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Film, Medium Specificity, and Response-Dependence

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REMEMBER THE MEDIUM! FILM, MEDIUM SPECIFICITY, AND RESPONSE-DEPENDENCE Clotilde Torregrossa A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 2020 Full metadata for this thesis is available in St Andrews Research Repository at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this thesis: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/19586 This item is protected by original copyright This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 Remember the Medium! Film, Medium Specificity, and Response-Dependence Clotilde Torregrossa This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at the University of St Andrews September 2019 Candidate's declaration I, Clotilde Torregrossa, do hereby certify that this thesis, submitted for the degree of PhD, which is approximately 56,000 words in length, has been written by me, and that it is the record of work carried out by me, or principally by myself in collaboration with others as acknowledged, and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for any degree. I was admitted as a research student at the University of St Andrews in September 2015. I confirm that no funding was received for this work. Date Signature of candidate Supervisor's declaration I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of PhD in the University of St Andrews and that the candidate is qualified to submit this thesis in application for that degree. Date Signature of supervisor Permission for publication In submitting this thesis to the University of St Andrews we understand that we are giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. We also understand, unless exempt by an award of an embargo as requested below, that the title and the abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker, that this thesis will be electronically accessible for personal or research use and that the library has the right to migrate this thesis into new electronic forms as required to ensure continued access to the thesis. I, Clotilde Torregrossa, confirm that my thesis does not contain any third-party material that requires copyright clearance. The following is an agreed request by candidate and supervisor regarding the publication of this thesis: Printed copy No embargo on print copy. Electronic copy No embargo on electronic copy. Date Signature of candidate Date Signature of supervisor Underpinning Research Data or Digital Outputs Candidate's declaration I, Clotilde Torregrossa, hereby certify that no requirements to deposit original research data or digital outputs apply to this thesis and that, where appropriate, secondary data used have been referenced in the full text of my thesis. Date Signature of candidate Acknowledgements I owe my first round of acknowledgements to Berys Gaut who has supervised my work from my Masters dissertation until the completion of this thesis. His generous and nuanced advice is something I can only hope to find elsewhere in the future and perhaps replicate myself. I am also very grateful to my secondary supervisor, Simon Prosser, for always offering me an insightful viewpoint into my thesis and for stepping up to support me when necessary. There are many other members of the SASP faculty I wish to thank, especially Lisa Jones and Mike Wheeler for keeping a watchful eye on me and my work, and Katherine Hawley for offering her expertise on some of the most difficult parts of this thesis. It is often said that writing a thesis is a lonely business and I have found this to be generally true. However, in many other ways, it took a village. Here is my village: Marvin Backes, Lisa Bastian, Joseph Bowen, Miguel Egler, Claire Field, Ethan Landes, Stefano Lo Re, Colin McLean, Quentin Pharr – to whom I owe so much more – Lewis Ross, Saranga Sudarshan, Ash Watkins, my friends and colleagues in Minorities and Philosophy SASP, and many others. Each of them has brought me something essential to complete this work, either theoretical, practical or emotional in nature, and for which I’m eternally grateful. I hope I can pay it back and forward. I would also like to thank Hot House Yoga, Luvians and Taste for providing the goods and services indispensable to my well-being during this time. Finally, I want to thank my parents, Sophie and Max, for making all of this possible in the first place. Abstract Medium specificity is a theory, or rather a cluster of arguments, in aesthetics that rests on the idea that media are the physical material that makes up artworks, and that this material contains specific and unique features capable of 1) differentiating media from one another, and 2) determining the aesthetic potential and goals of each medium. As such, medium specificity is essential for aestheticians interested in matters of aesthetic ontology and value. However, as Noël Carroll has vehemently and convincingly argued, the theory of medium specificity is inherently flawed and its many applications in art history ill-motivated. Famously, he concluded that we should ‘forget the medium’ entirely. In this thesis, I reject his conclusion and argue that reconstructing a theory of medium specificity, while taking Carroll’s objections into account, is possible. To do so, I offer a reconceptualization of the main theoretical components of medium specificity and ground this new theory in empirical research. I first redefine the medium not as the physical material that makes up artworks but as sets of practices – not the material itself but how one uses the material. I then show that what makes media specific and unique is not certain physical features, but the human responses, which can be empirically investigated, to the combination of practices that constitute media. This relation is one of response-dependence, albeit of a novel kind, which I develop by appealing to social metaphysics. The resulting theory is more complex but also much more flexible and fine-grained than the original and provides insight into a variety of current aesthetic theories. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 2 v BACKGROUND ......................................................................................................................... 2 v METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................................... 6 Ø Theory Construction and Conceptual Analysis ............................................................... 6 Ø Naturalism and Explanatory Pluralism ........................................................................ 10 Ø Triangulation and Cognitive Media Theory ................................................................. 14 v OUTLINE .............................................................................................................................. 16 CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS MEDIUM SPECIFICITY, AND HOW DOES IT APPLY TO FILM? ................ 19 1.1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 19 1.2 ORIGINS OF MEDIUM SPECIFICITY ........................................................................................ 19 1.3 MEDIUM SPECIFICITY FOR FILM THEORISTS ............................................................................ 29 1.3.1 Film as Art: initial attacks and appeals ................................................................... 29 1.3.2 After Film as Art: later appeals and the filmmaker as film theorist ........................ 38 1.4 CRITICISMS OF MEDIUM SPECIFICITY .................................................................................... 43 1.5 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 49 CHAPTER 2 WHAT IS MEDIUM SPECIFICITY AND HOW DOES IT APPLY TO FILM, REVISITED . 51 2.1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 51 2.2 ALTERNATIVE DEFINITIONS OF MEDIUM ................................................................................ 52 2.2.1 Physical medium and artistic medium .................................................................... 52 2.2.2 Why the artistic medium? ....................................................................................... 55 2.2.3 Artistic medium and artform ................................................................................... 61 2.3 BASIC CONSTITUENTS AND DIFFERENTIAL PROPERTIES IN THE FILM MEDIUM ................................ 63 2.3.1 The physical properties vs. the sets of practices ..................................................... 64 2.3.2 Practices and differential properties ....................................................................... 70 2.3.3 The explanatory power of the practices construal of basic constituents ................ 74 2.4 LIMITS ............................................................................................................................ 80 2.5 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................
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