Seeing Fictions in Film: the Epistemology of Movies by Wilson
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Book Reviews Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaac/article/70/4/393/5980300 by guest on 24 September 2021 wilson, george m. Seeing Fictions in Film: The Episte- stantly with the narrational and dramatic devices of mology of Movies. Oxford University Press, 2011, Hollywood melodrama in order to highlight the na- viii + 220 pp., $45.00 cloth. ture of the genre itself. In Chapter 9, Wilson argues that the Coen brothers’ film The Man Who Wasn’t There is no doubt that this is a difficult book. The There (2001) modulates the objectivity of its narra- question is whether Seeing Fictions in Film has to be tion according to the shifts in the protagonist’s rela- so difficult and whether working through its argu- tion to others. Even though these final chapters do ments is worth the reader’s effort. Happily, the an- not explicitly address imagined seeing and the status swer to these questions is a definitive yes. In its com- of narration, they demonstrate that close interpreta- plexity and subtlety, the book reveals just what is at tive work is essential to understanding how movies stake in the recent debate about cinematic narration. tell stories. The reader is informed of all the points of confusion Returning to the book’s central thesis, the Imag- and misdirection in this debate. She is then asked ined Seeing Thesis’s (IST) precise specification is to focus on what is really important and consider crucial in the face of preexisting skepticism about a controversial but richly suggestive view about the the role of imagined seeing in fiction film engage- imaginative grounds and distinctive means of cine- ment. First, Wilson rejects the “face-to-face” version matic narration. Many of the components of this view of IST, the version on which “viewers imagine see- are familiar from Wilson’s earlier work, particularly ing segments of the fictional world from a position from a series of fascinating articles appearing be- face-to-face with the segments in question,” on the tween 1997 and 2007. But the book-length treatment grounds that we are never or rarely meant to imag- serves to reveal the continuity of Wilson’s thinking ine being at a vantage point inside a fiction (p. 78). while providing greater stress, elaboration, context, The question is then whether we can make sense of and new responses to recent objections. imagining seeing from an “unoccupied perspective.” The central thesis of Seeing Fictions in Film can Wilson thinks that we can: on the “mediated version” besummedupasfollows.Infictionfilm,thestan- of IST, we imagine seeing depicted fictional events dard function of the image track is to prescribe what indirectly, through “transparently derived” images, viewers imagine seeing in the fiction. In performing and so without being involved in or even present at this function, the image track constitutes a (fictional) fictional events. Of course, for the mediated version narration of the story, a kind of visual narration dis- of IST to be a version of IST at all requires accep- tinctive to cinema (pp. 9–10). There are, of course, tance of the controversial thesis, famously defended as Wilson regularly acknowledges, a parallel set of by Kendall Walton, that certain kinds of images are claims to be made about the sound track in fiction transparent such that we can see through them. Just films. But his focus is on defending the claim that as controversial is Wilson’s further commitment to “imagined seeing” is the “primitive basis” for cine- the indeterminacy of our means of access to the vi- matic narration. The first seeds of the defense are sual narration: we are not meant to imagine anything planted in the book’s introduction, and, in the next about how we came to be viewing a transparent visual seven chapters, we follow its complicated and fecund record of fictional events. growth. Chapters 8 and 9 are then devoted to film in- Wilson’s appeal to fictional indeterminacy in re- terpretation. In Chapter 8, Wilson considers the last sponse to worries about the absurd implications of three films that Josef von Sternberg made with Mar- imagined seeing is familiar from some of his earlier lene Dietrich. Through close structural and thematic work. As before, in Seeing Fictions in Film the appeal analysis, Wilson demonstrates how the films play con- rests on a comparison between literary and cinematic The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70:4 Fall 2012 c 2012 The American Society for Aesthetics 394 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism narration: just as it remains fictionally indeterminate of IST. Given his commitment to IST, Wilson’s inter- how we came to be reading Lemuel Gulliver’s travel est in narrators is limited to the question of whether log, so it remains fictionally indeterminate how we the style of narration in particular films engenders came to be seeing Charles Foster Kane alone on something more than a “minimal” narrating agency. his deathbed. Once the general plausibility of nar- Returning to the explanatory power of IST, Wilson rational indeterminacy in fiction film has been estab- argues that the mediated version is positively recom- lished, the book introduces a new analogy. This one is mended over the face-to-face version by its allowing between radio plays and fiction films, and it is used to us to mark the differences in our experience of the support the further claim that, in the case of movies, diegetic and nondiegetic visual qualities of a movie indeterminacy sets in specifically between imagined shot. In addition, two important differences between Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaac/article/70/4/393/5980300 by guest on 24 September 2021 seeing and imagining being at a vantage point inside kinds of epistemic access to a movie narrative need the fiction (pp. 82–84). The new argument turns on explaining with IST: the difference between know- the claim that, in response to radio plays, we imagine ing something happens in a movie because we “see” hearing fictional sounds in rough spatial relation to it happen versus knowing something happens in the one another, but without imagining being in the space movie that is not shown, on the basis of reasonable of those sounds. Wilson carefully and colorfully elab- inference; and the difference between knowing that orates this claim to bring out its intuitiveness. Unfor- what we “see” in the movie is really happening in the tunately, however, its implications for the cinematic story world versus only in the mind of a character, as case remain unclear: important differences between a dream or hallucination. movies and radio plays may make an imagined van- These phenomenal and epistemic differences are tage point more likely in the former case than in richly illustrated and carefully specified by Wilson. If the latter. For instance, it is unclear whether Wilson we can make sense of the notion of mediated imag- has the means to explain an important difference in ined seeing, the case for its explanatory power is our movie experience between seeing the contents compelling. But can we make sense of this notion? of a shot with a fixed frame and seeing the contents Leaving aside the question of whether seeing can of a shot with a moving frame. The most straight- ever be mediated, there is still a question of what forward explanation of the experienced difference makes a certain kind of imaginative experience, had would surely appeal to whether we are prescribed to in response to what we see, itself a kind of seeing. imagine seeing from a fixed or from a moving van- Wilson describes the relevant sense of imagined see- tage point. But to explain this difference, it seems ing as an imaginative impression as if one is seeing difficult to avoid appealing to a prescription to imag- what is depicted in a fiction film, a kind of impression ine something about our vantage point. distinct from hallucination, from mistaken visual im- Clearly, more needs to be said about the precise pressions of other kinds, and from inner visualization role of fictional indeterminacy in our imaginative (pp. 72–74). But the distinction between imagined experience of a film’s visual narration. But Wilson seeing and other kinds of nonveridical seeing is not would be the first to admit as much: throughout See- entirely clear. The sense in which we see a werewolf ing Fictions in Film, he makes clear that his aim is to in a movie is easily distinguishable from the sense in show that the right version of IST can stand up against which we deliberately conjure up a werewolf in the the initial charges of absurdity and confusion. Once mind’s eye. But it is not so easily distinguishable from IST has been given a fighting chance, we can con- other forms of passive and unintended visualization, sider its explanatory power. And only then is it even like the kind potentially involved in amodal percep- worth considering the issue that has tended to dom- tion whereby we represent occluded parts of per- inate the current debate, that is, whether narrative ceived objects. Furthermore, there is a question about fiction films have implicit visual narrators. Chapter the precise nature of the relation between veridical 6ofSeeing Fictions in Film takes up this issue, but seeing (our actually seeing a visual representation of not in the usual way. Early on in the chapter, Wilson the werewolf) and imagined seeing. renders trivial the question of the ubiquity of implicit This relation could simply be causal: imagined see- visual narrators in light of a commitment to films hav- ing is prompted by actually seeing a visual represen- ing, as part of their fictions, a visual narration, or a tation.