Lines of Flight: Mediation and the Coding of Narrative Knowledge on the American Screen in the Seventies ( 2 Volumes) SUbmi tted to The University o~ Stirling In Candidaoy for the Degree o~ Ihotor of Philosophy By Daniel Riohard Fleming Mq 1984 The research on which this thesis is based was supported by the Department of Education for Northern Ireland. ' . ~, , . !----+----t- I, -- - --·-- - -··-r.~ ·· 1 J I I " " . '" I 6WOO liU OM thuncknt'nu;/c, cu if had .ee;' an apParition - . ' ~. i' . '~ " I This thesis, a two volUllle stu~ of aspeots of those popular cultural fOrMS whioh inoreasingly prevail over the home television and video environment (Amerioan narrative film in feature and series fOrMats), attempts to identify there a narrative mode of produotion. The speoifio problem traoed through suoh a produotion is that of the outer/inner (visible/invisible) metaphor as it informs the oonstruotion of points of 'individualiB1l' in or through the textual surfaoe. This problem is considered in relation both to oertain traditional ways of thinking about the American 'imagination' and to speoifio examples of popular film in the seventies. These oonsiderations are progressively fooussed on the question of ideologioal reoogni tion and on an enlargement of the conoept of 'ohannel' to inolude those mimetio impulses whioh maintain a oontaot between text and reader. Around the theme of an extending 'discourse relation' whioh establishes oertain limits and levels of praotioe, the thesis considers the relationship of level and metalevel, partioularly the idea that an event at one level of desoription m~ be 'oaused' by an event at another level by virtue of being a 'translation'. The oruoial instanoe relates the spatial positioning of the body, on the soreen and in front of it, to 'e:ririnsio' conti tions. Conditions are formulated in terms of a late oapitalist transition to unstable postindustria, at which point the study of narrative systems of signification becomes an exeroise in reading struotural mediation between popular oul ture and surrounding sooio-eoonomio and historioal realities. This shift between signifioations and communioations brings a oritioal perspeotive to bear on the dominant ideology thesis and begins to engage with a grounded method of theorising, suggesting that detailed work on textual features of popular culture is not finally discontinuous with the level of desoription whioh takes as its object the hypothesised new communioation order. iii When I study what I mean in saying th&t it is the body th&t sees, I find nothing else than: it is 'from somewhere' (from the point of view of the other--or: in the mirror for me, in the three-paneled mirror, for example) visible in the &ct of lookin~ M&urioe Merle&u-Ponty • Group' was imported in the seventeenth century-somewh&t l&te in the day-from the vocabulary of the fine &rts (a set of painted or soulpted figures) into that of literature (& group of living oharaoters) •••• The faot that ourrent vooabulary still leaves us with the abstr&ot and striotly useless individual/sooiety couplet, divoroed froll the oonorete lIediations between the two, obliges politioal oritioism to work with the words of others until suoh time &s it oan forge a language of its own. Regis Debr&y Between lI&terial artef&ots like wooden planks, shoes, or automobiles, and linguistio &rtef&ots like words, sentenoes, or discourses, & oonstitutive homology oan be traoed. It oan be baptised with the brief expression homology of produotion. If we use 'produotion' in its gener&l sense, the homology is internal to it •••• The similarities which they will present to homological enquiry are not simi 1 ari ties to be traoed empirioally, by an a posteriori application of some criterion ••• instead, the two different artefaots are taken into consideration all along the range of the work regarding them. Ferruocio Rossi-Landi [The genre] is an 'institution'-as Church, University or State is an institution. ••• One oan work through, express himself through, existing institutions, oreate new ones, or get on, so far as possible, without sharing in polities or rituals, one can also join, but then resh&pe, institutions • ••• Genre should be conoeived, we think, &s a grouping of literary works based, theoretioally, upon both outer form (speoifio meter or struoture) and also upon inner form (attitude, tone, purpose--more orudely, subjeot and audience). The ostensible basis m~ be one or the other ••• but the iv oritioal problem will then be to find the other dimension, to oomplete the diagram •••• Men's pleasure in a liter~ry work is oompounded of the sense of novelty and the sense of reoogni tion ••• in the murder mystery there is the gradual olosing in or tightening of the plot-the gradual oonvergence (as in Oedipus) of the lines of evidenoe. Rene Wellek and Austin Warren The sequenoe was probably inevitable: an enlarged federal government, heightened publio expectations, a turn to the president as the personifioation of how these might be real­ ized •••• It is hard to s~ whether the First Family is so often represented as being unoommonly close because it is thought that family unity will serve as a metaphor for national unity or beoause it is presumed that we will trllst the man more if he is the patriaroh of a brood •••• Under Carter, the ideal was realized: • ••• Fbr the first time since the d~s of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, the mansion on Pennw,ylvania Avenue houses an extended family'. Barbara Kellerman (quoting New York Times) There beoomes a more and more pronounced incompati bili ty between the funotion of the father, as the basis of a possible solution for the individual of the problems of identifioation inherent in the struoture of the oonjugal faaily, and the demands of industrial sooieties, in which an integrating model of the father/ldng/god pattern tends to lose any effeotiveness outside the sphere of mystification. Felix Guattari There erlsts an erroneous opinion ••• that the sooiologioal method oomes into its own only when artistio poetio form, !lade oomplex by the ideologioal faotor (the faotor of content), begins to develop hi storioally in conditions of erlernal sooial reality; while form itself possesses its own special, not sooiological, but speoifically artistio nature and laws • ••• Of course the Marrlst sooiologist oannot agree with suoh an assertion •••• The non-artistio sooial environment, acting on [art] from without, finds a direot, internal response in it. Here is not one alien faotor acting on another •••• !h! aesthetio, like both the legal and the oognitive, is only a variety of the sooial •••• No problems of the 'immanent' remain. v Vo 10 shinov The narratorial voioe is the voioe of a subjeot reoounting something, remembering an event or a historioal s~uenoe, knowing who he is, where he is, and what he is talking about. It responds to some 'polioe', a foroe of order or law ('What "exaotly" are you talking about?': the truth of equi valenoe). In this sense, all organized narration is 'a matter for the polioe', even before its genre (mystery novel, oop story) has been determined. The narrative voioe, on the other hand, would surpass polioe investigation, if that were possible. Jacques Derrida It is true that as a matter of psyohologioal faot we spontan­ eously talk about the films we have seen as a kind of oontin­ uation of the experienoe, muoh like we protraot intimacy by talking after sex. In both these oases, it is a oertain deep silenoe, a silenoe together, whioh may be wanted instead in order to maintain the intensity. The possibility of silenoe defines the quality of oonversation with whioh either of these experiences can be acoompanied, sinoe the standard topios of oonversation--politios, the neighbors, the ohildren, sporta, eoonomios--do not have silenoe as an alternative. Arthur C Danto 'He oaught all of it, you know? But all it oould do was cripple him, disfigure him on the outside. Inside •••• 'Inside he limps.' 'You bastard, Rioh. You poor bastard.' 'Inside we all limp, Mo.' 'Not Alex.' Bone shrugged. 'Okay ••• ' E· .] 'You know how I always see myself?' she said. 'How I always pioture myself? And I oan't stop. I mean,I try. I really do. But I even dream it. It's like a kind of precognition. I'm, oh I don't know, forty or fifty, and even skinnier than now and pale as death and my faoe is just a kind of blank, you know? ••• ' Newton Thornburg, Cutter and Bone No sooner has a word been said, somewhere, about the pleasure of the terl, than two policemen are ready to jump on you: the political policeman and the ps,ychoanalytioal polioeman: futility and/or guilt, pleasure is either idle or vain, a olass notion or an illusion. Roland Barthes Think of a field with a fence around it in which there are horses with adjustable blinkers: the adjustment of their blinkers is the 'coefficient of transversality' •••• My hypothesis is this: it is possible to ohange the various coeffioients of unconsoious transversali ty at the various levels of an institution. Felix Guattari I found it highly diverting, it consisted mainly of oomic~l polioemen pursuing even more comical villains through the streets. Not muoh of a plot, but the people aotually do IIlOve in a very convinoing and lifelike way. Freud, I think, ;a;-not greatly impressedZ D 111 Thomas, The White Hotel vii Contents to Volume I Preface •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••......•.....••••• % Part One 1 Theme of the Enigma~ Locus, Genre and Symbolio Landsoape ••• 1 Part Two 2 Dialogue ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••