovered rhythmic segments, the resolve a work, and this resolution is brought about not by recurrenceof the same phrase construction, in a prose work. semanticmeans but by purely compositionalones whereby TadeuszZieliriski has produced interesting studies of rhythm the effect of the compositional constant compares with that in oratoricalspeech and Boris Eichenbaum has done a great of the semantic. dealofwork on rhythm in pure prose that is intended to be readrather than recited, although it is true that he has not We find this kind of resolution to a work in Fet'sverse: after pursuedthis work systematically.But, as problems of rhythm four stanzasin a particular metre with caesura (a constant havebeen analysed,the boundary bewveen poetry and word divisionin the middle of each line),the poem is prosehas, it seems been confused rather than clarified. lt is resolved not by its plot but by the fact that the fifth stanza, possiblethat the distinction between poetry and prose does although in the same metre, has no caesura,and this notlie in rhythm alone. The more we study a work of art, the producesa senseof closure. moredeeply we penetrate the fundamental unity of its laws. Theindividual constructional aspects of an artistic The fundamental distinction between poetry and prose lies phenomenonare distinguishedqualitatively, but this possibly in a greater geometricality of devices, in the fact qualitativenessrests on a quantiative base, and we can pass that a whole series of arbitrary semantic resolutions is imperceptiblyfrom one level to another. The basic replacedby a formal geometric resolution.lt is as if a constructionof plot is reduced to a schema of semantic geometricization of devices is taking place. Thus the stanza constants.We take two contrasting everyday situations and in Eugene Onegin is resolved by the fact that the final resolvethem with a third; or we take two semantic constants rhyming couplet provides formal compositional resolution and createa parallel between them; or, lastly,we take while disruptingthe rhyme system.Pushkin supports this severalsemantic constants and arrange them in ranking semanticallyby alteringthe vocabularyin these lasttwo lines order.But the usual basis of plot (syuzhet)is story (fabula), and giving them a slightlyparodic character. i.e.an everyday situation. Yet this everyday situation is merelya particularinstance of semanticconstruction and I am writing here in very generalizedterms because I want to 'mystery we can create from one novel a novel', not by point out the most common landmarks,particularly in changingthe story but simply by transposing the cinema.I have more than once heard film professionals constituentparts: by putting the ending at the beginningor expressthe curiousview that, as far as literatureis by a more complex rearrangement of the parts. This is how concerned, verse is closer to film than is prose. All sorts of Pushkin'sThe Blizzardand The Shot were produced. Hence people say this and large numbers of films strive towards a whatwe may call everyday constants, the semantic resolutionwhich, by distantanalogy, we may call poetic. constants,the situational constants, and the purely formal There is no doubt that 'sA Sixth Part of the featuresmay be interchanged with, and merge into, one World (USSR,1926) is constructed on the principle of poetic another. formal resolution:it has a pronouncedparallelism and a recurrenceof images at the end of the film where they A prose work is, in its plot construction and its semantic conveya differentmeaning and thus vaguelyrecall the form composition,based principallyon a combinationof of a triolet. everydaysituations. This means that we resolve a given situationin the following way: a man must speak, but he When we examine ! Iilm The Mother cannot,and so a third person speaks on hls behalf. In The (USSR,1926), in which the directorhas taken great painsto Captain'sDaughter, for instance, Grinev cannot speak and create a rhythmical construction,we observe a gradual yet he must in order to clear his name from Shvabrin! displacement of everyday situations by purely formal slanders.He cannot speak becausehe would compromise elements.The parallelismo{ the naturescenes at the the captain'sdaughter, so she herself offers Ekaterina an beginning preparesus for the accelerationof movements, explanationon his behalf. In another example a man must the montage, and the departure from everyday life that vindicatehimself, but he cannot do so becausehe has intensifiestowards the end. The ambiguity of the poetic takena vow of silence:the solution lies in the fact that he image and its characteristicallyindistinct aura, together with managesto extend the deadlineof his vow. This is the basrs the capacity for simultaneousgeneration of meaning by

E READING:POETRY AND PROSElN CINEMA "n: :o':o T:" :l :1":': ::::::::

different methods, are achieved by a rapid change o{ frames The Motheris a uniquecentaur, an altogetherstrange beast. that never manageto become real.The very devicethat The film startsout as prose,using emphaticintertitles which resolvesthe film-the double-exposureangle shot of the fit the frame ratherbadly, and ends up as purelyformal Kremlinwalls moving-exploits the formal ratherthan the poetry. Recurringframes and images and the transformation semanticfeatures: it is a poetic device. of imagesinto symbolssupport my convictionthat this film is poetic by nature. In cinemaat presentwe are children.We have barelybegun to consider the subjects of our work, but already we can I repeat once more: there exist both prose and poetry in speakof the existenceof two polesof cinema,each of whrch cinema,and this is the basicdivision between the genres: will have its own laws. they are distinguishedfrom one another not by rhythm,or not by rhythmalone, but by the prevalencein poetic cinema CharlieChaplin's A Woman of Paris(USA, 1923), is obviously of technicaland formal over semanticfeatures, where formal prose based on semanticconstants, on things that are featuresdisplace semantic and resolvethe composition. accepted. Plotlesscinema is'verse' cinema.

A Sixth Part of the World, in spite of its government sponsorship,is a poem of pathos.

E lmpressionism, surrealisffi,dnd film theory:path dependenGG,or howa traditionin film theorygets lost

RobertB. Ray

'the Filmtheory's two traditions than crossroadsof magicand positivism'?Or a moresuccinct definition of filmtheory's traditional pro- 'break Inthe fall of 1938,when the movieswere only 40 ject thanto the spell'? yearsold, Walter Benjaminreceived a rejection let- ter.Inspired by LouisAragon's Surrealist narrative Le Paysande Paris(1927) and by Soviet experiments What could be a more exact definition withcinematic montage, Benjaminhad conceived of the cinemathan 'the crossroadsof whathas come to be known as Ihe ArcadesProject, magicand positivism'? a historyof nineteenth-centuryParis constructed primarilyfrom found material-texts, documents, rmages-whosejuxtaposition would revealthe bur- As a technologicallybased, capital-intensive med- ied originsof modern life. Benjamin had been ium, the moviesquickly developed into an industry receivingfinancial support from Frankfurt'sInstitute keenly attracted by positivism'sapplications: the forSocial Research, relocated in New York,ano ne Taylorist-Fordistmodels of rationalizedproduction. hadsubmitted three chaptersof a book on Bauoe- Indeed,as ThomasSchatz ('l 988) has described, the laire,designed as a prologueto the more expen- Hollywoodstudios set the tone by explicitlyimitating mentalwork ahead.But speakingfor the Institute, the organizationalsystem developed in large-scale 'Your Benjamin'sfriend Theodor Adorno said no. manufacturing. Mass production, standardized study',Adorno wrote, in the now famouspassage, designs,concentration of the wholeproduction cycre 'is locatedat the crossroadsof magic and positi- in a singleplace, a radicaldivision of labour,the routi- vism.That spot is bewitched.Only theory could nizingof workers'tasks, even the after-hourssurveil- breakthe spell' (Adorno 1938/1980:129). lance of employees-all of these Fordistpractices AlthoughAdorno cameto regretthis decision,his becameHollywood's own. Thus,at the peak of its formulationof it definesthe historyof filmtheory. For early1930s power, MGM could produceone feature whatcould be a moreexact definition of the cinema film per week, a quota enabledby its standardized CRITICALAPPROACHES

genres, enormous physical plant, strict definition of Film 'sconceptual neatnessdepends on its roles,and a star system whose performers remained dual provenancein those greatopposites,Lumidre and 'Cinema', asalienated from theirtasksas any factoryworker. And M6lids, documentary and fiction. Godard 'is to guaranteethis system'sreliability, L. B. Mayer kept famously summed up, spectacle-M6lids-and watch on his personnel'severy move. research-Lumiere,' adding (impatientwith the forced 'l And yet, for all of its commitment to the positivism choice) that have always wanted, basically,to do which Taylorand Ford had perfected, Hollywood was research in the form of a spectacle' (Godard 1972: not making Model Ts.That asceticvehicle, a triumph of 181). Inevitably,film theory took longer to appeat functionalism,had succeeded by avoiding any traces but after the First World War it quickly developed of the irrational decoration that Ford portrayed as into two analogous positions,only one of which was wasteful, inefficient,'feminine'. Strikingly, however, attached so neatly to a single name. the Model T's decline (Ford abandoned the car in That name, of course,was Eisenstein.With his insis- 1927) coincided with Hollywood's ascendancy, as tence that filmmaking-as-an-artdepended on repu- Ford's increasingly successful rival General Motors, diating the camera's automatic recording capacity, Alfred Sloan began to demonstrate the enormous Eisensteinaligned himselfnot only with M6lies,but seductive power of style (Wollen 1993; Batchelor also with pictoralism,the movement that sought to 1994).lndoing so, Sloanwas deriving an explicitbusi- legitimize photography by disguising its images as ness practice from the crucial discovery intuiteo oy paintings. Eisensteinavoided that retrograde move Hollywoodl moguls: the movies succeeded commer- while neverthelesssharing its fundamental premise: ciallyto the extent that they enchanted. that a medium's aestheticvalue is a direct function of Hence the inevitable question: could enchantment its ability to transform the reality serving as its raw be mass-produced? The movies' most influential material. For Eisenstein,the means of such transfor- form, Hollywood cinema (what Nodl Burch(1 990) calls mation was montage, the ideal tool for deriving sig- the InstitutionalMode of Representation),arose as an nificance (chiefly political) from the real details attempt to address this problem. The calculus has swarming in his footage (see Kolker, Part 1, Chapter alwaysbeen a delicate one: the temptations of ration- 2). alization on the one hand, the requirements of As histheoretical essays appeared in the 1920s, seduction on the other. As a result, anv commercial Eisensteinassumed the role simultaneouslyperfected filmmaking representsa site of negotiaiion between by T. S. Eliot-the artist-criticwhose writingscreate the 'The these conflicting positions. cinema', Jean-Luc taste by which his own aesthetic practice is judged. 'is Godard once told Colin MacCabe, all money, Eisenstein!sensational films enhancedthe prestige of (MacCabe 1980: 27), but at any moment it can atso histheoretical positions, which quicklytriumphed over become, as Godard once wrote of Renoir! La Nuit du the alternativeproposed by the Frenchlmpressionists 'l 'the carrefour(France, 932) air of confusion . . . the and Surrealists. lf Eisensteinsaw the cinemaas a means smell of rain and of fields bathed in mist' (Godard of argument, the French regarded it as the vehicle of 1972: 63). revelation, and the knowledge revealed was not 'Explanations Developed asthe meansfor balancingfilmmaking's always expressible in words. here are 'phenom- competing demands, Hollywood's protocols became out of place,' Louis Delluc wrote about the the norm of cinema. Increasingly,film historyhas sug- enon' of SessueHayakawa's screen presence, an ex- gested that the key figure in their development was ample of what the lmpressionistscal led ph otog6nie.' I less D. W. Griffith than MGM's lrving Thalberg. Far wish there to be no words,' Jean Epstein declared, more than the independent Griffith, Thalberg spent refusing to translate the concept that he posited as 'the his days negotiating between L. B. Mayer'sinsistence purest expressionof cinema'(Abel 1988: 138-9, on thrift and the popular audience'sdemand for gra- 243,315). mour. In effect, he occupied Adorno's crossroaos, Theconcept of photog6nie,especially inthe Surre- embracing both positivism and magic. Working at alists' hands, emphasized precisely what Eisenstein 'For the originsof the cinema'sdominant mode, a rationar- wished to escape: the cinema'sautomatism. the ist longing to be enthralled by his own productrons, first time', Andr6 Bazin would later elaborate, 'an Thalberg, in fact, embodied the two tendencies of all image of the world is formed automatically,without subsequentfilm theory. the creativeinvention of man' (Bazin1967: 13). More- E ,SURREATISM, FILM THEORY

over,forreasonswhichthe Frenchcould not define,the the premiseof allsubsequent commercial filmmaking, camerarendered some otherwise ordinary objects, including Eisenstein'swhich quickly attracted the landscapes,and even people luminousand spellbind- attention of the Hollywood studios.(Samuel Goldwyn: 'l've ing.Lumidre's simple, mesmerizingfilms had proved seen your film Potemkinand admire it very much. dratfact. Eisenstein anticipated Brecht's proposition What lwould likeisforyou to do somethingof the same that'lessthan ever does the mere reflectionof reality kind, but a little cheaper, for Ronald Colman.') reveal anythingabout reality . . . something must in Although M6lidshad begun as a magician,the film- {ac1bebui/t up, something (Benjamin artificial,posed' making tradition he inspired lent itself readily to the 1979:255).The French who followed Lumidre, how- Taylorist procedures adopted by the American ever,insisted that just turning on the camerawould do 'There moguls. lt was Lumidrewho had discoveredthe cine- thetrick: in Ren6 Clair'swords, is no detail of ma'salchemv. realitywhich is not immediately extended here [the cinema]into the domain of the wondrous' (Willemen 1994:125).And in his first published essay,Louis Ara- Surrealistfilmwatching tactics,for gon 'art' suggestedthat this effect did not result from example,were designedto reassertthe filmsalone: autonomyand ambiguityof images: think, for example,of 'shabit Allour emotion exists for thosedear old Americanadven- turefilms that speakof dailylife and manageto raiseto a of watching the screenthrough his dramaticlevel a banknoteon whichour attention is riveted, fingers, spread to isolate certain parts a tablewith a revolveron it, a bottle that on occasion of the screen. becomesa weapon, a handkerchiefthat revealsa crime,a typewriterthat'sthehorizon of a desk,theterrible unfolding telegraphictape with magic ciphers thatenrich or ruinbank- Second, by insistingthat film's essencelay beyono ers.(Hammond 1978:29\ words, the photog6nie movement left even its would- be followers with nowhere to go. As Paul Willemen 'mysticism This response seems, in retrospect, an acute (1994: 131) has suggested, was indeed description of the way movies are often experi- the swamp in which most of the theoreticalstatements enced-asintermittent intensities (a face, a landscape, of the lmpressionistseventually drowned'. By contrast, thefall of light across a room) that break free from the Eisensteinhad a thoroughly linguisticview of filmmak- sometimesindifferent narrativeswhich contain them. ing, with shots amounting to ideograms,which, when Why,then, was the lmpressionist-Surrealistapproach artfullycombined, could communicate the equivalent sorapidly eclipsed by Eisenstein's?First, its emphasis of sentences.As the hedonistic 1920s yielded to the onfragmentation poorly suited the rapidlyconsolidat- intensely politicized 1930s, Eisenstein'spropositions ingcommercial cinema whose hard-earned basis ray seemed a far more useful way of thinking about the preciselyin its continuity system.Both the lmpressron- cinema. istsandtheSurrealists, in fact, often regarded narrative In fact, however, while photog6nie's elusiveness asanobstacle to be overcome. ('Thetelephone rings,' causedthe term to disappeargradually from film the- Epsteincomplained, pointing to the event that so ory, other people were thinking about it-people like 'All often initiates a plot. is lost'; Abel 1988: 242.) lrvingThalberg. Havingperfected itscontinuity system unealist filmwatching tactics, for example, were bythe mid-1920s,the Hollywood studiosturnedto the designedto reassertthe autonomy and ambiguity o{ great remaining problem. MGM's constant screen images:think, for example,of Man Ray'shabit of watch- tests; its commitment to having the best cameramen, ingthe screen through his fingers, spread to isolate costume designers,and lighting technicians;its regu- certainparts of the screen. Lyrical, contemplative, lar resortto previews-these practicesindicated Thal- enrapturedby the camera'sautomatism, the lmpres- berg's obsessive quest for the photogenic actor, sionistattitude derived more from Lumidre's way of location, or moment. MGM's pre-eminence during workingthan from that of M6lids.The latter'scommit- this period suggeststhat Thalberg achieved,however mentto fiction, and his willingnessto constructa nar- intuitively,what the lmpressionisttheoreticians did rativeworld out of discontinuousfragments, proved not: a formula for photog6nie. E CRITICALAPPROACHES

Currentfilm theory hasoften discreditedlmpresston- ticket. But they were quickly surprisedby their vrew- ist-surrealistfilm theory by pointing to photog6nie's ers' fascination with individual players. For a brief obvious connectionto fetishism.Aragon's own expla- moment, the industryresisted this unintended conse- nation of the crnematic marvellous,amounting to a quence of the movies,this admirationfor actorswhich 'overestimation precisedefinition of the fetishist'sgaze, confirms this seemed an of ', a fetishism.Pre- 'To diagnosis: endow with a poetic value that which serving the players' anonymity, after all, had mini- does not yet possessit, to wilfully restrictthe field of mized their power and kept them cheap. lnevitably, vision so as to intensify expression: these are two however, Hollywood came to recognizethis fetishism propertiesthat help make cinemalic d6cor the ade- as a means of making money, and the star system quate expression of modern beauty' (Hammond deliberately set out to encourage it (see Butler, Part 1978:29). 2, Chapter 9). In fact, although continuity cinema's Inits history, fetishism hasappeared most prominently insistence on story often reduced the immediate asknowledge's opposite, as a meansof falseconscious- attraction of its components ('while an image could 'it nessand disavowal.Max, for example,argued that the be beautiful,'one cameraman recalls, wasn't to be 'fetishism of commodities'encourages us to ignore the so beautiful as to draw attention to itself'),inadver- exploitativesocial relations that such objects simulta- tently, as the lmpressionistsand Surrealistssaw, the neously embody and conceal. The commodity is a movies glamorized everything: faces, clothes, furni- 'hieroglyph', all right, but not one meant to be read. ture, trains.A dining-car'swhite, starchedlinen (North It substitutes the lure of things for a curiosityabout their by Northwest,USA, 1959),a woman'svoice (Margaret production. Similarly,Freud posited fetishism as the Sullavan'sin Three Comrades,USA, 1938),a cigarette resultof an investigation'sarest. Fearingthe sight of lighter (The Maltese Falcon, USA, 1941)-even the 'castrated', the mother's genitals, misunderstood as most ordinary objects could become, as Sam Spade 'the the male infantstops at another place (afoot, an ankle, put it in a rare literaryallusion, stuff that dreams a skirt'shem), investingthis replacementwith libidinal are made of' (Ray1995). energy,but denying the sexualdifference his gaze has It is hard to know whether this effect was always discovered. intended. Constant economtc pressures,the conver- What film theory discredited, however, Hollywood sion to sound, and the absolute pre-eminenceof nar- skilfullyemployed. In fact, the development of clas- rative all encouraged Hollywood's tendency towards sical narrative cinema finds its exact parallel in the Fordistprocedures and laconicfilmmaking. The Amer- 'fetish'. etymology of the word As William Pietz ican cinema'sfunctionalism, in other words, abetted (1985) has shown, the problem of fetishismfirst arose the rationalisttheoretical tradition descending from in a specifichistorical context: the trading conducted Eisenstein.In this context, Thalberg's more compli- by Portuguese merchants along the coast of West cated approach seems especially significant. For Africa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centurtes. Renaissance businessmen, the Portuguese were looking for straightforward economic transactions. Almost immediately, they were frustrated by what 'the Pietz (1985: 7-9) evocatively calls mystery of value'. For the Africans, material objects could embody-'simultaneously and sequentially-reli- gious, commercial, aesthetic, and sexual' worth, and the balance among these categories seemed, at |eastto the Europeans,a matter of caprice. Espe- cially troubling was the Africans' unpredictable esti- mate of not only their own objects, but also those of the European traders, which the merchants them- 'trifles'. selvesregarded as Like the Portuguese traders, commercial film- makers began naively by proposing an uncomPli- cated deal: a story in exchange for the price of a An impressionlst moment, Greta Garbo in Grcnd Hotel (4932) IMPRESSIONISM,SURREATISM, FILM THEORY

despiteMGMs production quotas, strict regimenta_ tern culture's longing for what philosopher Jacques tion,and h ighly developed divisionof labour,Tha lberg 'unmediated Derrida calls presence,. In a passage oftenencouraged, orat leastallowed, moments of rne often singled out for critique, Bazin (1971, OO),n.a kindso admired by the lmpressionistsand Surrealists. apparentlyearned this attack praising BicycleThieves ln GrandHote/ (USA, 1932), for example, whose (ltaly, 'one oro_ 1948) as of the first examples of pure ductionhe closely supervised,the camera cut sud_ 'No cinema': more actors, no more story, no more denlyto an unmotivated overhead shot of Garbo in sets,which is to say that in the perfect aesthetic illu_ herballerina costume, alone for the firsttime, opening sion of realitythere is no more cinema., In fact, how_ likea flower as she settled wearily to the floor. The ever, behind Bazin'srealist aesthetic lay an intuition nanativeidled, enabling this instanceof photoq6nie about the cinema'smost profoundly radrcalaspect: its tounfold because, as Thalberg knew,the movie riould automatism. With photography, Bazin kept insisting, bethe better for it. The plot could wait. an absolutely accurate representation of the world could be produced, for the first time in history, by accident. This miraculous revelatory power made the Soviet or Expressionistimposition Pathdependence of subjective meanings seem a kind of misguided vanity. This argument, of course, amounted to a displace_ Oneof the most decisive moments in the history o{ ment of Bazin'sunrequited religious impu lse.But it also filmtheory occurred during a span of twelve months involved a revival of the lmpressionists,photogenre fromlate 1952 to early 1953. Having emerged from and the Surrealists'automatism. In his own proposeo the SecondWorld War alive, but with the teachinq dictionaryentry, Breton (1972:26)had desiqnatedthis careerfor which he had trained foreclosed to hiri feature of modern technology as Surrealisni'sdefininq because of a stammar and poor health, Andr6 Bazin activity: (Andrew 1978)confirmed his commitment to film cn_ ticism 'The with Evolutionof the Languageof Cinema, ,n. Psychic automatism in itspure state, by which and'TheVirtues and Limitationsof Montage, (Bazin one proposesto express_verbally,by meansof the writ_ ten word, or in 1967,1971),essays in which, for the first time, some_ any other manner-the actualfunctronrno of thought. Dictatedby thought, onesuggested that the two most prestigiousschoots in the absenceof an! reason,exempt from of filmmaking(Soviet montage and Geiman any aesthetic or moral Expres_ :::::"J"tr sionism)were wrong. The movies, possibilities.Bazin insisted,were more radical than those wavs of work_ Breton had also made explicitthe metaphoric connec_ inghad suggested. tion between technology and the Surrealists,favourite Bazin,of course,is famous for arguingthat film,s ,a true game, describing automatic writing as true photo_ destinyis the objective representation of realitv. ,The graphy of thought' (Ernst1948: 177).For the lmpres_ guidingmyth . . . inspiring the inventionof cinema,,he sionists, photog6nie ,is was untranslatable but hadargued a few yearsearlier, the accomplishment intentional,the product of particularlytalented film_ ofthat which dominated in a more or lessvaque fashion makers.For the Surrealists,on the other hand, it was allthe techniquesof the mechanical reprJduction of often accidental,and thus capable of appearing any_ realityin the nineteenth century, from photography ro where. Man Ray made the point provocatively:,The thephonograph, namely an integral realism,a recrea_ worst films l've ever seen, the ones that send me to tionof the world in its own image, an image unbur_ sleep, contain ten or fifteen marvelous mrnutes.The denedby the freedom of interpretation of the artisr or best films l've ever seen only contain 10 or 15 valid theineversibility of time' (Bazin 1967:21).The Soviets minutes' (Hammond 1978: 84\. andGermans, according to Bazin ea), had betrayeo Like 'putting the Surrealists,Bazin could occasionallvfind thissacred purpose by their faith in the image, what he valued in forgettable movies. He devoted. insteadof in reality,convulsing the camera,sobjectivity ,The for example, a page-long footnote in Virtuesano with abstracting montages and grotesque mise_en_ Limitationsof Montage' to what he called ,an scene. other_ wise mediocre English film', Where no Vultures Flv Since about 1970 this position has been repre_ (GB,1951), praising a singlemoment that abandoned sentedas fantasticallynaiVe, another version of Wes_ 'tricky' 'banal a and montage,to show parents,child, CRITlCALAPPROACHES and a stalkinglioness'all in the samefull shot'(1967: contingencies of mise-en-scdne'(Hiller 1985: 134). t€ 49-50). In general, however, Bazin preferred to associ- Auteurism's basic problem, however, involved just n ate his cinematic ideal with a particularset of strate- this kind of attribution. More than even most theore- o gies deliberately employed by an elect group of tical groups, the Cahierscritics had a sense of them- e filmmakers.,Vittorio De Sica, F.W. Mur- selvesas a visionary,well-educated, sensitive elect. As ir r nau,Robert Flaherty, William Wyler,and long as they were associatingthe delights of mise-en- t- were great becausein relying on long takes and deep scdne with filmmakers like Jean Renoir,they could i( focus,they had modestly permitted reality to speak for continue to insiston the consciousaspect of a direc- r itself. tor's decisions.Renoir, after all, was aestheticallywell- r bred, politically liberal, and personally sympathetrc. But the auteuristposition increasinglyprompted them t At the heart of the Cahiersposition lay a to celebrate directorswho had often made bad films, I and who sometimes seemed neither particularly privilegedterm that evoked both smart nor especially nice. Directors, for example, photog6nie'sineffability and the like Otto Preminger. Faced with this situation, the 1 Surrealists"objectivechance'. That Cahierswriters revised their praise, directing it less term was'mise-en-scdne'. at individual filmmakers than at the medium itself. Thus, the Cahiers'sAmerican operative (1965: 13) could explicitly modulate la politique des With this argument, Bazin was retreating from his into a revival of Surrealism's praise of thought's most radical implication, his sense of the automatism: fu ndamentaI d ifference betwee n previous representa- 'random tional technologiesand the new generators' For me, mise-en-scdneis not merelythe gap betweenwhat likethe camera.In the hands of his followers,the Cah- we seeand feel on the screenand whatwe canexpress in iers critics, Bazin's attitude towards intentionality words,but is alsothe gap betweenthe intentionof the became even more ambivalent. La politique des director and his effect upon the spectator.. . . To read all auteursseemed to renounce altogether the Surrealist sortsof poignantprofundities in Preminger'sinscrutable 'rea- faith in chance,celebrating even Bazint beloved urbanitywould seemto be the lastword in idiocy,and yet lity' lessthan the filmmaking geniuseswho could con- there are momentsin hisfilms when the evidenceon the sciouslysummon its charms. But at the heart of the screenls inconsistent with one's deepest instincts about the Cahiers position lay a privileged term that evoked directoras a man.lt isduring those moments that onefeels the magicalpowers of mise-en-scdneto get moreout of a both photog6nie's ineffability and the Surrealists' 'objective picturethan is put thereby a director. chance'. 'mise-en-scdne'. Thatterm was As the Cahierscritics used it, mise-en-scdne'quickly left behind its conven- The roots of this move lay in Bazin'stacit renewal of tional meaning ('setting')to become a sacred word, the lmpressionist-Surrealistbranch of film theory.This shared by friends who could invoke it knowing the achievementusually goes unnoticed,since Bazin, after otherswould understand.ffhis point, and other impor- all, remainsfamous for so many other things: his cham- tant contributionsto this chapter,come from Christian pioning of realismand the ltalianpost-war cinema, his Keathley.)At first, it appeared to be simply another editorship of the Cahiers,his spiritualfathering of the versionof photog6nie, a way of talking again about Nouve/le Vague. Nevertheless, Bazin's ability to 'essence the untranslatable of the cinema'. Hence, reroute film theory at least temporarily,amounted to Jacques Rivette on Otto Preminger's Angel Face a rare instanceof a disciplineescaping from what eco- 'What 'path (USA,1953): tempts lPremingerl if not . . . the nomic historianscall dependence' (David 1985; rendering audible of particular chords unheard and Passell1995). rare,in which the inexplicablebeauty of the modula- Pathdependence developed as a way of explaining tion suddenly justifies the ensemble of the phrase? why the free market'sinvisible hand does not always This is probably the definition of something precious choose the best products. Beta and Macintosh lose to . . . its enigma-the door to something beyond intel- inferior alternatives,while a clumsy arrangement o{ lect, opening out onto the unknown. Such are the keyboard symbols (known as owERryfor the first six

@ IMPRESSIONISM,SURREALISM, FILM THEORY

letterson a typewriter's upper left) becomes the inter_ brio? Maybe this was a scene during which we had closed nationalstandard. Although an initial choice often our eyes. occursforreasons whose trivialityeventually becomes In many cases, this different critical strategy evolved evident(momentary production convenience, fleet- into filmmaking itself, with Godard (1972: j71) again ing cost advantages),that decision establishes a providing the explanation: pathdependence almost impossibleto break. Super- iorkeyboardlayouts have repeatedly been designeo, butwith every typist in the world using owenry tney As a critic, I thought of myself as a filmmaker.Today, I still haveno chance. think of myself as a critic, and in a sense I am, more than before. Instead of writing criticism, Bazinrecognized that film theory was especially I make a film, but the criticaldimension is subsumed. I think of myself as an essay- proneto path dependence. The vagaries of film ist, producing essaysin novel form or novels in essayform: preservation,the industry's encouragement of only instead of writing, I film them. amnesia(before television, only a handful of firms wereregularly and widely revived),the small size of the intellectualfilm community-these factors all The film theory sponsored by Bazinwould receive its encouraged theoretical consensus. While rne best explanation only after its own moment nad lmpressionistand Surrealistfilms, with a few excep- passed.Writing in 1973, (1973/198j: 44) 'Let tions,had disappeared from sight, Eisenstein,shao proclaimed, the commentary be itself a text. . . . There remainedin wide circulation, serving as advertise- are no more critics,only writers.' Bazin'smoment lasted mentsfor his position. (And vice versa: Jean-Marie only fifteen years.The events of May 1968 discreditedboth his ideas Straubonce observed that everyone thinks that and the critical practice he had fostered, stimulating ques- Eisensteinwas great at editing because he hao different tions about the cinema'srelationship to ideology so many about it; Rosenbaum 1982.) As ano power.The post-1968period coincidedwith the oever- a result,Eisenstein's rationalist, critical branch of opment of academic film study, and although - film theory had triumphed, establishing a path ism briefly persisted as a way of doing dependencethat Bazin challenged with all his (aided by its explicit analogy energy. to literaryauthorship), its apolitical concern with aestheticssuddenly seemed Bazinattacked on two fronts.First, he challengedthe reactionary.Comolli and Narboni's 1969 Cahiersedi- Eisensteintradition's basic equation of art with antr- torial'Cinema/ldeology/Criticism' (Nichols, 1976) realism.Second, he encouraged, without practising represented the transition, an attempt to preserve himself,a different kind of film criticism: the lyrical, the old auteurist heroes (Ford, Capra, et a/.) in terms discontinuous,epigrammatic flashes of subjectivity- of the new political criteria.But as spread cum-analysisthat appeared in the Cahiersdu cin6ma. through the universities,it organized itself around a Afewnow famous examples from Godard (j972:64, theoretical approach having more to do with Eisen- 66)suggest this form's tone: stein than with Bazin. That approach has come to be known as'semiotic', Therewas theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), (Ros- painting usingthat term as a shorthandway of summarizingthe sellini), (Eisenstein), (Renojd. Henceforth there structuralist,ideological, psychoanalytic,and iscinema. And the cinemais NicholasRav. theory it encompassed.Committed largely to a spe- Neverbefore have the characters in a film fRayt Bifter cies of critique defined by the FrankfurtSchool, this Victory,France, 19571 seemed so close and yet so far paradigm accomplished wonderful things, above all away.Faced by the deserted streets of Benghazi or the alerting us to 'scomplicities with the sand-dunes,we suddenly think for the space of a second most destructive, enslaving, and ignoble myths. of something else-the snack-bars on the Champs-Ely- lt taught s6es,a girl one liked, everything and anything, us to see the implications of those invisible lies, the 'the treacheryof women, the shallowness,of men, playing the operationsthat Brecht had called apparatus',the slot-machines.. . . relation,for example, between Hollywood's continu ity How can one talk of such a film? What is the point of system,apparently only a set of filmmaking protocots, sayingthat the meeting between Richard Burton and Ruth and a world-view eager to conceal the necessityof Romanwhile Curt Jurgens watches is edited with fantastic choice (see Ray1985). CRITICALAPPROACHES

These gains did not come free of charge. The duce information,defined by information theory as a lmpressionist-Surrealisthalf of film theory fell into function of unpredictability. (The more predictable obscurity,banished for its politicalirrelevance. Indeed, the message, the less information it contains; Ray 'impressionistic' became one of the new paradigm's 1995: 10-12). Film studies, in particular,should ask most frequentlyevoked pejoratives,desi gnating a the- these questions: (1) Can the rational, politically sen- 'untheorized' oretical position that was either or too sitive Eisenstein tradition reunite with the lmpres- interested in the wrong questions. The wrong ques- sionist-Surrealist interest in photog6nie and tions, howevel frequently turned on the reasonswhy automatism?Can film theory in other words, imitate people went to the movies in the first place, the pro- filmmaking and recognizethat, at its best, the cinema blem so vital to the lmpressionists.In 1921 Jean requires,as Thalberg understood, a subtle mixture of Epsteinhad announcedthat'The cinemais essentially logicalstructure and untranslatableallure? (2) Can film supernatural.Everything is transformed. . . . The unl- theory revive the Cahiers-Nouvelle Vague experi- verse is on edge. The philosopher'slight. The atmo- ment, learning to write differently, to stage its research sphere is heavy with love. I am looking' (Abel 1988: in the form of a soectacle?American theoreticianGre- 246).ln the new dispensation,occasional film theore- gory Ulmer (1994)has specified that this new writing tician FredricJameson (Jamesonand Kavanagh1984: practicewould provide a complementto critique.ltwill 3-4) would acknowledge that the appeal of beautiful not be hermeneutics,the scienceof interpretation.lt and exciting storytelling is precisely the problem: will look to photography, the cinema, television,and 'Nothing can be more satisfyingto a Maxist teacher', the computer asthe sourceof ideasabout invention.lt 'than "break" 'heuretics'. he admitted, to this fascinationfor stu- iscalled dents'.Also renderedsuspect was formal ly experimen- A heuretic film studies might begin where photo- tal criticism, deemed irresponsible by rationalist g6nie, third meanings, and fetishism intersect: with critique.The Cahiers-inspiredauteurist essay receded, the cinematic detail whose insistent appeal eludes as did the New Wave film, that hybrid of researchand precise explanation. Barthes maintained that third soectacle.Lumiere and M6lids. meanings,while resistingobvious connotations,com- 'an pel interrogative reading'. In doing so, he was implicitly suggesting how lmpressionistreverie could prompt an active research method resembling the Can the rational, politicallysensitive 'lrrational Surrealists' Enlargement',a game in which Eisensteintradition reunite with the players generate chains of associationsfrom a given lmpressionist-Surrealistinterest in object (Jean 1980: 298-301 ; Hammond 197 8: 7 4-8O). photog6nieand automatism? Here would be the instructionsfor such a project: Se/ect a detail from a movie, one that interests you without your knowing why. Follow this detail wherever Twenty-five years ago, Roland Barthes recognized it leads and report your findings. what was happening to criticism.The semiotic para- Here is an example of what this lmpressionist- digm that he himselfhad done so much to establish- Surrealist model might produce. Studying MGM's 'ittoo', Barthes(1977:166) lamented,'has become tn Andy Hardy movies, I was struck by the occasional some sort mythical: any student can and does presenceof a Yale pennant on Andy's wall. Following denounce the bourgeois or petit-bourgeoischaracter Barthes!'instructions',l'i nterrogated'th isobject, pro- of such and such a form (of life, of thought, of con- ducing the following response: sumption). In other words, a mythological doxa has been created: denunciation, demystification (or ln Andy'sbedroom, only two apPear:Carvel High demythification),has itself become discourse, stock Pennants andYale. In the 1930s, when the bestof the Hardyfilms were of phrases, catechistic declaration.' The problem, 'Where made,Yale's tvvo most famous alumni were probablyCole (1977a: years Barthes 71) wrote four later, is Porter(author of the colleget football cheer)and Rudy 'The to go next?' In the next decade, the most imPortant Vallee (popularizer of Whiffenpoof Song'). Andy 'l've debates in film theory will turn on the extreme path Hardy'sPrivate Secretary [USA, 1941] gives Porter's dependence Barthes saw constraining the human- Got My Eyeson You'to KathrynGrayson, who usesit to ities. At stake will be our disciplines' ability to pro- satisfyAndys request(and the audience!)for something

@ IMPRESSIONISM.SURREALISM. FItM THEORY

bsidesopera. But with his urbanity,dandyism, aristocratic -(1977b), Roland Barthes,trans. Richard Howard (New wit,and cosmopolitan allusiveness, Porter is the Hardy ser- York: Hill & Wang). ies!antonym. Vallee's deportment, on the other hand-a Batchef or, Ray (1994), Henry Ford: Mass Production, Mod- studiedjuvenescence deployed to conceal a prima donna's ernism and Design (Manchester: Manchester University Eo-seems more like Rooney's own. In bursts of manrc Press). exuberance,Andy is given to expressions of self-satisfaction *Bazin, Andr6 (1967), What is Ctnema?,2 vols.,trans.Hugh addressedto his bedroom mirrol pep talks descended from Gray, i (Berkeley,Calif.: Universityof California Press). Franklin'sAutobiography. Although the Hardy films unques- *- (1971lr,What is Cinema?,2 vols., trans. Hugh Gray, ii tioninglyaccept Poor Richard'svulgarized legacy (chambers (Berkeley:University of California Press). 'Progress'), ofcommerce, boosterism, faith in those values Benjamin, Walter (1979), One-Way Street, trans. Edmund willeventually be satirizedby even popular culture, espe- Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London: New Left ciallyin 1961s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Books). Irying,whose hero-on-the-make serenades his own mirror Breton, Andr6 (1972), Manifestos of Sureaiism, trans. 'l imagewith the show's hit, Believe in You.' Making a RichardSeaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor: University Mickey-Rooneystyle comeback, that play's costar, in the of Michigan Press). partofcorporation presidentJ. B. Biggley,was RudyVallee. Burch, No6l (199O),Life to those Shadows (Berkeley:Uni- Andyet:with the series making no other mention of it, versity of California Press). 'Clio fre choiceof the Yale pennant seems particularly arbi- David, Paul A. (1985), and the Economics of owrnrv', trary.Andy, after all, eventually follows his father's foot- American Economic Review, 7 5/2: 332-7 . 'Wainwright stepsto College,' whose plentiful coeds, Ernst, Max (1948), Beyond Painting and Other Wrrtings by accessibleteachers, and intimate size represent the lvy the Artist and his Friends (New York: Wittenborn Schultz). League'sopposite. Obvious answers, of course, present Godard, Jean-Luc (1972), Godard on Godard, trans. Tom 'Yale' 'Yale' themselves: as the best known college name, Milne (New York: Viking Press). 'class.' 'Harvard' 'Prince- asa signifierof Then why not or *Hammond, Paul (ed.) (1978), The Shadow and its ton'?lf we acknowledge instead another logic (more Shadow: Surrea/ist Writinos on the Cinema (London: 'Yale' visual,more cinematic),we might begin to see as British Film Institute). an unusuallyvaluable design-bold (the rare capital !, Hillier, Jim (ed.) (1985), Cahiers du Cin6ma. The 1950s: concise(the shortest college name), memorable (the Neo-Rea/ism,Hollywood, New Wave (Cambridge, Mass.: locks),available for multiple rhymes (including hale, the Harvard UniversityPress). 'hearty'). 'The inevitablecompanion o{ Hardy's near-homonym Jameson, Fredric, and James Kavanagh (1984), Fromthis perspective,the Yale pennant signals a relaxa- Weakest Link: Marxism in Literary Studies', in The Left tionof filmmaking'sreferential drive, a turn toward the Academy // (New York: Praeger). possibilitiesinherent in shapes, movements, and sounds. Jean, Marcel (ed.) (1980), The Autobiography of Surreal- 'Yale'suggests Inthe Hardyseries, the cinema's revisionof ism (New York: Viking). Mallarm6'sfamous warning to Degas-movies are not MacCabe, Colin (1980), Godard: lmage, Sounds, Politics madewith words, but with lmages. (Ray 1995: 173-4) (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress). Nichols, Bill (ed.) (1976), Movies and Methods (Berkeley: Universityof California Press). 'Why Passell, Peter (1996), the Best doesn't always Win', BIBTIOGRAPHY New York Times Magazine, 5 May: 60-'l . tAbel, Richard (ed.) (19BB), French Film Theory and Criti- Pietz, William (1985),'TheProblem of the Fetish',part 1, cism, i: 1907-1929 (Princeton: Princeton Universitv Res,9:5-17. Press). -(1987),'The Problem of the Fetish',part 2, Res, 13: Adorno,Theodor (1938/'1980), Letter to Walter Benjamin, 23-45. 'The trans.Harry Zohn, in Fredric Jameson (ed.), Aesthetics - (1988), Problemof the Fetish',part 3, Res,16: and Politics(London: Verso). 105-23. *Ray, Andrew, Dudley (1978), Andre Bazin (New York: Oxford RobertB. (1985),A CertainTendency of the Holly- UniversityPress). wood Cinema 1930-1980 (Princeton: Princeton Univer- 'Theory Barthes,Roland (197311981), of the Text', trans. sity Press). Geoff Bennington, in Robert Young (ed.), lJntying the - (1995), The Avant-Garde Finds Andy Hardy (Cam- Iext: A Post-Structuralist Reader (Boston: Routledqe & bridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress). 'The KeganPaul). Rosenbaum, Jonathan (1982), Films of Jean-Marie - (1977a), Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath Straub and Danielle Huillet'. in Film at the Public. Pro- (NewYork: Hill & Wang). gramme for a film series (New York: Public Theater).

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'Premingert Sarris,Andrew (1965), Two Periods:Studio Willemen, Paul (1994), Looks and Frictions: Essaysin Cu/- and Solo',, 3/3: 12-17. tural Studiesand Film Theory (Bloomington: Indiana Uni- Schatz,Thomas (1988),fhe Geniusof the System:Holly- versity Press;London: British Film Institute). wood Filmmakingin the Studio Era(New York: Pantheon Wollen, Peter (1993), Raiding the lcebox: Reflections on Books). Twentieth-Century Culture (Bloomington: Indiana Uni- Ulmer, Gregory L. (1994),Heuretics: The Logic of lnven- versity Press). tion (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press). psychoanalysis

BarbaraCreed

Psychoanalysisandthe cinema were born at the end of spectator relationship. Despite a critical reaction drenineteenth century. They sharea common histor- against psychoanalysis,in some quarters,in the 'l ical,social, and culturalbackground shaped by the 980sand 1990s,it exertedsuch a profoundinfluence forcesof modernity. Theorists commonly explore thatthenature and direction of film theory and criticism howpsychoanalysis, with its emphasison the impor- has been changedin irrevocableand fundamental tanceof desirein the life of the individual,has influ- ways. encedthe cinema.But the reverseis alsotrue-tne cinemamay well have influencedpsychoanalysis. Notonly did Freud draw on cinematlcterms ta 'screen Pre.197ospsychoanalytic film theory describehis theories, as in memories,,but a number of his key ideaswere developedin visual One of the firstartistic movements to drawon psycho- terms-particularly the theoryof castration,which is analysiswas the Surrealistmovement of the 1920sano dependent upon the shockregistered by a close-up 1930s. In theirquestfor new modes of experiencethat image of the femalegenitals. Further, as Freud(who transgressedthe boundariesbetween dream and real- loved SherlockHolmes) was aware, his casehistories ity,the Surrealistsextolled the potentialof the cinema. unofoldvery muchlike popular mystery novels of the They were deeply influencedby Freud'stheory of kindthat were also adopted by the cinemafrom its dreamsand hisconcept of the unconscious.To them, inceotion. the cinema,with its specialtechniques such as the Thehistory of psychoanalyticfilm criticismis extre- dissolve,superimposition, and slow motion, corre- melycomplex-partly because it is long and uneven, spondto the natureof dreaming. partlybecause the theories are difficult, and partly Andr6 Breton,the founderof the movement.saw becausethe evolutionof psychoanalyticfilm theory cinemaas a wayof enteringthe marvellous,that reatm afterthe 1970s cannot be understood without of loveand liberation.Recent studies by writerssuch recourseto developmentsin separate,but related as Hal Foster(1993) argue that Surrealismwas atso areas,such as Althusser's theory of ideology,semiotics, bound up with darkerforces-explicated by Freud- andfeminist film theory.In the 1970spsychoanalysis suchas the deathdrive, the compulsion to repeat,ano becamethe key disciplinecalled upon to explaina the uncanny.Certainly, the filmsof the greatestexpo- seriesof diverseconcepts, from the way the cinema nent of cinematicSurrealism, Luis Bufrel(Un chien functionedas an apparatus to the natureofthe screen- andalou,France, 1928; The ExterminatingAngel, Mex-

@ CRITICALAPPROACHES

ico, 19 62; and fhat Obs cu re Object of Desire, France, sisticego isformed in its relationshipto others.One of 1977), explore the unconscious from this perspective. the earliestworks influenced by Freud'stheory of the Not all theorists used Freud. Others drew on the double was Otto's Rank's 1925 classic The Double ideas of Carl Gustav Jung, and particularlyhis tneory which was directly influenced by a famous movie of 'l of archetypes,to understandfilm. The archetype is an the day, Ihe Student of Prague(Germany, 913). In his ideaor image that hasbeen centralto human exisrence later rewriting of Freud, Lacantook Freud'snotion of and inherited psychicallyfrom the speciesby the indi- the divided self as the basisof histheory of the forma- vidual. Archetypes include: the shadow or the unoer- tion of subjectivity in the mirror phase (see below), side of consciousness;the anima,that is the feminine which was to exert a profound influenceon film theory 'l aspectin men;andthe animus,orthe masculineaspect in the 970s. in women. But generally,Jungian theory has never Sexualitybecomes crucial during the child's Oedi- been widely applied to the cinema. Apart from Clark pus complex. Initially,the child existsin a two-way,or Branson'sHoward Hawks:A Jungian Study (1987)and dyadic, relationshipwith the mother. But eventually, John lzod's The Filmsof Nico/as Roeg: Myth and Mind the child must leavethe maternalhaven and enter the (1992), critical works consist mainly of articles, oy domain of law and language.As a resultof the appear- authors such as Albert Benderson (1979), Royal S. anceof a third figure-the father-in the child'slife, the (1980), Brown and Don Fredericksen(1980), which child gives up its love-desirefor the mother.The oya- analyse archetypes in the film text. Writers of the dic relationshipbecomes triadic. This isthe moment of 1970swho turned to Freud and Lacan-the two mosr the Oedipal crisis.The boy represseshis feelings for influential psychoanalysts-were critical, however, of the mother becausehe fearsthe fatherwi || pu nish him, what they perceived to be an underlying essentialism possiblyeven castratehim-that is. make him like his in Jungian theory that is a tendency to explain sub- mother, whom he now realizesis not phallic. Priorto jectivity in unchanging,universal terms. thismomentthe boy imaginedthe motherwasjust like Many of Freud's theories have been used in film himself. On the understanding that one day he will theory: the unconscious;the return of the represseo; inherita woman of hisown, the boy represseshis desire Oedipal drama; narcissism;castration; and hysteria. for the mother. This is what Freud describes as rne 'primal Possibly his most important contributions were his moment of repression';it ushersin the forma- accountsof the unconscious,subjectivity, and sexual- tion of the unconscious. ity.According to Freud, large parts of human thought The girl givesup her loveforthe mother,not because remain unconscious;that is,the subjectdoes not know she fears castration (she has nothing to lose) but about the content of certaintroubling ideas and often because she blames the mother for not giving her a much effoft is needed to make them conscious.Unde- penis-phallus.She realizesthat only those who pos- sirablethoughts will be repressedor kept from con- sessthe phallushave power. Henceforth,she transfers sciousnessby the ego under the command of the her love to her father, and later to the man she will super-ego,or conscience.In Freud'sview, repression marry.But, as with the boy, her represseddesire can, is the key to understandingthe neuroses.Repressed at any time, surface, bringing with it a problematic thoughts can manifest themselves in dreams, night- relationship with the mother. The individual who rs mares,slips of the tongue, and forms of artisticactivity. unableto come to terms with his or her proper gender These ideas have also influencedfilm studv and some role (activityforboys, passivity forgirls) may become an 'unconscious' psychoanalyticcritics explore the of the hysteric;that is, represseddesires will manifestthem- 'subtext'-analysing film text-referred to as the it for selvesas bodily or mental symptoms such as paralysis repressed contents, perverse utterances, and evi_ or amnesia.'sPsycho (USA, i 960) and dence of the workings of desire. Marnie(USA, 1964) present powerful examplesof what Freud's notion of the formation of subjectivity is might happen to the boy and girl respectivelyif they more complex. Two concepts are central: division fail to resolvethe Oedipus complex. and sexuality.The infantile ego is a divided entity. Freud'stheories were discussedmost systematically The ego refers to the child's sense of self; however, in relation to the cinema after the post-structuralist becausethe child, in its narcissisticphase, also takes revolution in theory during the 1970s. In particular, itself,invests in itself,as the object of its own libidinal writersapplied the Oedipal trajectoryto the narrative drives,the ego is both subject and object. The narcis- structuresof classicalfilm texts. They pointed to the E FILM AND PSYCHOANATYSIS

faathatall narratives appeared to exhibitan Oedipal inistfilm theorist Laura Mulvey, who contestedaspects tajectory;thatis,the (male)hero was confronted with a of the workof Baudryand Metzby rebuttingthe nat- crisisinwhich he had to asserthimself over another uralizationof thefilmic protagonist as an Oedipal hero, man(often a fatherfigure) in order to achievesocial andthe viewof the screen-spectatorrelationship as a recognitionand win the woman.In thisway, film was one-wayprocess. s€ento representthe workingsof patriarcha I ideology. The third stage involved a number of feminist 'Monsters Inan early two-part article, from the lD' responsesto Mulvey'swork. These did not all follow (1970,1971),which pre-dates the influencesof post- the samedirection. In general,they includedcritical sfucturalistcriticism, Margaret Tarrattanalysed the studiesof the femaleOedipal trajectory, masculinity sciencefiction film. She argued that previouswrr- andmasochism, fantasy theory and spectatorship, and ters,apart from Frenchcritics, all view sciencefiction womanas active, sadistic monster. 'reflections filmsas of society's anxiety about rts Thefourth stage involves theorists who usepsycho- increasingtechnological prowess and its responsibil- analytictheory in conjunctionwith other critical ityto controlthe gigantic forces of destruction it approachesto the cinemaas in post-colonialtheory, possesses'flarratt 1970: 38). Her aim was to queertheory, and body theory. 'deeply demonstratethat the genre was involved withconcepts of Freudianpsychoanalysis and seen Apparatustheory: inmany cases to derive their structurefrom it' (38). Baudryand Metz lnparticular, explores the individual's The notion of the cinema as an institutionor apparatus repressedsexual desires, viewed as incompatible is central to 1970s theory. However, it is crucial to withcivilized morality. Utilizing Freuds argument understand that Baudry Metz, and Mulvey did not thatwhatever is repressedwill return, Tarratt drs- simply mean that the cinemawas like a machine.As 'The cussesOedipal desire, castrationanxiety, and vio- Metz explained, cinematic institution is not just lentsadistic male desire. the cinema industry . . . it is also the mental machin- "accus- ery-another industry-which spectators tomed to the cinema" have internalized historically 1970spsychoanalytic theory and aftel and which has adapted them to the consumption of 'cinematic films' (1975/1982:2). Thus the term appa- Oneof the majordifferences between pre- and post- ratus' refersto both an industrialmachine as well as a 1970spsychoanalytic theory was that the lattersaw the mental or psychicapparatus. cinemaasan institution or anapparatus. Whereas early Jean-Louis Baudry was the first to draw on psy- approaches,such as those of Tarratt,concentrated on choanalytictheory to analysethe cinema as an insti- 'cannot thefilmtext in relation to itshidden or repressedmean- tution. According to D. N. Rodowick, one ings,1970s theory, as formulated by Jean-LouisBau- overestimate the impact of Baudry's work in this dry,Christian Metz, and LauraMulvey, emphasized the period' (1988: 89). Baudryt pioneering ideas were crucialimportance of the cinemaas an apparatusand later developed by Metz, who, although critical of asa signifying practice of ideology,the viewer-screen aspects of Baudryt theories, was in agreement with relationship,and the way in which the viewerwas'con- his main arguments. structed'as transcendentalduring the spectatorial Baudryexplored hisideas aboutthe cinematicappa- 'ldeological process. ratus in two key essays.In the first, Effects Psychoanalyticfilm theoryfrom the 1970sto the of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus' (1970), he 1990shas travelledin at least four different,but argued that the cinema is ideological in that it creates related,directions. These should not be seenas linear an ideal, transcendentalviewing subject. By this he 'eye- progressionsasthey frequently overlap: meant that the cinema placesthe spectator,the Thefirststage was influenced by apparatustheory as subject' (1986a:290), atthe centre of vision. ldentifi- proposedby Baudryand Metz.In an attemptto avoid cation with the camera-projector,the seamlessflow thetotalizing imperative of the structuralistapproach, of images,narratives which restoreequilibrium-all of theydrewon psychoanalysisasa wayof wideningtherr these things give the spectator a sense of unity and 'the theoreticalbase. control. The apparatusensures setting up of the "subject" Thesecond development was instituted by thefem- as the active centre and origin of meaning' E CRITICAL APPROACHES

(1986a:286). Further,according to Baudry,by hiding emanatefrom the spectatorbut is constructedby the the way in which it creates an impressionof realism, apparatus.Thus, the cinematicinstitution is complicit the cinema enables the viewer to feel that events are with ideology-and other institutionssuch as State simply unfolding-effortlessly-before his eyes. The and Church-whoseaim is to instilin the subjecta 'reality effect' also helps to create a viewer who is at misrecognitionof itselfas transcendental. the centre of representation. In his 1975 essay'The Apparatus',Baudry drew To explainthe processesof identificationat work in furtheroarallels between Plato's cave and the cine- the viewing context, Baudryturned increasinglyto the matic apparatus.The spectatorsin both are in a 'shackled theories of . Baudry argued that the stateof immobility', to the screen',staring 'images screen-spectator relationship activates a return to at and shadowsof reality'that are not real the Lacanian lmaginary the period when the child but'a simulacrumof it' (1986b: 303-4).Like specta- experiencesits first sense of a unified self during the tors in the cinema,they mistakethe shadowyfigures 'The mirror stage. arrangement of the different ele- for the realthing. According to Baudrywhat Plato's ments-projector, darkened hall, screen-in addition prisoners-humanbeings desire-and what the to reproducing in a strikingway the mise-en-scdneof cinema offers-is a return to a kind of psychicunity Plato'scave . . . reconstructsthesituation necessaryto in whichthe boundarybetween subject and objectis "mirror the releaseof the stage" discoveredby Lacan' obliterated. (1986a:294). Baudry then drew connections between Plato's 'maternal According to Lacan,there are three orders in the cave, the cinematicapparatus, and the 'the history of human development: the lmaginary the womb' (1986b:306). He arguedthat cinemato- Symbolic,and the Real.lt isth isarea of Lacaniantheory graphicapparatus brings about a state of artificial particularlythe lmaginary and the Symbolic, that is regression'which leads the spectator'backto an ante- centralto 1970s film theory. Drawing on Freud'sthe- riorphase of hisdevelopment'. The subject's desire to 'an oriesof narcissismand the divided subject,Lacan pro- returnto this phaseis earlystate of development posed his theory of subjectivity. The mirror stage, with its own forms of satisfactionwhich may play a which occursduring the period of the lmaginary,refers determiningrole in hisdesire for cinemaand the plea- to that moment when the infant first experiencesthe surehe findsin it' ('1986b:313). What Baudryhad in 'archaic joy of seeing itselfas complete, and imaginesitself to mindby this'anterior phase'was an momentof 'a be more adult, more fully formed, perfect,than it really fusion'prior to the Lacanianmirror stage, mode of is.The self is constructed in a moment of recognition identification.which has to do with the lackof differ- and misrecognition.Thus, the self is split. entiationbetween the subjectand hisenvironment, a Similarly,the spectatorin the cinema identifieswith dream-scenemodel which we find in the baby/breast the larger-than-life,or idealized, characters on the relationship'(1 986b: 31 3). screen.Thus, as Mulvey (1975) later argued, the vrew- After discussingthe actual differencesbetween ing experience,in which the spectator identifieswith dreamand the cinema, Baudry suggested that another the glamorousstar, is not unlike a re-enactmentof the wishlies behind the cinema-complementaryto the moment when the child acquiresits first senseof self- one at workin Plato'scave. Without necessarily being hood orsubjectivitythrough identificatonwith an ideal awareof it,the subjectis led to constructmachines like 'reoresent self.But, as Lacanpointed out, this is alsoa moment of the cinemawhich hisown overallfuncrron- misrecognition-the child is not really a fully formeo ingto him . . . unawareof thefactthat he isrepresent- subject. He will only see himself in this idealizedway ingto himselfthe very scene of the unconsciouswhere when his image is reflected back through the eyes of he is'(1986b:316-17). others.Thus, identity is alwaysdependent on media- In 1975 ChristianMetz publishedPsychoanalysis tion. and Cinema: The lmaginarySignifier (translated in Forthe moment, the spectatorin the cinema istrans- 1982),which was the first systematicbook-length ported back to a time when he or she experienced a attemptto applypsychoanalytic theory to the cinema. senseof transcendence.But in reality,the spectatoris Like Baudry Me? also supported the analogy not the point of origin, the centre of representatton. betweenscreen and mirror and held that the spectator Baudryargued that the comforting sense of a unified waspositioned by the cinemamachine in a moment self which the viewing experience re-enactsdoes not that reactivatedthe pre-Oedipalmoment of identifi- FILM AND PSYCHOANATYSIS

cation-thatis, the moment of imaginary unity in boundtogether. Thus, entry into the Symbolicentails whichthe infantfirst perceivesitself as complete. an awarenessof sexualdifference and of the 'self'as 'l' However,Metz also argued that the cinema-mirror fragmented.The very conceptof entailslack and analogywas flawed. Whereas a mirror reflects back IOSS. fre spectator'sown image, the cinema does not. Metz When the boy mistakenlyimagines his mother (sis- alsopointed out that, whereas the cinema is essen- ters,woman) is castrated,his immediate responseis to tiallya symbolic system, a signifying practice that disavow what he has seen; he thinks she has been mediatesbetween the spectator and the outside castrated, but he simultaneously knows that this is world,the theory of the mirror stage refers to the not true. Two courses of action are open to the boy. pre-symbolic,the period when the infant is without He can accept her differenceand represshis desirefor language. unificationwith the mother on the understandingthat Nevertheless,Me? advocated the crucial impor- one day he will inherita woman of his own. He can tanceof Lacanianpsychoana lytic theory for the cinema refuseto accept herdifferenceand continueto believe andstressed the need to theorize the screen-spectaror that the mother is phallic.Rather than think of her lack, relationship-notjust in the context of the lmaginary the fetishist will conjure up a reassuring image of butalso in relation to the Symbolic. To address this another part of her body such as her breasts or her issue,Metz introduced the notion of voyeurism. He legs. He will also phallicizeher body, imaginingit in arguedthat the viewing process is voyeuristicin that conjunction with phallic images such as long spiky thereis alwaysa distance maintained, in the cinema, high heels. Hence, film theorists have drawn on the betweenthe viewing subject and its object. The cine- theory of the phallic woman to explain the femme 'l maticscene cannot return the spectator's gaze. fatale of film noir (Double lndemnity, USA, 944; Metzalso introduced a further notion which became Body Heat, USA, 198'l ; The Last Seduction, USA, thesubtitle of his book: the imaginary signifier.The 1994), who is depicted as dangerously phallic. E. cinema,he argued, makes present what is absent. Anne Kaplan's edited collection Thescreen might offer imagesthat suggest complete- Noir (l978) proved extremely influential in this ness,but this is purely imaginary.Because the specta- context. torisaware thatthe offerof unity isonly imaginary he is The Oedipal trajectory,Metz argued, is re-enacted forcedto dealwith a senseof lackthat isan inescapabre in the cinema in relationnot only to the Oedipal nature partof the viewing process. of narrative, but, most importantly, within the specta- Metzdrew an analogy between this process and the tor-screen relationship.Narrative is characteristically experienceof the (male)child in the mirror phase. Oedipal in that it almost alwayscontains a male prota- (Metassumes the spectatoris male.)When the boy gonist who, after resolvinga crisisand overcoming a 'lack', looksin the mirrorand identifiesfor the firsttime with then comes to identifywith the law of the father, himselfas a unifiedbeing he isalso made aware of his while successfullycontaining or controllingthe female differencefrom the mother.She lacksthe penis he figure,demystifying herthreat, orachieving union with oncethought she possessed. Entry into the Symbolic ner. 'lack' alsoinvolves repression of desirefor the motherand The concept of is crucialto narrativein another theconstitution of the unconsciousin responseto that context. According to the Russian Formalist Tzvetan repression.(Here, Lacan reworks Freud's theories of Todorov, the aim of all narrativesis to solve a riddle, to thephallus and castration.)Along with repressionof find an answerto an enigma, to fill a lack.All stories desireforthemothercomesthe birth of desire:forthe begin with a situationin which the statusquo is upset speakingsubject now beginsa lifelongsearch for the and the hero or heroinemust-in generalterms-solve 'o'of lostobject-theother, the little the lmaginary,the a problem in order for equilibriumto be restored.This motherhe relinquishedin order to acquirea social approach seesthe structuresof narrativeas being in the identity. service of the subjea's desire to overcome lack. As the child entersthe Symbolicit acquireslan- Furthermore,the processesof disavowaland fetish- 'law guage.However, it mustalso succumb to the of ism which mark the Oedipal crisisare-according to thefather' (the laws of society)which governs the Sym- Metz-also replayed in the cinema. In terms of dis- bolicorder. Entry into the Symbolicis entryinto law, avowal, the spectator both believes in the existence language,and loss-conceptswhich are inextricably of what was represented on the screen yet also knows E CRITICALAPPROACHES

that it does not actually exist. Conscious that the criticismcame from feministcritics, who arguedcor- cinema only signifieswhat is absent, the (male)spec- rectlythat apparatustheory completely ignored gen- tator is aware that his sense of identificationwith the image is only an illusionand that his senseof self is based on lack. Knowing full well that the original events, the profilmic diegetic drama, is missing, the Psychoanalysis,feminism, and film: Mulvey spectator makes up for this absence by fetishizinghis love of the cinema itself. Metz sees this structure of Psychoanalyticfilm theorists, particularly feminists, disavowal and fetishism as crucial to the cinemas were interested in the construction of the viewer in representationof reality. relation to questions of gender and sexual desrre. Apparatus theory did not address gender at all. In assumingthat the spectatorwas male, Metz examined Apparatus theory emphasizesthe way desire in the context of the male Oedipal trajectory. the cinemacompensates for what the ln 1975 Laura Mulvey published a daring essay, 'Visual viewing subject lacks;the cinemaoffers Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', which put female spectatorshipon the agenda for all an imaginaryunity to smooth over the time. As Mulvey later admitted, the essay was deliberately fragmentation at the heart of and provocatively polemical. lt established the psy- subjectivity.Narrative structurestake choanalyticbasis for a feministtheory of spectatorship up this processin the way they construct which is still being debated. What Mulvey did was to storiesin whichthe'lost object'(almost redefine, in terms of gender, Metz's account of the cinema as an activity of disavowal and fetishization. alwaysrepresented by union with a Drawing on Freudiantheories of scopophilia, castra- woman) is recovered by the male tion, and fetishism,and Lacaniantheories of the for- protagonist. mation of subjectivity,Mulvey introduced gender into apparatustheory. In her essay,Mulvey argued that in a world ordered Thus, apparatustheory emphasizesthe way the by sexualimbalance the role of making things happen cinemacompensates for what the viewing subject usuallyfell to the male protagonist,while the femate lacks;the cinemaoffers an imaginaryunity to smooth star occupied a more passiveposition, functioning as over the fragmentationat the heart of subjectivity. an erotic object for the desiring look of the male. Narrativestructures take up this processin the way Woman signifiedimage, a figure to be looked at, while 'lost theyconstruct stories in whichthe object'(almost man controlled the look. In other words, cinematic alwaysrepresented by unionwith a woman)is recov- spectatorship is divided along gender lines. The 'Fem- eredby the maleprotagonist. In her 1985essay cinema addressed itself to an ideal male spectator, inism,Film Theory and the BachelorMachines', in and pleasurein looking was split in terms of an active whichshe critically assessed apparatus theory as the- male gaze and a passivefemale image. orizedby Baudryand Metz,Constance Penley made 'imaginary thetelling point that Metz's signifier'is itself a'bachelor apparatus'-a compensatorystructure Mulveyargued that in a world ordered designedfor malepleasure. by sexualimbalance the role of making As Ihe lmaginarySignifier began to exert a pro- found influenceon film studiesin many Amerrcan thingshappen usually fell to the male and Britishuniversities, problems emerged. Critics protagonist, while the female star attackedon a numberoffronts:they argued that appa- occupied a more passiveposition, ratustheory was profoundlyahistorical; that, in its functioning as an erotic object for the valorizationof the image,it ignoredthe non-visual desiringlook of the male.Woman aspectsof the viewing experiencesuch as sound; and that the applicationof Lacanianpsychoanalytic signifiedimage, a figureto be looked theorywas not alwaysaccurate. The most sustained at, while man controlledthe look. E FILM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

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llatfeneDletrich (here admired by cary Grant) as fetishised spectacle (Blonde venus, L9s2)

Sheargued that, although the form and figure of plation, reinforcedMulvey's argument about the womanwas displayed for the enjoyment of the male fetishisticlook. protagonist,and, by extension,the male spectator in WhereasFreudian and Lacaniantheory argued that the cinema,the female form was also threatening the castrationcomplex was a universalformation that becauseit invoked man'sunconscious anxieties abour explainedthe originsand perpetuationof patriarchy, sexualdifference and castration.Either the male oro- Mulvey demonstrated in specific terms how the uncon- tagonistcould deal with this threat (as in the films of sciousof patriarchalsociety organized its own signify- Hitchcock)by subjecting woman to his sadisticaaze ing practices,such as film, to reinforcemyths about andpunishing her for being different or he could deny womenand to offerthe maleviewer pleasure. Within herdifference(as in the films of Joseph von Sternberg thissystem there is no placefor woman. Her difference andMarlene Dietrich) and fetishizeher body by over- represents-to use what was fast becoming a notor- valuinga part of her body such as her legs or breasts. iousterm-'lack'.However, Mulvey did nothold up this Thenarrative endings of films, which almost always systemas universaland unchangeable.lf, in orderto punishedthe threateningwoman, reinforcedMulvey's representa new languageof desire,the filmmaker argumentabout the voyeuristic gaze, while the found it necessaryto destroypleasure, then thiswas deploymentof the close-upshot, which almost always the pricethat mustbe paid. fragmentedparts of the female form forerotic contem- What of the femalespectator? In a secondanicle, E CRITICALAPPROACHES

'Afterthoughtson "Visual Pleasureand Narrative on Freud'stheory of the primal sceneto explorethe Cinema"Inspired by King Vidor'sDuel in the Sun possibilityof a fluid,mobile or bisexualgaze; a third (1946)'(1 981), Mulvey took up the issueof the female concentratedon the representationof masculinityand Sincethe classic Hollywood text is so depen- masochism;and a fourth approach, based on JuliaKris- spectator. 'abject dentupon the maleOedipal trajectory and malefan- tevas (1986)theory of the maternalfigure' and tasiesabout woman to generatepleasure, how does on Freud'stheoryofcastration, argued thatthe image of film the femalespectator experience visual pleasure? To the terrifying,overpowering woman in the horror answerthis question, Mu lvey drew on Freud'stheory of andsuspense unsettles prior notions of woman the libido,in whichhe assertedthat'there is onlyone asthe passiveobject of a castratingmale gaze. libido,which performs both the masculineand femi- ninefunctions' (1981 : 13). Thus, when the heroineon the screenis strong, resourceful,and phallic,it is The Oedipalheroine becauseshe hasreverted to the pre-Oedipalphase. Accordingto Freud,in the livesof somewomen,'there Drawing on Freud'stheory of the libido and the Mul- is a repeatedalternation between Periods in which female Oedipal trajectoryfeminists extended femininityand masculinitygain the upper hand' vey'sapplication of the theoryto arguefor a bisexual (quotedin Mulvey1971: 15). Mulvey concluded that gaze. PerhaPsthe spectatordid not identify in a the femalespectator either identifies with womanas monolithic,rigid manner with his or hergender coun- objectof the narrativeand (male) gaze or mayadopt a terpart,but actuallyalternated between masculine- 'masculine'position. But, the female sPectator's'phan- activeand feminine-passive positions, depending on tasyof masculinisationis alwaysto some extent at the codes of identificationat work in the film text. cross-purposeswith itself, restlessin its transvestite In a readingof Hitchcock'sRebecca (USA, 1940), clothes'(in Mulvey 1981 : 15). TaniaModleski (1982) argued that when the daughter It isthis aspect of herwork that becamemost con- goes throughthe OedipuscomPlex-although she troversialamongst critics, such as D. N. Rodowick givesup heroriginal desire for her mother,whom she (1982),who arguedthat heraPProach was too reduc- blamesfor not giving her a penis,and turnsto the tiveand that her analysis of thefemale character on the fatheras her loveobject-she neverfully relinquishes screenand female spectator in the auditoriumdid not her first love. Freudalso arguedthat the girl child, allowfor the possibilityof female desireoutside a unlikethe boy, is predisposedtowards bisexuality. ohallocentric context. The girl'slove for the mother,although rePressed, stillexists. ln Rebeccathe unnamedheroine exPeri- greatdifficulty in mouldingherself to appealto Developmentsin psychoanalysis, ences the man'sdesire. When she most imaginesshe has feminism,and film achievedthis aim, the narrativereveals that she is'still "mother", Mulvey'suse of psychoanalytictheory to examinethe attachedto the stillacting out the desire way in whichthe patriarchalunconscious influenced for the mother'sapprobation' (1 982: 38). Recently, film form led to heateddebates and a plethoraof the notion of the female Oedipal trajectoryhas articlesfrom post-structuralistfeminists' Theorlsts been invoked in a seriesof articlespublished in (New suchas JoanCopjec (1982), Jacqueline Rose (1980), Screen(1 995) on Jane Campion'sThe Piano and ConstancePenley (1985) argued that apparatus Zealand,1993), which suggeststhat these debates theory,regardless of whether or notit took questions of are still of great relevanceto film theory. related issues.In Ihe Desireto genderinto account,was Partof a long traditionin Other work raised Westernthought wherebymasculinity is positioned Desire (1987), Mary An n Doaneturned her attention to 'woman's norm,thus denyingthe possibilityof a place the film' and the issueof femalespectator- as the 'Enunciation for woman.They argued that therewas no spacefor ship.Janet Bergstrom, in and SexualDif- the discussionof femalespectatorship in apparatus- ference' (1979),questioned the premisethat the basedtheories of the cinema.Responses to Mulvey's spectatorwas male, while Annette Kuhn, in ThePower theoryof spectatorshipfollowed four mainlines: one of the lmage(1985), explored cross-dressing, bisexu- approachwas to examinethe femaleOedipal trajec- ality,and the spectatorin relationto thefilm SomeLike tory;another approach, known as fantasy theory, drew it Hot (USA,1959). E FILM AND PSYCHOANATYSIS

Fantasytheory and the mobilegaze is denied a look of direct access.The male is objecti- fied, but only in scenesof action such as boxing. Main- Theconcept of a more mobile gazewas explored oy stream cinema cannot afford to acknowledge the ElizabethCowie in herarticle'Fantasia'(1 984), in which possibility that the male spectator might take the shedrew on Laplancheand Pontalis'sinfluential essay 'Fantasy male protagonist as an object of his erotic desire. ol 1964, and the Origins of Sexuality'. ln her book ln The Realmof Pleasure(1988), Gay- Laplancheand Pontalis established three original fan- lyn Studlar, however, offers a completely different tasies-originalinthat each fantasy explains an aspect 'primal interpretation of spectatorship and pleasure from ofthe'origin'ofthe subject. The scenepictures the voyeuristic-sadisticmodel. In a revision of exist- treorigin of the individual;fantasies of seduction,the ing feminist psychoanalytictheories, she argues for a originand upsurge of sexuality;fantasies of castration, (male)masochistic aesthetic in film. Studlar'soriginal freorigin of the differencebetween the sexes'(1 964l study was extremely important as it was one of the 1986:19). These fantasies-entertained by thechild- first sustained attempts to break with Lacanianand explainor provideanswers to threecrucial questions: Freudian theory. Instead, Studlar drew on the psy- Whoam l?"Why do I desire?"Why am I different?'The choanalytic-literarywork of , and the conceptofprimalfantasies isalso much more fluid than object-relationsschool of psychoanalytictheory. thenotion of fantasypermitted by apparatustheory Object-relations theory derived from the work of whichinevitably and mechanisticallyreturns to the Melanie Klein and, more recently,D. W. Winnicott, is Oedipalfantasy. The primalfantasies run through the a post-Freudianbranch of psychoanalysisthat places individual'swaking and sleepinglife, through con- crucial importance on the relationship between the sciousand unconscious desires. Laplanche and Ponta- infant and its mother in the first year. Klein placed lisalsoargued that fantasy is a stagingof desire,a form the mother at the centre of the Oedipal drama and ofmise-en-scdne. Further, the positionof the subjectis argued for a primary phase in which both sexes notstatic in that positionsof sexualidentification are identified with the feminine. She argued for womb- notfixed.The subject engaged in the activityof fanta- envy in boys as a counterpart to Freud's penis-envy sizingcan adopt multiple positions, identifying across in girls. In particular, she explored destructive gender,time, and space. impulses the infant might experience in its relation- Cowieargued that the importanceof fantasyas a ship with the mother and other objects (parts of the setting,a scene, is crucial because it enablesfilm to be body) in the environment. During this early formatrve viewedas fantasy, as representingthe mise-en-scdne phase, the father is virtually absent. ofdesire. Similarly, the film spectatoris free to assume Focusingon the pre-Oedipal and the close relatron- mobile,shifting modes of identification-asCowie ship formed during the oral phase between the infant demonstratedin her analysisof Now Voyager(USA, and the dominant maternal figure, Studlar demon- 19421andfhe RecklessMoment (USA 1949).Fantasy , stratesthe relevanceof her theory in relation to the theoryhas also been usedproductively in relationto films of Marlene Dietrichand Joseph von Sternberg.In sciencefiction and horror-genresin whichevidence these Dietrich plays a dominant woman, a beautiful, ofthe fantastic is particularly strong. often cold tyrant, with whom men fall hopelesslyand helplesslyin love. Titles such as The Devil is a Woman Masculinityand masochism (USA, 1935) indicate the kinds of pleasure on offer. Studlar argues that the masochisticaesthetic has so RichardDyer ('l982) and Steve Neale (1983) both wrote many structuresin common with the Baudry-Metzcon- articlesin whichthey argued againstMulvey's assertion cept of the cinematic apparatus,in its archaicdimen- thatthemale body could not'bearthe burden of sexual sion,that it cannot be ignored and constitutesa central objectification'(1975: 28). Both examined the condi- form of cinematicpleasure which had been previously tionsunder which the eroticizationof the male body is overlooked. permittedand the conditions under which the female Kaja Silverman also developed a theory of male spectatoris encouraged to look. Neale explored three masochism in Male Subjectivity at the Margins mainstructures examined by Mulvey: identification, (1992). Silverman's aim was to explore what she 'deviant' voyeurism,and fetishism. He concluded that, while describes as masculinities.which she sees 'perverse' themale body is eroticized and objectified, the viewer as representing alternativesto phallic mas- CRITICALAPPROACHES

'without culinity. Drawing on Freudian and Lacanian theory invariablydescribed as a voice',or asstanding and concentrating on the films of Rainer Werner outsidethe Symbolicorder. Fassbinder,she examined the misleading alignment Rejectingthe role of ideologyin the formationof of the penis with the phallus and the inadequate subjectivity,some criticswere more interestedin the theorizationof male subjectivityin film studies.Silver- actualdetails of how viewersresponded to whatthey man explored a number of different forms of male sawon the screen.Given that 1970stheory developed masochism,from passive to active. Her analysisof partlyin reactionto thiskind of empiricism,it issignifi- 'male lack' is parlicularlypowerful, and her book, in cantthat, in recentyears, there has been a renewalof which she argued that the spectator can derive interestin the area.This is evident in the work of David pleasure through passivity and submission, made BordwellandNoel Carroll, whose edited volume Post- an important contribution to growing debates Theory(1 996) sets out to challengethe dominanceof around psychoanalyticinterpretations of spectatorial 1970stheory and to providealternative approaches to pleasure. spectatorshipbased on the use of cognitive psycho- logy.Their interest is the role played by knowledgeano viewing in relationto spectatorship.Accord- Themonstrous woman practices ing to Carroll,' is not a unifiedtheory. lts Perhapsit was inevitable,given analysesof the maso- namederives from itstendency to lookfor alternative chistic male, that attention would turn towards the answersto many of the questionsaddressed by or monstrous, castrating woman. Feminist theorists raisedby psychoanalyticfilm theories,especially with argued that the representation of woman in film respectto film reception,in terms of cognitiveand does not necessarilyposition her as a passiveobject rationalprocesses ratherthan irrational or unconscious of the narrative or of viewing structures. Mary Russo's ones'('l 995: 62). Judith Mayne argues that, while cog- 'Female essay Grotesques'(1 986), which drew on the nitivistshave formulated a numberof imoortantcriti- 'the "spectator" Freudiannotion of repression,was very influential.So, cismsof psychoanalyticfilm theory, too, was the Kristevan notion of the abject as a struc- envisagedby cognitivismis entirelydifferent from ture which precedesthe subject-object split. Drawing the one conceptualizedby 1970sfilm theory'(1 993: 'ideal on psychoanalytic theories of woman-particularly 7).The latteraddressed itself to the spectator' the mother-as an abject monster, writers such as of the cinematicprocess, while cognitivismspeaks 'real Modleski (1988),Lurie (1981-2),and Creed (1993) to the viewer'.the individualin the cinema. adopted a very different approach to the representa- Mayne arguesthat all too often cognitivists,such 'attempts tion of woman in film, by arguing that woman could as Bordwell,ignore the that have been be represented as an active, terrifying fury, a power- made to separatethe subject and the viewer' fully abject figure, and a castratingmonster. This was a (1993: 56) and recommendsthe writingsof Teresa 'castrated 'illustrating far cry from Freudt image of woman as de Lauretisin Alice Doesn't (1984)as other'. that the appealto perceptionstudies and cogniti- vism is not necessarilyin radicalcontradistinction from the theoriesof the apparatus(as in the case Criticismsof psychoanalyticfilm theory with Bordwell and others), but can be instead a revisionof them' (1993: 57). Psychoanalysisexerted a powerfulinfluence on mod- Second,psychoanalytic theory was chargedwith els of spectatorshiptheory that emergedduring the ahistoricality.As earlyas 1975Claire Johnston warned 1970sand early 1980s. One of thedominant criticrsms that 'thereis a realdanger that psychoanalysiscan be of the apparatustheory was that, in all of itsforms, it usedto blur any seriousengagement with political- invariablyconstructed a monolithicspectator. In the culturalissues'. The grand narratives of psychoanalysis, Baudrymodel the spectatoris male and passive;in suchas the Oedipuscomplex and castrationanxiety, the Mulveymodel the spectatoris male and active. dominatedcritical activity in the 1970sand early Psychoanalyticcriticism was accusedof becoming 1980s,running the realdanger of sacrificinghistorical totalizingand repetitive.Film afterfilm was seenas issuesin favour of those relatedto the formation o{ alwaysrepresenting the malecharacter as in control subjectivityand its relationto ideology.These critics of the gaze,and womanas itsobject. Or womanwas proposedthe importance,not of the grandnarratives E FILM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

'micro-narratives' of subjectivity,but of of social The entirethrust of 197Os changesuch as those moments when culturalconflict psychoanalyticfilm theory was based mightreveal weaknesses in the dominant culture.They on the fact arguedthat film should be studied more in its relation- that there is no clear or shiptohistory and societythan to the unconsciousand straightforward relation between the subjectivity. consciousand the unconscious,that Third,some attacked the centrality of spectatorship what is manifestedon the surfacemay dreoryand its apparently exclusive interest in the bear no direct relation to what lies idealspectator rather than the actual viewer. Specta- torshiptheory did not take into account other factors beneath,that there is no cause-and- suchas class, colour, race, age, or sexual preference. effect relation,which manifestsitself in Nordid it considerthe possibilitythat some viewers appearance,between what the subject mightbe more resistantto the film's ideologicalwork- desiresto achieveand what takes place ingsthanothers. Political activists argued that psycho- in reality. Only via psychoanalytic analyticcriticism did not provide any guide-lines on howthe individual might resist the workings of an readingscan one exploresuch things as ideologythat appeared to dictate completely the displacement,disguise, and formationof subjectivity as split and fractured. transformation. Furthermore,they argued, not all individuals are lockedinto roles determined by the way subjectivity isformed. Recentdevelopments Culturalstudies has developed partly in responseto dreseproblems. lt sees culture as a site of struggle. lt Although psychoanalyticfilm theory has been subject placesemphasis. not on unconsciousprocesses, but to many forms of criticismover the past tvventyyears, onthe historyof the spectator (as shaped by class, it continues to expand both within and outside the colour,ethnicity, and so on) as well as on examinrng academy. This is evident, not only in the work of waysin which the viewer might struggle against the cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall, but also in the dominantideology. Whereas the cognitivists have relatively new areas of post-colonialism and queer clearlyrejected psychoanalysis, the latter's status theory and in writings on the body. Scholarsworking withincultural studies is not so clear as culturalcrirrcs in these areasdo not use psychoanalytictheory in the frequentlyutilize areas of psychoanalytic theory. totalizing way in which it was invoked in the 1970s. Fourth,empirical researchersargue that the major Rather,they draw on aspects of psychoanalytic theory problemwith psychoanalysisis that it is not a science, to illuminateareas of their own specialstudy. The aim thatpsychoanalytic theories are not based on reliable in doing so is often to bring together the social and datawhich can be scientificallymeasured, and that the psychic. otherresearchers do not have access to the informa- Post-colonialtheorists such as Homi K. Bhabha and tionpertaining to the case-studieson which the the- Rey Chow have drawn on psychoanalytictheories in orieshave been formulated. their work. Whereas earlier writers on racism in the Psychoanalytictheories reply that by its very nature cinema tended to concentrateon ouestionsof stereo- 'proof'. theoreticalabstraction cannot be verified by typing, narrativecredibility, and positive images, the Furthermore,the entirethrust of 1970spsychoanalytic focus of post-colonialtheorists is on the process of 'otherness', filmtheory was based on the fact that there is no clear subjectification, the representation of orstraightforwardrelation between the consciousand spectatorship, and the deployment of cinematic 'flawed' theunconscious, that what ismanifested on the surface codes. In short,the shiftis awayfrom a study of 'negative' maybear no direct relationto what lies beneath, that or images ('positive' images can be as thereis no cause-and-effectrelation, which manifests demeaning as negative ones)to an understandingof itselfin appearance, between what the subject desires the filmic construction of the relationship between to achieveand what takes place in reality.Only via colonizer and colonized, the flow of power between psychoanalyticreadings can one explore such things the two, the part played by gender differencesand the asdisplacement, disgu ise, and transformation. positioning of the spectator in relationf6 5g6f'1lsnro- CRITICALAPPROACHES sentations.In orderto facilitate such analyses, theorists SisterGeorge(GB, 1968), have been re-examined, ano frequentlydraw on aspectsof psychoanalytictheory. the historyof therepresentation of gaysand lesbians in 'The In Other Ouestion',Homi K. Bhabhauses film is being rewritten.In somefilms the homosexual Freud'stheory of castrationand fetishismto analyse and/orlesbian subtext, previously ignored, has been the stereotypesof blackand white which are crucial to reinscribed. the colonialdiscourse. He arguesthat the fetishized Judith Butler'sGender Trouble (1990), which pre- stereotypein film and other cultural practices works to sentsa queercritique of the psychoanalyticconcept reactivatein the colonialsubject the imaginaryfantasy of fixed gender identities,has exerted a strong influ- 'an of idealego that is whiteand whole'(1992:322). enceon filmtheorists seeking to analysethe represen- Drawingon theseconcepts, he presentsa new inter- tationof gaysand lesbiansin film.Wary of the 1970s pretation of Orson Welles'sA Touch of Evil (USA, approachto psychoanalytictheory, because it largely 1958).In hiswritings on the nation,Bhabha draws on ignoredthe questionof the gayand lesbianspectator- 'The Freud's1919 essay Uncanny',in which Freud ship,film theoristshave turned to the workof writers 'cultural' refersto the unconsciousas a statein which suchas Butler, Diane Fuss, ,and Lee archaicforms find expressionin the marginsof mod- Edelman(see Smelik and Doty, Part 1 , Chapters14 and ernity.Bhabha also uses Freud's theory of doubling,as 15). 'The elaboratedin Uncanny',to examinethe way in A numberof essaysin How do I Look?aueer Film which colonialcultures have been coercedby their and Video(Bad Object-Choices 1991) discuss the fact 'white' colonizersto mimic culture-but only up to a that psychoanalyticapproaches to the cinemahave point. Difference-and hence oppression-must avoideddiscussions of lesbiansexual desire. ln ner 'Lesbian always be maintained.Throughout his writings, article Looks'Judith Mayne criticizesthe Bhabhauses many of Freud'skey theories, reinterpret- way in whichfeminist film theoryhas employed psy- ing them in orderto theorizethe colonialdiscourse. choanalysiswhile also drawing on, and reinterpreting, Thisapproach has been adopted by othercritics. In aspectsof psychoanalytictheory in her own analysis. Romanceand the'YellowPeril'(1993), Gina Marchetti ValerieTraub's article 'The Ambiguitiesof "Lesbian" focuseson Hollywoodfilms about Asians and interra- Viewing Pleasure'(1991), on lesbianspectatorship cialsexuality. Adopting a positioninformed by post- and the film B/ackWidow (USA,1987), provides a colonialtheory, Marchetti draws on psychoanalytic good exampleof a queerreading. theoriesof spectatorshipand femininemasquerade, Anotherarea in which film theorists have drawn on a refiguringthese concepts for herown work on race. rereadingof psychoanalytictheory is that of the body. Ina similarvein, film critics, drawing on queerread- Contemporaryinterpretations of the horrorfilm have ing strategies,have carefully selected aspects of psy- generallyfavoured a psychoanalyticreading with 'against choanalytictheory to analysefilm texts the emphasison the workingsof repression.Since the grain'.As in post-colonialtheory, queer theory repre- mid-1980swriters have paid particularattention to sentsa methodologicalshift. lt, too, rejectsan earlier the representationof the body in horror-the gro- 'positive' criticalemphasis on praising and decrying tesquebody of the monster.Based on psychoanalytic 'negative' imagesof homosexualmen and lesbiansrn theoriesof abjection,hysteria, castration, and the film. lnstead,queer theory sees sexualpractices- uncanny,such an approachsees the monstrousbody whetherheterosexua l, homosexual, bisexua l, autosex- asintended partly to horrifythe spectatorand partlyto ual, transsexua l-as fluid,diverse, and heterogeneous. makemeaning at a moregeneral level, pointing to the For instance,the practicesof masochism,sadism, or abjectstate of the social,political, and familial body. coprophiliamay be adoptedby homosexualand het- Otherapproaches to the body takeup the issueof erosexualalike: the beliefthat onlyheterosexual rela- the actualbody aswell as the cinematicbody. Steven tionships(or any other type of relationship,for that Shaviro'sThe CinematicBody (1993) presentsa thor- matter)are somehow'normal' is patently incorrect. ough attackon apparatustheory, arguing instead for 'an As a criticalpractice, queer theory seeks to analyse activeand affirmative reading of the masochismof filmtexts in order to determinethe way in which desrre, cinematicexperience'(1 993: 60). Drawing on the early in its many diverseforms, is constructed,and how workof GillesDeleuze, he suggeststhat what'inspires cinematicpleasures are institutedand offeredto the the cinematicspectator is a passionfor that very loss of spectator.Previously reviled films such as The Killing of control,that abjection,fragmentation and subversion E FILM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

Ofself-identity that psychoanalytic theory so dubiousry de Lauretis, Teresa (1984) , Alice Doesn't: Feminism, dassifiesunder the rubrics of lack and castration' Semiotics,Cinema (Bloomington:Indiana University {1993:57). Shaviro is highlycritical of whathe seesas Press). fieconventional use of psychoanalysisto constructa Doane, Mary Ann (1987), The Desire to Desire: The (Bloomington: distancebetween spectator and image; he wantsto Woman'sFilm of the 1940s IndianaUni- versityPress). usepsychoanalysis to affirm and celebratethe power Donald, James (ed.) (1990),Psychoanalysis and Cultural oftheimage, and of the visceral, to moveand affectthe Theory:Thresho/ds (London: Macmillan). viewer. 'Don't Dyer, Richard(1 982), LookNow: The MalePin-Up', I havereferred briefly to aspects of post-coloniar, >creen. z5/5-4: o I-lJ- queer,and body theory to demonstrate that film the- Foster, Hal (1993), Compulsive Beauty (London: MIT oryin itscurrent use of psychoanalysis,has become Press). moreselective and nuanced. While no one would Fredericksen, Don (1980),'Jung//Symbol/Film', $,ggesta return to the totalizing approach of the Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 5/4:459-79. 'The 1970s,it would be misleading to argue that applica- Freud, Sigmund (1919/1953-66), Uncanny', in The tionof psychoanalysisto the cinema is a thing of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of , 24 vols., trans. James Strachey pst. lf anything,the interest in psychoanalyticfilm (London: Hogarth), xxi. dreoryis as strong as ever. And the debates continue. fzod, John (1992), The Films of Nicho/as Roeg: Myth and Mind (London: St Martin's Press). SIEtIOGRAPHY Johnston, C. (1975),'Femininityand Masquerade:Anne of the Indies', in Claire Johnston and Paul Willemen (ed.) (1991), &d Object-Choices How do I Look?Queer (eds.), Jacgues Tourneur (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Film Filnand Video (Seattle: Bay Press). Festival). (1970/1 'ldeological Baudry,Jean-Louis 986a), Effectsof Kapfan, E. Ann (ed.) (1978),Women in Film Noir (London: theBasic Cinematographic Apparatus', in P.Rosen (ed.), British Film Institute). *- Narrattve,Apparatus, ldeology (New York: Columbra (ed.) (1990), Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (New UniversityPress). York: Routledge). - (1975/1986b), 'The Apparatus: Metaphysical Kristeva, Julia (1986), Powers of Horror: An Essayin Abjec- Approaches to ldeology', in P. Rosen (ed.), Narative, tion, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia Uni- Apparatus,Ideology, (New York: Columbia University versity Press). Press). Kuhn, Annette (1985), The Power of the lmage: Essayson (1 'An Benderson,Albert 979), Archetypal Reading of Representation and Sexuality (London: Routledge & Julietof the Spirits',Auarterly Reviewof Film Studies, Kegan Paul). 4/2:193-206. Laplanche, J., and J.-8. Pontalis (1964/1986),'Fantasy (1 'Enunciation &rgstrom,Janet 979), and SexualDiffer- and the Origins of Sexuality', in Victor Burgin, James ence',Camera Obscura,3-4: 33-70. Donald, and Cora Kaplan (eds.), 'The Formations of Fantasy thabha,Homi K. (1992), OtherOuestion: The Stereo- (London: Methuen). typeand the ColonialDiscourse', in TheSexua/ Subject: Lebeau, Vicky (1995), LostAnge/s: Psychoanalysisand the A ScreenReader in Sexuality(London: Routledge). Cinema (New York: Routledge). post- 'The "Castrated Bordwell,David, and Noel Caroll (eds.) (1996), Lurie, Susan (1981-2), Construction ofthe Theory: ReconstructingFilm Studies (Wisconsin:Uni- Woman" in Psychoanalysisand Cinema', Discourse,4.. versityof WisconsinPress). 52-7 4. (1987), 'Yellow Branson,Clark Howard Hawks:A Jungian Study Marchetti, Gina (1993), Romance and the Peril': (Santa Barbara,Calif.: Capra Press). Race, Sex and Discursive Strategles in Hollywood Ftctton Brown, (1980),'Hitchcock! Royal S. Spe//bound:Jung (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California versusFreud', Film/Psychology Review, 4/1 : 35-58. Press). (1990), 'Lesbian Butler,Judith Gender Trouble: Feminismand the Mayne, Judith (1991), Looks: Dorothy Arzner and Subversionof ldentity (New York: Routledge). Female Authorship', in Bad Object-Choices (1991). (1982),'The Copjec,Joan Anxiety of the Influencing - (1993), Cinema and Spectatorshp (London: Routledge). I/achine', *Metz, October,23. Christian (1975/1982), Psychoanalysisand Cinema: (1 'Fantasia', Cowie,Elizabeth 984), m/f,9:71-1O5. The Imaginary Signifier(London: Macmillan). (1993), 'Never Creed,Barbara The Monstrous-Feminine:Film, Modleski, Tania (1982), to be Thirry-SixYears Old', Feminismand Psychoanalysis(New York:Routledge). Wide Anole.5/1:34-41

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Modef ski, Tania (1988),The Women who Knew too Much: Screen (1995), 36/3: 257-87. Articles on The Piano. Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (New York: Methuen). Shaviro, Steven (1993), The Cinematic Body (Minneapolis: *Mulvey, 'Visual Laura (1975), Pleasure and Narrative Universityof Minnesota Press). 'Masochism Cinema',Screen, 16/3: 6-18. Silverman, Kaja (1981), and Subjectivity', "Visual - (1981),'Afterthoughtson Pleasureand Narra- Framework, 12:2-9. tive Cinema" inspired 6y Duel in the Sun', Framework, - (1992), Male Subjectivity at the Margins (New York: 15-17:12-15. Routledge). 'Masculinity Neale, Steve (1983), as Spectacle', Screen, Sobchack, Vivian (1992), fhe Address of the Eye: A Phe- 24/6:2-16. nomenology of Film Experience (Princeton: Princeton 'Feminism, Penley, Constance (1985), Film Theory and the UniversityPress). Bachelor Machines', m/f, 10:.39-59. Studlar, Gaylyn (19BB) , ln the Realm of Pleasure: Von Rank, Otto (1925/1971), The Double: A psychoanalytic Sternberg, Dietrich, and the Masochistic Aesthetic Study (Chapel Hill: Universityof North Carolina Press). (Urbana:University of lllinois Press). 'The 'Monsters Rodowick, D. N. (1982), Difficulty of Difference', Tarratt, Margaret (1970), from the ld', part 1, Wide Angle,5/1: 4-15. Films and Filming (Nov.-Dec.), 38-42. 'Monsters - (19BB), The Crisis of Political : Criticism - (1971), from the ld', part 2, Filmsand Film- and ldeology on Contemporary Film Theory (Berkeley: ing (Jan.-Feb), 40-2. 'The "Lesbian" Universityof California Press). Traub, Valerie (1991), Ambiguities of View- 'The Rose, Jacqueline (1980), Cinematic Apparatus: Pro- ing Pleasure:The (Dis)articulationsof Black Widow', in blems in Current Theory', in Teresade Lauretisand Ste- Julia Epsteinand KristinaStraub (eds.),BodyGuards:The phen Heath (eds.), The Cinematic Apparatus (New York: Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity (New York: Rout- St Martint Press). ledge). 'Female Russo, Mary (1986), Grotesques: Carnival and Wiffiams, Linda (ed.) (1995\, Viewing Positions: Ways ol Theory', in Teresa de Lauretis (ed.), Feminist Studies/ Seeing Film (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Critical Studies(Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress). Press). Post- and

PeterBrunette

Post-structuralismis a rathervague generic name for a lf the missionand focus of film studiesis seen as the hostof disparatetheoretical developments that have formal and thematic interpretationof individualfilms, followedin the wake of structuralismand semiotics. deconstructionhas little to offer.Deconstruction is not Theterm has been applied occasionallyto the work of a disciplineor, even less,a methodology, but rather a MichelFoucault and the laterRoland Barthes, but most questioning stance taken towards the most basrc especiallyto the challenging and innovative revision aspectsof the production of knowledge. LikeLacanran of Freudpropounded by the French psychoanalyst psychoanalysis,it tends to concentrate on the slip- JacquesLacan, and to the work of ,a pages in meaning,the gaps and inconsistencies,that 'anti-'that kindof has come to be known as inevitablymark all understanding.As such, decon- deconstruction.Since the Guide contains a separate struction has been seen by its critics as part of the '1 'hermeneutics article(by BarbaraCreed, Part , Chapter 9) detailing of suspicion' that has developed out thecrucialinfluence of Lacanianpsychoanalysis on film of the anti-foundationalist investigations of Freud studies,this chapter will concentrate on the applica- and Nietzsche. tionof Derrideanthought to the cinema. The specific application of deconstruction to film has been far less evident than that of Lacanianpsy- choanalysis,but Derrida'sinfluence on such thinkers as (to name but two) Judith Butlel a gender theorist, and Homi Bhabha,a specialistin post-colonialstu- Deconstructionis not a disciplineor, dies, has been profound. These theorists have in evenless, a methodology, but rather a turn had a tremendous impact on recent writing on film, and thus, in this sense, it is probably questioningstance taken towards the correct to say that the application of Derridean thought to film mostbasic aspectsof the production of has been important but largely indirect. A further knowledge.Like Lacanian complication is that some on the left have denounced psychoanalysis,it tends to concentrate deconstruction because it tends to call a// thinking on the slippagesin meaning,the gaps into question, even that which presents itself as pro- gressiveand liberatory.In fact, Derrida'swritings can andinconsistencies, that inevitably be seen as thoroughly political in nature when they markall understanding. are properly understood as a critique of the out- E CRITICAL APPROACHES

'logocentric' moded thinking that has led to numer- structionhas been to reverseand-since a mererever- ous political impassesnow and in the past. salwould not disturbthe underlyingbinary logic-to Nevertheless, several key deconstructive notions displacethese ostensible oppositions as well. have been applied directly to film by a number of Sincedeconstruction builds upon the insightsand theorists in France and elsewhere. For example, a terminologyof semiotics,one of the firstbinary oppo- deconstructiveperspective can challengethe historio- sitionsthat iscalled into question is that founding dis- graphical assumptionsthat allow us conveniently to tinctionbetween signifier and signified.From a post- divide film history into specific, self-identicalmove- structuralistperspective, it is easyto seethe latteras a ments such as German ,ltalian Neo- transcendent,almost spiritual entity that is privileged 'merely' Realism,and so on. The notion of aswell is over the materialsignifier, which is usually vulnerableto a deconstructiveanalysis, as isauteunsm, seenas a dispensablecontainer with no effecton the and authorial intentionality,already much challenged contained.Derridean thought tends rather to focuson anyway (see Crofts, Part 2, Chapter 7). Most impor- the'freeplay' between signifier and signified that con- tantly, perhaps, deconstruction challenges the very stitutesall meaning, and to showthat the marksof the basisof interpretationitself, revealing the institutional materialsignifier never really disappear in the faceo{ and contextualconstraints that necessarilyaccompany thesionified. all attempts at reading. Deconstructioncan be approached from any num- ber of different directions,but perhaps it can be most Derrideanthought tends rather to focus easily seeri as a radicalizationof the basic insights, on the 'free play' between signifierand developed around the turn of the century, of Swiss signifiedthat constitutesall meaning, linguist Ferdinandde Saussure.Saussure, considered the father of structuralismand semiotics,argued that and to show that the marks of the 'no there are positive terms' in language; in other materialsignifier never really disappear words, that meanings do not stem from something in the face of the signified. inherent in the words and sounds themselves, but rather from their difference from other words ano 'p' sounds.Thus, all alone,the sound could neveroe Furthermore,deconstruction, like Lacanianpsycho- 'truth' functional,nor could the word carryany mean- analysis,points out that meaning effects occur as a 't' ing, but only in so far asthey differedfrom or'r' or's' result of the sliding within chains of signifiers,rather on the one hand, or'error', say,on the other.lf this isthe than becausea signifierleads inevitablyto a signified. 'error' case, it becomes clear that is, in some strange After all, when one looks up a word in the dictionary way that defies traditional Western logic (which, Der- what is found is not a fixed signified, but rather more rida claims,is based upon a'metaphysicsof presence'), signifiers,which must be looked up in turn. Despitethis part and parcel of the meaning of its supposed oppo- similarityin viewpoint, Derrida has criticizedLacan for site, truth. Paradoxically,in other words, truth cannot the impermissibleoriginary grounding that he seems be thought, and thus cannot even exist,without error. to offer in his founding triad of the lmaginary the Erroris thus both there and notthere'within'truth, both Symbolic,and the Real.(For deconstructionists, there presentand absent,thus castingdoubt upon the prin- can be no fixed ground or origin, sincesuch concepts, ciple of non-contradiction (the very basis of Western once again, are symptoms of the metaphysicsof pre- logic),that a thing cannot be A and not-A at the same sence.)For the same reason,deconstructive theorists time. have alsotended to agree with the feminist critique of It can easilybe seenthat Westernthought has,srnce Lacanianfilm theory concerning its privileging of the the beginning, relied upon a set of self-identicalcon- phallusas the primarysignifier from whichall meaning ceptsthat alignthemselves as binaryoppositions, such arises. as truth-error, good-evil, spirit-body, nature-culture, ln his early work, especially in Of Grammatology man-woman, and so on. In each case, one term is (1967), Derrida concentrates on deconstructing the favoured or seen as primary or original; the second symptomatic binary opposition that privileges, term is regarded as a (later) perversion of the firsr, or throughout the historyof Western philosophy,speech in some way inferiorto it. The principalwork of decon- over writing. Inthis book, Derridashows that asfar back POST-STRUCTURALISMANDDECONSTRUCTION

Platoand as recentlyas Saussureand Claude L6vi- saidthat the imageis thus fundamentally'incoherent,, speechhas been associatedwith the livinq sinceany attempt to makeit coherewill 'true' alwaysneces- andthe speaker's meaning, guaranteed sitatea moreor lessviolent epistemological effort of 'secondary' herpresence, whereas writing has been seen as repressionof meanings. misleading,always the sign of an absence.This Thinkingof film as a kind of writingalso compre- largely the resultof the curiousbioloqical fact that mentsthe anti-realistbias of recentfilm theory,for it we speak(and listen),meaning seems to be an worksagainst the ideathat 'copy, 'natural' filmcan ever be a of blematic, event with no intermediary. its referent.Andr6 Bazin and other realisttheorrsts Signifierand signifiedmerge effortlessly,whereas rn insistedupon the intrinsicrelationship or similarity writingtheir relationshiop isalways more problematic. betweenreality and itsfilmic representation, but from NaiVely we seemto feel that if we could onlv havea a deconstructiveperspective. once it is admittedthat writerspeakingto us in person,in otherwords, present, realityand its representationmust always be different wewould knowexactlywhatshemeant. Derrida shows fromeach other (as well as similar), then difference nas inthis book that the supposedimmediacy and direct- justas much a claimas similarity to beingthe 'essential, nessof speechis a fiction,and that all the neqative relationbetween the two. featuresassociated with writing are characteris-ticof Moregenerally, deconstructive thinking can lead us peechas well.In a familiarmove, he reversesthe awayfrom a conventionalidea of cinema,and itsrera- hierarchy, puttingwriting before speech, and then dis- tionto reality,as an analogicalone basedon similarity, placesthe hierarchyaltogether by rewritingthe term 'writing', to an ideaof cinema,as Brunetteand Wills (1989: 88) as 'Writing', 'an with an expanded, purposely have put it, as anagramof the real',a place of ontradictory meaningthat encompassesboth writing writingfilled with non-naturalconventions that allow (in theconventional sense) and speech.As such,tne usto understandit asa representationof reality. termjoins a host of other key terms that Derridahas Broadlyspeaking, cinema itself is, as a medium, developedover the lastthirty years,including trace, clearly produced through negation,contradiction, hinge,hymen, supplement.and diff6rance (he purpo- and absence.lt dependsfor its effecton the absence selymisspells this Frenchword to highlightits differ- of what it represents,which is alsoparadoxically pre- encefrom itself, 'trace' a differencethat is reflectedin writing sentat the sametime in the form of a (whichin butnot in speech)-termswhich attempt to name an theoriginal French also means'footprint', thus carryrng impossible'space', to expresspresence and absence the simultaneoussense of absenceand presence). simultaneously. without,however, becominq a new Similarly,the photographic process is based on a nega- ground. (to In a some extent quixotic) attempt to tion whichis reversedin a positiveprint. And through circumvent the metaphysics of presence, Derrida theapplication of the(now partially discredited) notion declares 'words that these terms are neither nor con- of the persistenceof vision,we canunderstand thatwe cepts'. literallycould not even see the cinematic image unless Thisnewly expanded sense of Writingcan be easily it were, through the operationof the shutter,just as applied to film,since, after all, the word cinematoqra- oftennotthere. (One film theorist has pointed out that phy 'written' clearlypoints to its nature.Like wrilen the screenis completelydark about halfthe time we words,whose meanings, according to Derrida,are arewatching 'disseminated' a film.)The screenitself, as a materialof always in multiple directionsrather supportof the image,must also be thereand not tnere fran beingstrictly linear, the imagecan never be con- atthesame time, for ifwe canactually see it, we cansee strainedto a singleset of meanings.ln fact,meanings nothingelse. thatare located/constructed will inevitablvbe contra- Deconstructionalso calls into question the 'natural, dictory. Norcanauthorial intentionality, alieady notor- relationbetween original and copy (forexample, we iously weakin film, be said to anchormeaning, for neverspeak of an'original'of a document,unless there intention 'copy' willalways be divided,never a unity.In fact, is alsoa in question;thus, in a sense,the copy film itselfis fundamentally split between a visualtrack canbe saidto createthe original),and thishas a pro- and an audiotrack, which actuallyoccupy different found effecton a mimeticor imitativetheory of artistic physicallocations on the stripof celluloid,but which representation.lt is clear, forexample, that a documen- are 'copies'the artificiallybrought together to achievean effectof tary thoughit ostensibly realityit focuses wholeness and presence.In allthese senses, it canoe upon,also helps to individuatethat aspect of reality,ro CRITICALAPPROACHES

'create' bring it specificallyto our attention,and thusto fact, it makesas much senseto basea film aestheticson the cut (absence)as on the individual image (pre- This is closely related to another idea that Derrida sence). has explored at great length, the notion of iterability In any case,this idea of the frame is obviously para- (repeatability).Here, he has pointed out that each mount in film as well,and, though focusedin a some- 'same' repetition of the must, by definition, also be what different manner, just as ambiguous. What is different(otherwise, it could not be individuated).Simi- curious about this word in its cinematic usage is that larly,each time something is quoted, it has a different it means two opposite things at the same time (and meaning depending on its context, something that thus can be added to Derrida'slist of key words): it is 'outside' 'frame- Derrida has shown is never fully specifiable.Here the both the boundary (one speaksof the 'graft', idea of the which is closely related to Rotand line'),and the entire inside of the image as well (God- 'truth Barthes'snotion of ,is also important.All ard said that cinema is twenty-four frames per texts are seen as being made up of innumerablegrafts second').More widely,the film frame can also be seen of other texts in ways that are never ultimately trace- as that set of understandingsof genre, or of the so- 'real able.For example,when we see an actorin a film,our called world', or of cinematicconventions, and so responseis inevitably conditioned by his or her appear- on, that we bring to a film-in other words, that con- ances in other films; yet in a conventional,logocentric text, ever changeable,that both allowsand constrains form of criticismsuch meanings would not be consid- meaning. ered part of the film, properly speaking, and thus This frame, this image that is framed, can, further- 'imorooer'. more, be seen both as heterogenous (think of how This leads to another crucial binary distinction that many discrete elements within it must be repressed 'interpret' deconstruction challenges, that between the inside in orderto it)and graphic(again, in the sense and the outside. During the heyday of formalistliterary that it is written),as well as pictorial.Much of Derrida's analysis,Marxist and Freudiancritics were chastisedfor laterwork hasbeen involvedwith exploring the pictor- 'importing' 'extrinsic' discoursesthat were seen as into ial nature of writing (in the conventional sense)ano, a poem or novel. In regard to film, we might ask, for conversely,the graphic natureof the image, and these example, whether the opening or closing credits are investigationsare directlyapplicable to a study of how 'in'the film,thus a partof it,or'outside'the film proper, meaning is created in film. (Seeespecially The Truthin external to it. (ls a book's preface-usually written Paintingand Ulmer 1985,1989). last-part of the book proper or not?) Similarly,one The most important work done thus far in relating wonders whether Alfred Hitchcock'sfamous cameo Derrida and film has been that undertaken by the appearancesin hisfilms mean that he is a characterin Frenchtheoretician Marie-Claire Ropars-WuiI leumier, them. Our inability to answer these questions points notably in her book Le Textedivis6 (1981). There, inter preciselyto a problem in the logic of inside-outside a/ia,she brilliantlycompares Derrida's discussion of the binarythinking itself. hybrid form of the hieroglyph (which is made up o{ The larger question here, one that is explored at phonetic,that is,graphic marksthat representspeech, great length in Derrida's book fhe Truth in Painting as well as pictorial elements)with Eisenstein'sdevel- (1978),isthe questionof the frame.In Derrida'sfamous opment of montage theory.In both, meaning isseen as 'there formulation in that book, is framing, but the a complicated operation that comes about partially frame does not exist' (1978/198781; translationmod- through representation,but alsothrough the very dis- ified).This meansthat the locationof the frame (both a ruption of the image itselfin the form of juxtaposrtron. physical frame, say, of a painting, or an interpretive (Fora provocativeapplication of Derridato television, frame or context, or any sort of boundary marker)can see Dienst 1994.) never be preciselydetermined, though its effectscan Perhaps the most far-reaching consequence of a be seen.In film, the cut issimilarly a functionwith clear deconstructive perspective on film concerns the act effects,but no physicalexistence. Because it isa kind of of interpretation. Ultimately, deconstruction shows relational absence rather than an explicitly present that it is, strictlyspeaking, impossibleto specify what 'valid' entity, it too servesto call into question the metaphy- a interpretation would look like. (See Conley sics of presence.With this ambiguity in mind, some 1991 for the most adventurousapplication of th is prin- deconstructivefilm theorists have suggested that, rn ciple to the interpretation of individual films.) In this E POST-STRUCTURALISMAND DECONSTRUCTION

sense,it might 'base'. be said that deconstruction,smosr economic or social As such, its influence will importantworkhas been the investigationof the insti- continueto be powerful,if subterranean. tutionsthat both allowand restrictreading, or mean- ing-makingofany sort. lt isimportant to note.however, thatDerrida himself is no propounderof an ,anything goes'theoryof reading, despite the impressiongiven BIBLIOGRAPHY byhis detractors and some of his more enthusiastrc *Brunette, followers.Instead, he has alwaysinsisted upon the Peter, and David Wills (1989), Screen/play: doublenature of hiswork: to pushbeyond the bounos Derridaand Film Theory(Princeton: Princeton University ofconventional logic, all the while remainingrigor- Press). ouslylogical. Conley, Tom (1991),Film Hieroglyphs:Ruptures in Ciassi- cal Cinema(Minneapolis: University of Minnesotapress). Derrida, Jacques(1967/1976), Of Grammatology,trans. It might be said that deconstruction,s Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press). mostimportant work has been the - (1978/1987),The Truthin Painting,trans. Geoff Ben- investigationof the institutionsthat ningtonand lan McLeod(Chicago: University of Chicago both allow and restrict reading, or Press). Dienst, Richard(1994), Still Life meaning-making in RealTime: Theory after of any sort. Television(Durham, NC: DukeUniversity press). Ropars-Wuilleumier,Marie-Claire (1 981), Le Textedivis| (Paris:Presses Universitaires de France). Asfilmstudies evolves more fully into culturalstudies, Ulmer, Gregory (1985), Applied Grammatology (Balti- deconstructionwill provide a corrective by revealingthe more:Johns Hopkins University Press). ultimatelymetaphoric nature of much of the termino- -(1989), Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of logythatsurrounds the relating of cultural artefactsto an Vrdeo(London: Routledqe). Filmand

JohnH ill

'postmodernism' 'the The conceptof is a notoriouslypro- cal assumptionsof earliertheory(as in the theory of blematicone, giventhe diverseways (in both acade- subject' which has underpinned much psychoanalytic miaand populardiscourse) in whichit hasbeen useo. and ). Moreover, the interest in Theterm itself has been applied to analmost bewilder- postmodernism as an object of study has often been inglywiderange of economic,social, and cultural phe- directed towards cultural shifts which go beyond a nomena,with the resultthat manycommentators on narrow attention to film, and if film has commonly postmodernismare not necessarilyreferring to, or been linked with the experienceof moderniry then it focusingupon, the samethings. Moreover, the epithet isgenerally television, rather than film, which is 'postmodern' seento is used not only to identifyparticular embody the postmodern. socio-culturaland aestheticfeatures of contemporary In order to locate some of the ways in which ideas life,but alsoto designatenew formsof theorization about the postmodern have influenced the study of whichare held to be appropriateto makingsense of film, it is therefore helpful to distinguish three main the new'postmodern'condition. 5o, whilepostmod- strandsof thinking about postmodernism. Hence, the erntheory and the analysisof postmodernismmay go term can be seen to have been used in philosoohical handin hand, it isnot necessary that they do so.Fredric debates concerned with the scope and groundings of Jameson,for example,is one of the most influential knowledge; in socio-culturaldebates concerned to analystsof postmodernism;but he himselfis nor a assessthe significanceof economic and social shifts postmoderntheorist, given his commitmentto con- in contemporary life; and in aesthetic debates con- ventionalforms of social analysisand explanation cerned with the changing characterofartistic practices 'decline' (especiallyMaxism). in the wake of the of modernism.These three It isalso fair to saythat in relationto film,postmod- sets of debates are not, of course, unconnected, but ernismhas not ledto a theoreticalapproach or bodyof they are sufficiently distinct to make it useful to con- criticalwritings in the way that other theoretical sider them separately. perspectives,such as psychoanalysisof feminism, maybe seento have.This is becauseit is in the char- acterof postmodernismto be suspiciousof unified Philosophical debates theoreticalframeworks and, if postmodern ideas havehad an influenceon film study,it hasoften been In philosophy,debates about postmodernism may be throughunsettling the knowledgeclaims or ontologi- seen to demonstratea growing suspiciontowards FILMAND POSTMODERNISM

'universal' '' or all-embracingsystems of thought and cultural and identities as well as the imoos- explanation.An influentialsource, in this respect,has sibility of any unified, or comprehensive,account of beenJean-Frangois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condi- them. As such, postmodernism is often seen as, and 'the tion(1979). For Lyotard postmodern condition' criticized for, embracing both a relativism which 'incredulity' maybe defined in terms of a growing acceptsthe impossibilityof adjudicating amongst dif- 'les 'metanarra- towardswhat he calls grands r6cits'or ferent accountsof, or knowledge claimsabout, reality 'idealism' 'conventionalism' tives'ofWestern thought (1979/1984, p. xxiv). In this and an or which acceots 'reality' respect,the'modern' which the'postmodern' isseen to the impossibility of gaining access to other 'discourses'through 'realities' besupersedingisnotthe artisticmodernism of the late than via the which are 'mod- nineteenthand earlytwentieth century but the constructed.Moreover, it has also been a tendency of ern'systemof thought associatedwith the Enlighten- many postmodern argumentsapparently to belie their 'universalize' ment(and philosophers such as Voltaire, Locke, and own precepts and their claims concern- 'scientific' 'postmodern Hume)and its association with a project of ing the condition' or erect preciselythe 'grand 'modernity'to explanationand mastery of the natural and socialworld. narratives'of the transitionfrom 'postmodernity' For Lyotard,the idea of progress characteristic of which it is otherwise argued are no 'the Enlightenmentthought is no longer tenable, and he longer possible.As Gregor Mclennan suggests, 'an arguesthat it is now impossible to believe in either progressivedecline of the grand narratives'is itself theprogressive advancement of thought-the eman- alternativegrand narrative'(1 989: 17 7). ln th is respect, cipationof reason-or the socialand politicalemanct- it may be helpfulto distinguishthe scepticismtowards pationtowhichitwasonce believed suchreason might grand theory which is a feature of postmodern philo- 'What 'is contribute. kind of thought', Lyotardasks, able sophy from the more substantivesociological and cul- tosublateAuschwitzin a general . . . processtowardsa tural claims which have been made concerning the universalemancipation ?' (19 86: 6). characterof postmodernity and postmodern culture, Lyotard'swork, in this respect, may be linked to even though these are often interlinked(as in Lyotard's more general strains of post-structuralistthinking work, which is both an investigationinto the statusof andto sharewith them a number of features.In gen- knowledge in post-industrialsociety and a polemic eralterms, these may be seen to include a suspicion againsttotalizing theory). oftotalizing theories and explanationswhich attempt tooffer comprehensive and aI l-embracing accounts of socialand culturalphenomena; an anti-foundational- Socio-culturaldebates ismthat rejects claims to'absolute' or'universal'foun- 'false dations for knowledge; a rejection of the Thus, in sociological debates, postmodernism has universalism'of ethnocentric or Eurocentricsystems been used to identify the emergence of what is often ofthought;and an anti-essentialismthat rejectsboth believedto be a new economic and socialorder. This is 'depth' 'oost-industrialism' epistemologieswhich seekto lay bare'h idden' sometimes linked to the idea of 'postmodernity' or'essential'realities as well as ideasof a fixed notion of (Rose1991) and designated as either 'essence'. identityor human In this last respect,a cri- (Lyon1 994) or'postmodernization'(Crook et al. 1992). 'Postmodernism' 'postmodernity') tiqueof Enlightenmentreason is likened to a critiqueof (or is, in this 'modernity'. theunified self which was assumedto underpin it and respect,seen to be following a period of provideit with itsfoundations. Thus StuartHall draws a However, this is a term which is itself disputed and distinctionbetween'the Enlightenment subject', whose periodizationis not alwaysagreed. Thus, while 'a 'modernity' whichis based upon conception of the human per- may be seen to have emerged with the 'tradition' sonas a fullycentred, unified individual,endowed with break with (and feudalism) represented by the capacitiesof reason, consciousnessand action', the advent of caoitalismin the fifteenth and sixteenth and'thepostmodern subject', which isconceptualized centuries, it is more commonly identified with the 'no ashaving fixed, essentialor permanent identity' economic and social changes characteristicof the 'different butrather as assuming identitiesat different nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,and espe- times'(Hall 1992: 277). cially those ushered in by industrialization,urbanrza- Postmoderntheory, in this regard, lays stressson the tion, and the emergence of mass social movements. 'post- heterogeneityand fragmented characterof socialand Accordingly,the main featuresof the emerging E CRITICALAPPROACHES

modern'socialorderare usuallyidentified in terms of a key, reality for the modern citizen.The controversial 'oost- transitionfrom an old industrialorder to a new French theorist Jean Baudrillard is particularlyasso- industrial' one which is, in turn, characterizedby a ciated with this position. number of features: a decline in manufacturing ano In common with post-industriaI theorists, Baudril lard the increased impoftance of service industries (be identifiesa transitionfrom an old industrialorder based they businessand financial or heritage and tourism); upon labour and the production of goods to a new the replacement of old models of standardized,or socialreproductive order based upon communication 'Fordist', massproduction by new flexible and geogra- and the circulationof signs (Bauddllard 1975). How- 'post-Fordist' phically mobile forms of production ever, for Baudrillard,this change also provides the involving batch production and the targeting of spe- basisof a new cultural condition. lt is not simply that cific consumer groups, or market segments;a decline we live in a world increasinglydominated by images in the traditionalworkingclass and the growth of white- and signs, but that these have become our primary 'service collarworkersand a class'(whose attitudes and reality.We now live, he suggests,in a world of simula- tastes, some accounts claim, postmodernist culture tions,or hyperreality,which hasno realitybeyond itseli. expresses);and therefore a diminution of the signifi- lndeed,for Baudrillard(1983:41), it is'now impossible canceof classidentities and divisionsand an increaseo to isolatethe processof the real,orto prove the real':all importance of other forms of social identity such as that we have accessto are signs and simulations.This those related to age, gender, sexualorientation, eth- provocativeline of argument was pushed to extremes nicity,and region. In this respect,the shift away from when, in 1991, Baudrillardexamined the representa- 'politics 'virtual' the politics of mass movements towards a of tion of the Gulf War as a event and decrareo 'the difference'may be seen to link with postmodern argu- that Gulf War did not take place'. Although it is ments concerning the increasing contingency and possible to read this as an argument about the fluidity of socialidentities in the contemporary era. changed character of contemporary warfare in the Such shifts are also identified with the growing postmodern era, it also suggests some of the weak- importance (and convergence)of the new computing nessesof a postmodern perspective that both displays and communicationstechnologies to the changing an indifferenceto the actualityof events beyond the 'simulacrum' economic and socialorder. Media output and informa- and,underthe guise of radicalism,simply tion servicesnot only provide a major'force of produc- joins a lengthy tradition of socialcommentary in attri- 'post-industrial' tion' of the economy, but also buting an exaggerated power and effectivity to media increasinglyexemplify'post-Fordist' economic prac- imagery. tices (Lash and Urry 1994). Even more importantly, Although the Baudrillardianvision of a media world the media and the new technologies are seen to be of simulationsis undoubtedly overstated,it does none significantlyreshaping social experience and subjec- the lessdirect our attentionto the omnipresencewithin tivity. Two main themes can be identified. First,the contemporary culture of media signs and images and speeding up of the circulation of information and their increasing detachment from exterior realities. images through computer-linked systems and satel- However, it is television-given its continuous avail- lites, for example, has been seen as responsiblefor ability and presence within contemporary culture- 'de- an increasingcompression of time and space, a that is most commonly associatedwith the postmod- territorialization'of culture and the construction of ern condition rather than film. Thus, for Kroker and 'in forms of identity which are no longer strongly identi- Cook it is televisionthat is a very literal sense,the fied with place (Harvey1989; Meyrowitz 1985).These real world . . . of postmodern culture, society and processesmay in turn be linked to arguments about economy' (1986/1988: 268). This is not, of course,to 'globalization' and the mixing, and pluralization,of saythat argumentsabout film have not been informed culturalperspectives and influenceswhich the acceler- by postmodern ideas. However,they have tended to ated flow of people, goods, services,images, ideas, be applied to individualfilms ratherthan,in the caseof and information is presumed to permit (albeitthat this television,to the mediumas a whole(albeitthat this has is still characterizedby acute imbalancesof power).A then led to grossgeneralizations about the functioning 'in secondtheme emerging from the analysisof postmod- of television general').At this point, it is therefore ernism concernshow the media, and media images appropriate to look at the artistic context in which and signs,are increasinglyidentified asa key,if not the debates about postmodern film have occurred. E FILMAND POSTMODERNISM

Aestheticdebates analogousto other arts.Andreas Huyssen(1 986), how- ever,suggests that the emergence of postmodern an, lfpostmodern philosophy may be linkedto a failing especially in the United States, may be linked to a 'universal 'exhaustion', confidencein reason'and ideas of progress, certain kind of failure, or of modernism itis also possible to seecertain kinds of culturalprac- (or,more specifically,the versionof modernism which tice--designatedas'postmodern'-emerging as a became institutionalizedin the United States in the responseto a growinglack of confidencein the value 1950s).Postmodernism in this regard may be seen as or progressivenessof modernism in the arts and a response to what Russell Berman (1984-5: 41) 'obsolescence design.Much of the earlydebate about postmodern- describesas the of shock' and the cor- ismwas linked to a considerationof architecture,and it responding loss of modernism'stransgressive power. isinrelation to architecturethat someof Due to its incorporation into the art market and its theseideas 'high emergemost clearly. institutionalizationas art', , it is argued, has lost Puttingit in general terms, modernism in architec- its capacityto challenge and provoke as well as its capacity to fure(as, for example, in the work of , the communicate to a public beyond a small 6lite. Bauhausgroup, Mies van der Rohe, and the Interna- For Huyssen,the origins of tionalStyle) has placed a particularemphasis on func- this challenge may be found in of the 1960swith its reaction tionand social utility. , in this against 'truth the dominant aestheticof abstractexpressionism and respect,may be seen to have demanded a to challengingof conventionalnotions of art through the function',involving a rejection of ornament and dec- incorporation of elements from popular culture. As orationin favour of a laying bare of the materials such, pop art may be seen to embody a number of employedand clear display of their purpose. These 'modern' features which are now commonly associated with architecturalprinciples were also linked to postmodern cultural practice.These may, loosely,be socialobjectives such as the provisionof masshousing identified as eclecticism, an erosion of aestherrc (evenif they were not always implemented by politi- boundaries,and a decliningemphasis upon originality. ciansand planners with the appropriate degree of Thus,just as postmodern philosophyand postmodern financialinvestment) and seen, as in the Internationar 'universal' culture have been associatedwith pluralism, so the Style,to be in application. For Charles most commonly identified feature of postmodernism Jencks,postmodernist architecture should be seen as hasbeen its eclecticism-its drawing upon and mixing a responseto the failure of this modernist project. 'death' of different styles, genres, and artistic conventions, Indeed,he associatesthe of modern architec- including those of modernism. Postmodernism, in turewithsuch events as the collapseof the RonanPoint this regard,is to be understoodas a movement beyond towerblock in 1969 and the blowing up of high-rrse modernism which is none the lessable to make use of blocksin St Louisin 1972. Such events,he argues,not modernist techniques and conventions as one set of onlysignalled the failure of modern architecture as 'mass stylisticchoices amongst others. lt is in this sensethat housing',but also its failure to appeal to, or Featherstone describes postmodernism as demon- communicatewith, its inhabitants (Jencks 1986: 19). strating'a stylisticpromiscuity'(1 988: 203),while other Thus,for Jencks,postmodernist architectureseeks to criticshave placed an emphasisupon its strategiesof reconnectwith its occupants 'appropriation' 'hybridization' by rejecting the function- and (e.9. Wollen 1981: alismof modernism, making use of decoration and 168;Hassan 1986:505). ornamentationand mixing stylesfrom different peri- A central component of this process has been a odsand (including 'high' 'low' places the vernacular).As such, mixing of elements from both and culture 'de-differ- Jencksdefines postmodernism in terms of the concept (whichmay in turn be seen as an example of 'double 'the of coding', involving combination of mod- entiation',or the breaking down of boundaries,which erntechniques with something else(usually traditional has been identified as a feature of postmodernism building)in orderto communicatewith the public and a more generally).As Jameson has argued, artists of 'postmodern' concernedminority, usually other architects'(14). the period have displayed a fascination 'double Jencksacknowledges that while coding with popularforms of culturesuch as advertising, the B maybe a feature of postmodern culture more gener- movie, sciencefiction, and crime-writing.He suggests, 'failure' 'quote' ally,the of modern architectureis not directlv however,that does not simply CRlTICALAPPROACHES

popular culture in the way that modernist art once did, dist' mass production (the studio system)to the more 'flexible' 'New but that this quotation is incorporatedinto the worksto forms of independent production (the 'postmodern' the pointwhere olderdistinctionsbetween'modernist Hollywood' and after) characteristicof and mass culture' no longer seem to apply (Jameson economies, while the incorporation of Hollywood 'break' 1988: 113). lt is worth noting, again,that the into media conglomerates with multiple entertainment 'postmodern' between modernism and postmodernism is in this interestshas been seen to exemplify a senserelative rather than absolute.Thus, as a number blurringof boundariesbetween (or'de-differentiation' of commentators have noted, many of the features of) industrial practices, technologies, and cultural associatedwith postmodernism (such as the appro- forms (Storper and Christopherson 1987; Tasker priation and juxtaposition of diverse materials)were 1996).Second, films have, in variousways, been seen also a characteristicof modernism even if they did to exemplify postmodern themes orto offer'images of not possessquite the same significancefor the work postmodern society' (Harvey 1989: 308-23; Denzin '1 as a whole (e.9.Callinicos 1989: 12-16;Wol{f 1990: 991). Thus, the dystopian character of the contem- e8-9). porary sciencefiction film might be seen to be con- 'postmodern' Finally,the borrowing of stylesand techniqueschar- nected with a lossof faith in the idea of acteristicof postmodern art may be linked to a declin- progressor the changing film representationsof men 'grand ing premium upon originalityand the personalimprint with a breakdown of confidence in the narra- of the'author'(who, in parallelwith the'Enlightenment tives'surrounding masculinity and patriarchaI authority subject', is seen to have undergone something of a (Kuhn 1990; Modleski1991). Finally, films have been 'death'). Thus,for Dick Hebdige, the postmodern use seen to display the aestheticfeatures (such as eclecti- 'parody, of simulation, and allegory' may be cism and the collapseof traditionalartistic hierarchies) 'to seen deny the primacy or originary power of the that are characteristicallyassociated with postmoder- "author"', 'invent' who is no longer required to but nist cultural practice. However,the identificationand 'rework simply the antecedent' or rearrange the assessmentof such aesthetic features has not been 'already-said' (Hebdige 1988: 191). However, the without its comolications. opposition between modernist originality and post- This is partlyto do with the diversityof films to which modernist appropriation and replication is not as the label has been attached (including both main- 'independent' clear-cutas it issometimes argued and, even in popular stream Hollywood films as well as or 'author' 'experimental' culture, the has remained curiously resilient. film and video) and partly to do with 'postmodern' Thus,while a film like BlueVelvet(USA 1986)cleany the difficulty of clearly differentiatinga 'modern' exemplifiessuch postmodern featuresas eclecticism, filmmaking practice in relation to an earlier the mixing of avant-garde and popular conventions, one (especiallyin the case of Hollywood).These pro- and an ironicplay with surfacesignifiers, it hasstill been blems have been furthercompounded bythe differing 'author', very much in terms of the presumed David interests that have conventionally underpinned the Lynch,that the film has been put into circulation,dis- concern to identify postmodernist film. On the one cussed,and interpreted. hand, the idea of postmodernism has been used to carry on a tradition of ideological criticismwhich has sought to identify the social conservatismof the aes- thetic conventionsemployed by postmodern cinema. Postmodernismand film On the other, it has been used to discussfilms which 'oppositional' 'trans- may be seen to continue the or 'political However,while individualfilmssuch as Blue Velvetand gressive'traditionof modernism' butthrough (, 1982)have figured promi- a deployment of what is regarded as more culturally nently in debates about postmodernism and film. the appropriate (i.e. postmodern) means. In this respect, identificationof what constitutespostmodern cinema discussionof postmodern cinema may be seen to fol- 'reac- hasnot been straightfon,rard.Three main kindsof con- low in the wake of earlierdistinctions between a 'postmodernism cern have been in evidence. First,the organizationof tionary postmodernism' and a of the itself has often been taken to exem- resistance'(Foster 1983: p. xii) or between a socially plify'postmodern'features. Thus, it has been argued conservative'affirmative postmodernism' and an 'For- 'alternative that Hollywood has undergone a transitionfrom postmodernism in which resistance,cri- FILMAND POSTMODERNISM

'postmodern', tiqueandnegation of the status quo were redefined in be plausibly identified as given their non-modernistand non-avantgardist terms' (Huyssen self-consciousnessabout film history and film tech- 1984:16). nique, extensiveuse of referenceand quotation, and 'high'and 'low'art Thesetensions can be seen at work in the ways in mixing of conventions(such as those 'l 'art' whichHollywood films since the 970s have been of the European film and the Hollywood genre addressed.Since the emergence of the New Holly- film).Similarly, although there has been an undoubted 'classical' woodin the late 1960sit has been common to note rn return to the conventions of narrative and Holly,voodfilms an increasingstylistic self-conscious- characterin many post- films, this has ness,use of referencesto film history, and quotation also been accompanied by a continued (and, indeeo, fromotherstyles (e.g. Carroll 1982). The significanceo{ growing) use of quotation and mixing of genre ete- frisdevelopmentis, however,contested. For Fredric ments. 'Postmodern- Jameson,in his ground-breakingessay Fredric Jameson'sdistinction between parody and ism;or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism'(1984), it pastichemay be helpful in this regard.Although both isclearlytobe read negatively. Jameson defines post- parody and pastiche are conventionally associated modernculture in terms of a'depthlessness'represen- with postmodernism, Jameson argues that, within 'a btiveof newculture of the image orthe simulacrum'; postmodern culture, it is pastichewhich is dominant. anew kind of spatializedtemporality and consequent ForJameson,while parody involvesa senseof criticism 'weakening 'new of historicity';and the creation of a or mockery of the text or texts which are being paro- 'blank typeof emotionalground tone' which he describesas died, pastichesimply consists of parody':a'neu- 'awaning of affect' (1984: 58-61). In seeking to sub- tral mimicry without parodyt ulterior motives' (1984: stantiatethese poi nts, J ameson poi nts to the' nosta I g ia 64-5). Although it is not an unproblematicdistinction, film'ofthe 1970s(suchasChinatown (USA.1974)and it does have some heuristic value in discriminating EodyHeat (USA, 1981)). He argues that, as a resultof between the films of the New Hollywood and after. 'intertextual' fieiruse of pasticheand reference,sucn Thus, while a New Hollywood film such as Robert Alt- filmsmay be seen to exemplify a characteristically man's lhe Long Goodbye (1973)quotes from film his- postmodernloss of historical depth. Such films, he tory and reworks genre conventions with obvious 'real' claims,are unable to re-createa past but only a parodic intent-to debunk the myth of the private simulationof the past based upon pre-existing repre- eye and the valueshe represents-the use of film quo- 'event' sentationsand styles (67). tations and referencesin a 1980s film such as Inthis respect, Jameson! analysislinks with other The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987) is largely critiquesof recent Hollywood cinema for both its'emp- characterized by the use of pastiche (as in the clever, tiness'andideological conservatism. Thus, it has been but politicallyand emotionally'blank', reconstructton commonto see the formal invention and socialques- of the Odessa steps sequence from the revolutionary tioningof the New Hollywood films of the late 1960s Russianfilm ,1925). As such, tne and1970s as giving way to a more conventionaland film's use of pasticheoffers lessa critique of the male 'alibi' conservativeHollywood cinema from the mid-l970s hero (asthe Long Goodbye does)than an for the onwards,especially in the wake of the successof Star film's ideological conservatismby inoculatingthe film Wars(USA,1977)(e.9. Ryan and Kellner1988). This has againstbeing read too straight(in much the same way inturn been associatedwith a decline in what Kolrer as the more recent lndependence Day (1996) also 'the hasreferred to as modernist project' of New Holly- invests its conservativemilitarism with a measure of 'post- woodfilmmaking and its replacement by the ton gue-in-cheekknowingness). 'has 'postmodern' modernAmerican film' which done its best ro What this suggests is that the use of erasethe traces of sixties and seventies exoeriment- conventionsin Hollywood cannot simply be read offas ation'(Kolker1988: pp. x-xi). In this respect, Kolker ideologicallyuniform (or.indeed, that Hollywood films 'postmodern' maybe seen to link postmodernism with a kind of are all usefully labelled as given the anti-modernism(or'reactionary postmodernism') degree of aestheticdiversity which characterizescon- 'classical' 'a involvinga return to the conventions or temporary Hollywood filmmaking). Thus, for Linda linearillusionist style' (p. xi). However,it is not entirely Hutcheon,Jamesont'blanket condemnation of Holly- clearwhetherthe distinction he draws is so clear-cut. wood' is overstated and failsto take into account the 'oppositional For,clearly, the New Hollywood films may themselves and contestatory'potential of postmod- CRITICAL APPROACHES

Hollywoodpostmodernism- David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986)

ernismwhich may be found in certain Hollywood films have been most firmly located. Despite its extensive 'allusion', (Hutcheon1989: 1 14).Unlike Jameson, she holdsout use of Noel Carroll(1982) argues against the 'postmodern' the possibilityof Hollywood films making use of irony application of the label to Hollywood and parody both to address history (as in Woody filmmakingand, in a subsequentessay, identifies'post- 'subvert' Allen's Zelig, 1983) and to Hollywood from modern' film with the avant-garde, and specifically within by their challenge to audience expectations with various reactions against structuralfilmmaking, 'deconstructionism, concerning narrativeand visual representation(even such as the new talkie, punk film 'light' in such a film as De Palma's Phantom of the the new psychodrama,and the new '('l 985: 'alternative' Paradise, 1974). Nevertheless, Hutcheon atso 103). In this tradition of filmmaking, the acknowledgesthat postmodernistfilms are not always reworking of old materials and representations by 'challenging in mode', that they are ofren likelyto be postmodernism is interpreted not simply as a kind of 'compromised', and that, as a result of their reliance surfaceplay (or'depthlessness'),but as part of a critical 'ideologically 'deconstruct' upon irony. they may also be ambiva- project to and subvert old meanings as lent or contradictory'(1989: 107). Hence, most of her well as'construct'new ones through the repositionrng examples are actually films which are outside the of artisticand cultural discourses.Thus, Laura Kipnis mainstreamof Hollywood production (Zelig, The Pur- explainspostmodernism in terms of a culturalpractice 're-functioning' ple Rose of Cairo, (1985), The French Lieutenant's of (1986:34), while Jim Collinsargues 'juxtaposition' Woman (1981) or not Hollywood films at all (Suzanne it involvesthe use of asa mode of inter- Osten's The Mozart Brothers,Sweden, 1986), Maximi- rogation'(1 989: 138).Thus, for Collins,the bringing lian Schell'sMarlene (WestGermany, 1983), and Peter together of differentdiscursive modes in a film suchas Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts (UK./Nether- Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's Parsifal(1984) consists of lands, 1985)).Indeed, more generally it is typical of more than just pastiche,or the aimlessplundering of 'critical'strain writing concerned to identify a of post- past styles,but both a questioning of earliertraditions 'a modernism within Hollywood that it focuses on films of representationand way of making senseof life in which tend to be unusual in Hollywood's terms (e.g. decentered '(1 989: 140). Bladerunner,Blue Velvet, Thelma and Louise(.l991)) ln this respect, the critical engagement with prior rather than ones which can be seen as typical. representationshas been seen as especially attrac- Accordingly,it hasoften been outside of Hollywood tive to filmmakers who wish to challenge the tradi- 'adversarial' that the qualities of postmodern cinema tional ways in which parlicular social groups or

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bthers'(suchas blacks,indigenous peoples, women, ual orientation, and diasporic identity, and embrace andgays) have been represented and to do justice to what they call'anthropophagic, parodic-carnival- $e complexitiesof identity in the postmodern era. esque, and media-jujitsu strategies' (Shohat and 'promise Thus,for Janet Wolff, the of postmodern- Stam 1994: 10). In all of these cases,filmmakers in ism'forfeminism is that, by employing the tactics of the Third World are seen to make use of FirstWorld 'pastiche, irony,quotation, and juxtaposition', femin- techniques and conventions but for politically sub- 'current 'in istculturalpractice may engage directly with versive ends. Thus, it is argued that, their respect images,forms, and ideas, subverting their intent and for difference and plurality, and in their self-con- (re)appropriatingtheir meanings' (1990: 88). Simi- sciousness about their own status as simulacra, larly,Kobena Mercer identifies the work of black and as texts that engage with a contemporary, 'a Britishfilmmakers in the 1980s as constituting mass-mediatedsensibility without losing their sense 'jujitsu' kindof counter-practicethat contests and critiques of activism', the strategies of such films as the predominant forms in which black subjects the Aboriginal Babakiueria(Don Featherstone,Aus- becomesocially visible in different forms of cultural tralia, 1988)and the PhilippineMababangong Ban- representation'(1988: 8). Despite the use of the term gungot ('Perfumed N ightmare', Kidlat Tahim ik, 197 7) 'counter-practice' 'resistance by Mercer,such filmmaking should, exemplify Foster'snotion of a postmodern- nevertheless,be differentiated from the Godardran ism' (1994:332). However,the appropriatenessof the 'counter-cinema' 'political modelof (or modernism') conceptualizationand periodization of postmodern- 'correct' andits apparent prescription of one way of ism in relation to non-Western cultures remains con- makingpolitical cinema which is universallyapplic- troversial,as does its relationshipto the concept of the 'post-colonial', able.Rather, Mercer argues that such films as leri- the debate around which has now tories(1984)and Handsworth Songs (1987)employ a effectively overshadowed earlier arguments about 'appropriation' postmodernstrategy of wh ich,through the postmodern. a reworkingof pre-existing documentary footage, foundsound, quotations, and the like, involves botn 're-articulation' 'given a'dis-articulation'and a of sig- Gonclusion:postmodernism and film ni{yingelements of hegemonicracial discourse'(1988: studies 11).ln doing so, he also indicateshow such work 'syncretism' 'hybridity' representsa or which, he Although the debates about postmodernism have led 'diasporean argues,is appropriate to the conditions' to variousdiscussions about the usefulnessof the term ofthe black communities in Britain(1 1). in relationto film, it is lesseasy to identify a distinctive Inthis respect, Mercer's work interlinkswith postmo- postmodern film theory. Postmodern ideas, in this 'anti-essenti- dernand post-colonial emphases on the respect, have tended to inform other film theorres, alist'nature of social and cultural identities and wnar rather than develop as a body of theory in their own 'the EllaShohat describes as mutual imbrication o{ right. In this respect,postmodern polemicizingagainst "central" "peripheral" 'First' 'universalizing' 'totalizing'theory and cultures' in both the and has led to a cer- and'ThirdWorlds' (1992/ 199 6: 329).Although Shohat tain refocusingof intereston the local and the specific 'Screen warnsagainst any simple celebration of post-colonial which may be detected in the turn away from 'l hybridity,which she arguesassumes diverse and ideo- theory' of the 970s towards historicalresearch, cul- logicalvaried forms, she also suggests how hybridity tural studies,and an interestin the socialand cultural 'a canbe usedas part of resistantcritique' (331).Thus, specificities of non-Euro-American cinemas (and a 'multicultural' 'dialogistic'approach sheandhercollaborator Robert Stam echo a numberof more and to their postmodernthemes (such as the breakdown of con- study).One illustrationof this may be found in feminist fidencein'grand narratives'andthe problemizationof film theory. 'post- representation)in their discussionof how the Although feministfilmtheory wascrucially important ThirdWorldist' fi lms hasmoved'beyond' the anti-coto- in the mid-1970sin introducingquestions of gender 'apparatus nialnationalism and politicalmodernism of filmssuch into the previouslysex-blind theory' (see 'l asBattleof Algiers (Algeria/ltaly,1966) and Hourof the Creed, Part , Chapter 9), it itself became criticized 'essentializing' 'female Furnaces(Argentina, 1968) to interrogate nationalist for an conceptualizationof the 'the discoursefrom the perspectivesof class,gender, sex- spectator' which failed to do justice to multiple

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*Featherstone, 'ln and fluid nature'of the female spectatorwho,may oe, Mike (1988), Pursuitof the postmod- and/or be constructedas, simultaneouslyfemale and ern:An lntroduction' , Theory,Culture andSociety, S/2-3: black and gay' (Kuhn 1994: 2O2).As a result, Kuhn 195-215. 'the *Foster, 'Postmodernism: arguesthat future for feminist work on film would Hal ('1983/1985), A Preface,,in Foster(ed.), The Anti-Aesthetic: postmodern appear to lie in micronarrativesand microhistoriesof Essayson Culture (Port Townshend:Bay Press);repr. as postmo- the fragmented female spectator rather than in any dern Culture(London: Pluto). totalizing metapsychology of the subject of the cine- Fraser, Nancy, and Linda J. Nicholson (1988/1990\, matic apparalus' (202). In this respect, the conver- 'Social Criticism without Philosophy:An Encounter gence of feminism and around the between Feminismand Postmodernism',in Nicholson questionof audiences hasalready moved in that direc- (ed.)Feminism/Postmodernism (London: Routledge). 'The tion. However. as Nancy Fraserand Linda Nichorson Hafl, Stuart (1992), Ouestion of Cultural ldentity,,in (1988)have argued in their discussionof the relations Stuart Hall and Tony McGrew (eds.),Modernity and its between feminism and postmodernism, while posr- Futu res (Cambridge: Pol ity Press). 'postmodernist modern feminismmay sharea increou- Harvey, David (1989), The Condition of Postmoderni! 'must (Oxford: lity towards ', it rematn Blackwell). 'large Hassan,lhab (1986/1987), 'Pluralism per- theoretical' and hold on to some narratives,if in Postmodern 'the spective',Critical lnquiry, 12l3 (Spring),503-20; repr.in social-criticalpower of feminism' is to be main- The Postmodern Turn: Essaysin PostmodernTheoy and tained. ln this respect, their recommendation that 'explicitly Culture(Ohio: Ohio State UniversityPress). postmodern feminist theory should be his- Hebdige, Dick (1988),Hiding in the Light: On tmagesand torical' 'attuned and to the culturalspecificity of differ- Things(London: Routledge). ent societies and periods and to that of different Hutcheon, Linda (1989), The Politicsof postmodernrsm groups within societiesand periods' (1988/1990: 34) (London:Routledge). 'postmodern, 'Mapping would seem to be a good recipe for Huyssen,Andreas (1984), the Postmodern,, analysismore generally. New GermanCritique,33: 5-52; repr.in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture and postmoderntsm (London:Macmillan). *Jameson, BIBLIOGRAPHY Fredric(1984/1991),'Postmodernism; or,The CulturalLogic of LateCapitalism', New LeftReview, 146: Baudrillard, (1975), production Jean The Mirror of (St 53-92; repr. in Postmodernism:Of the CulturalLogic of Louis:Telos Press). Late Capitalism(London: Verso). - (1983), patton, 'The Simulations,trans. Paul Foss, Paul and - (19Bg), Politicsof Theory:ldeological positions in PhilipBeitchman (New York:Semiotext(e)). the PostmodernismDebate', in The tdeologiesof The- - (1991/1995), p/ace, The Gulf War did not Take trans. ory, ii: The Syntaxof History(London: Routledge). (Sydney: Paul Patton Power). Jencks, Charfes(1986), What is Post-Modernism(London: 'Modern Berman,Russell A. (1984-5), Art and Desublima- St Martin'sPress). tion', Te/os. "'Refunctioning" 62: 31-57. Kipnis, Laura (1986), Reconsidered: Caff inicos, (1 Afex 989), AgainstPostmodernism: A Marxrst Towardsa Left PopularCulture', in Colin MacCabe Critique(Cambridge: PolityPress). (ed.), High Theory/LowCulture: Analysing popular Film Carroll,Noel (1 982),'TheFuture of Allusion:Hollvwood in and Television(Manchester: Manchester University the Seventies(and Beyond)', October,20: 51-61. Press). - (1985), 'Film', post- in StanleyTrachtenberg (ed.), The Kofker, Robert Phillip (1988), A Cinema of Lone/jness: modern Moment (Westport, press). Conn.: Greenwood Penn, Kubrick, Scorsese.Spielberg, Altman, 2nd edn. *Cof popular fins, Jim (1989), L)ncommon Cultures: Culture (Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress). and Post-Modernism(London: Routledge). Kroker, Arthur, and David Cook (1986/1988),The post- Connor, Steven (1989) , PostmodernistCu/ture: An tmro- modern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper- duction to Theories of the Contemporary(Oxford: Black- Aesthetics (New York: St Martin! Press;Basingstoke: well). Macmillan). Crook, Stephen, Jan Pakulski,and Malcolm Waters Kuhn, Annette (ed.) (1990), Alien Zone: Cultural Theory (1992), Postmodernization(London: Routledge). and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema (London: Denzin, Norman (1991),lmages of postmodern Society: Verso). Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema (London: - (1994),Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema.2nd Sage). edn. (London:Verso).

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!rch,Scott,and John Urry (994), Economicsof Signsand Rose,Margaret A. (1991),The Post-Modernand the Post- Space(London: Sage). Industrial(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). lpn, David(1994), Postmodernity (Buckingham: Open Ryan.Michael. and DouglasKellner (19881, Camera Poli- UniversityPress). tica: The Politicsand ldeology of ContemporaryHolly- fryotard,Jean-FranEois (1979/1984), The Postmodern wood Film(Bloomington, Indiana University Press). 'Notes Condition:A Reporton Knowledge,trans. Geoff Ben- Shohat,Ella (1992/1996), on the "Post-Colonial"', ningtonand BrianMassumi (Minneapolis: University of in PadminiMonga (ed.),Contemporary Postcolonial The- MinnesotaPress). ory (London:Arnold). 'Defining -(1986), the Postmodern',in LisaAppigna- *- 3nd Robert Stam (1994),Unthinking Eurocentrism: nesi(ed.), Postmodernism (London: ICA). Multiculturalismand the Media (London:Routledge). }fcCfennan,Gregor (1989), Marxism, Pluralism and Storper,Michael, and Susan Christopherson (1 987), 'Flex- Beyond:Classic Debates and New Departures(Cam- ible Specializationand RegionalIndustrial Agglomera- bridge:Polity Press). tions:The Caseof the USPicture Industry', Annals of the 'Recoding Mercer,Kobena (1988), Narrativesof Raceand Associati on of Am eri ca n Geog raphe rs,7 7 / 1: 104-1 7 . 'Approaches Nation',in Mercer(ed.), Black Film BritishCinema (Lon- Tasker,Yvonne (1996), to the New Holly- don:ICA). wood',in JamesCurran, David Morley, and Valerie Walk- ilfeyrowitz,Joshua (1 985), No Senseof Place:The tmpact erdine (eds.), Cultural Studies and Communications of ElectronicMedia on SocialBehavior (Oxford: Oxford (London:Arnold). UniversityPress). Wolff, Janet ('l990), Feminine Sentences: Essays on Modleski,Tania (1991), Feminism without Women:Cul- Womenand Culture(Cambridge: Polity Press). 'Postfeminist'Aqe tureand Criticism in a (London:Ro-- Wollen, Peter (1972),'CounterCinema: Vent d'es(, After- tledge). image,4: 6-16. 'Ways Rodowick,D. N. (1988),The Crisisof PoliticalModernism: - (1981), of Thinkingabout MusicVideo (and Criticismand ldeology in Contemporary Film Theory Post-Modern is m), Critical O.ua rte rlv, 28/1 -2: 16l -7 0. (Urbana:University of lllinoisPress).

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