A few people have already brought up my critique of counter-cinema, which is, what is the point? By deliberately setting out to break the rules of cinema, counter-cinema is just as bound by these rules as Hollywood. And since counter-cinema isn't aiming to please an audience, and actually often tries to be the opposite of entertaining, it isn't even valuable as a form of entertainment.
Peter Wollen, in his article "Godard and Counter-Cinema," compares Godard to Brecht, saying that both are "suspicious of the power of the arts-- and the cinema, above all-- to 'capture' it's audience without apparently making it think, or changing it." I do think this is a valid suspicion. Films have the power to capture our attention, so it seems somehow wrong that they should spend two hours in charge of our brain without inspiring us to think about something.
But I'm not sure I believe that counter-cinema films do a better job of this. For example, the first difference Wollen lists between Hollywood and counter-cinema is narrative transitivity vs. narrative intransitivity. The article suggests that narrative intransitivity somehow forces the audience to pay more attention. But I found the opposite to be true-- while I can easily follow a consistent narrative in a film, breaking the film up into little pieces serves only to distance me from the film and make me less interested in what is going on on the screen, so that I actually pay much less attention.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Purpose of Foregrounding
Agh. I just managed to delete my blog post.... time to start from scratch!
What I found most striking about Godard's counter-cinema was the way in which the hierarchy of the three looks was destroyed. In Weekend, the audience is made fully aware that they are watching a film, because of internal references to the film itself, writing on the screen, and the camera movement and angles. This idea of foregrounding leads the audience to be more critical of the content in the movie, but it does not provide the audience with much empathy or involvement with the characters or the
In traditional, first cinema & Hollywood movies, the audience is fully immersed in the film. The audience is not aware of the presence of the camera. The camera serves as a "technological means toward achieving a perfect perspective construction" (Wollen). This coincides with the idea of cinema as providing a window into a different world. Godard chooses to expose the camera. He uncovers the means through which the audience is able to see through this window.
Godard does so to transform film into a "process of writing in images, rather than a representation of the world" (Wollen). It is necessary for the audience to become aware of the camera, aware of the separate worlds, and critical of the differences between reality and film/language that is being presented to him or her.
I wonder, though... does this foregrounding work to further engage the audience by forcing them to think critically about the film? Or does it simply detach the audience, thus negating its very purpose?
What I found most striking about Godard's counter-cinema was the way in which the hierarchy of the three looks was destroyed. In Weekend, the audience is made fully aware that they are watching a film, because of internal references to the film itself, writing on the screen, and the camera movement and angles. This idea of foregrounding leads the audience to be more critical of the content in the movie, but it does not provide the audience with much empathy or involvement with the characters or the
In traditional, first cinema & Hollywood movies, the audience is fully immersed in the film. The audience is not aware of the presence of the camera. The camera serves as a "technological means toward achieving a perfect perspective construction" (Wollen). This coincides with the idea of cinema as providing a window into a different world. Godard chooses to expose the camera. He uncovers the means through which the audience is able to see through this window.
Godard does so to transform film into a "process of writing in images, rather than a representation of the world" (Wollen). It is necessary for the audience to become aware of the camera, aware of the separate worlds, and critical of the differences between reality and film/language that is being presented to him or her.
I wonder, though... does this foregrounding work to further engage the audience by forcing them to think critically about the film? Or does it simply detach the audience, thus negating its very purpose?
Counter Cinema
I was also confused about the ultimate goal of counter-cinema. It seems that the only motivation for counter-filmmakers is just to go against the mainstream. In this way they are bound by the conventions of Hollywood cinema just as everyone else is, because they deliberately do the opposite of mainstream filmmakers. They basically take all the conventions of Hollywood cinema, including narrative transitivity and identification and does the opposite of them. However, there is no indication that the conventions of mainstream cinema are inherently bad while the opposite are inherently good. Furthermore, while mainstream cinema at least has the goal of entertainment, counter-cinema does not attempt to be entertaining, and in some cases deliberately tries to deny the audience pleasure. Under these circumstances, who are counter-filmmakers making their films for. Are they for other counter-filmmakers? Are they for the mainstream audience in an attempt to disillusion them from mainstream cinema? Is there no audience in mind, and the only point of making it is to be revolutionary and against the mainstream? If the goal is to ultimately destroy mainstream cinema, then counter cinema would just become the mainstream, but with the opposite conventions? Would this be any better than the current mainstream? Would conventions that were once mainstream become the conventions of the new counter-cinema?
Counter Cinema, I mean what's the point?
As a wannabe film maker with the desire to genuinely entertain people I find Counter-Cinema to be fairly annoying. Under pleasure vs unpleasure in his establishment of counter-cinematic values Wollen describes the attack on entertainment cinema:
"Cinema is concieved of as a drug that lulls and mollifies the militancy of the masses, by bribing them with pleasurable dreams, thus distracting them from the stern tasks which are their true destiny"(79)
And of course this attack is valid but I don't really see the point of the attack because this to me is the point of cinema. Mankind has been dependent on different art forms to do achieve this for him, culminating with the film. Wollen goes on to write about Brecht and Horace " in favoring pleasure as the purpose of the arts combined with instruction," and this is what I absolutely agree with. But then Wollen goes on to explain that cinema can't show truth but can show meaning and that Godard is creating important meanings because they exist in relation to other meaning. What I fail to see is this meaning exactly...
If I had paid money to see "Weekend" I honestly might have cried. It was nuts. I don't know when I would ever watch a film like that unless I was in a class(such as this). When I go to the movies I, like most people, want to be entertained and I want to be in a state of suspended belief due to my cultural and societal definitions, etceteras. So as a film maker I dislike counter-cinema, but I guess that's the point of it, but I still fail to see this deep meaning.
Now as an artist I do appreciate counter-cinema in the way I can appreciate a Pollack painting. I would prefer to look at a Rembrandt, but Pollack is different and presents me with alternative and choice, which I assume is comparable with counter-cinema, but see counter-cinema isn't even original in that it is mutilated cinema....that annoys me as well
But despite how annoying Weekend was to me, I still was able to derive some pleasure, some Identification, and some suspended belief. In this sense is Weekend an incomplete counter-cinema? Would a successful counter-cinema drive me to walk out of the theatre? Is there a definition for counter-cinema or is its purpose to be undefined? I'll stop there...
Film as a Process of 'Image- building': Actors as a Signifier/ Agent
I find this quality of film as a process of 'image - building' very intriguing. In order to read the film as a constructed image than a set of representational moments, I viewed the scenes not as object- oriented/ figurative but rather as purely passing imageries; I considered certain principles that fulfill the quality of an image such as colors, composition, positive/ negative space. Through this way of viewing, I noticed a number of examples of such throughout the film, most notably the constantly changing appearance of the actors. Actors being considered as a main agent that carries along the scenes (regardless of the non-narrative, destructive nature of the Counter- Cinema), the changes of their presentations are very curious.
Imagine a scene from the film in your mind (such as the one above), and reduce the complexity and details of the image to an amalgam of colors. The two protagonists (Corrine and her husband Roland), in their various journeys different moments within each event, constantly change from one outfit to another, one color to another. Consider the following: Corrine's discovery of "trousers," the couple's savage- like hunt and search for clothes from the dead in the accident and their non - hesitant change into these new presentations. We see these protagonists, who are main carriers of the film, as constantly changing in their form, their frame. (For example, remember the yellow scarf: Corrine holds on to it at all time - whether wearing around her neck while seated in the car, carrying it around the field, the fire, damage, in the midst of chaos, and later on it is spotted on Roland as wearing it at the parents' house.)
Relate this idea to that of Saussure in regarding the signification as the union of the signifier and the signified... The actors, the main agents, are signifiers within the image, a color x within the coded set of colors. Then how do we as audience understand the constant change in a signifier, constant change of colors within a certain system of codes? Where is the signified, where is the essence? What does Godard intend to say? The signifiers that do not hesitate a moment to change, thus affecting the signified/ signification... or is there any? The abundant, dominant use of primary colors in the actors - and the changes within this pool of colors of the scenes...
Furthermore, how do we understand the image of Corrine in bath against the background of a painting? The film is heavily inundated with sexual references and yet in fact there is not much of the actual presentation (in fact the actors are always so exhaustingly, heavily dressed), except for this particular scene where Corrine reveals a relatively considerable amount of her body. Besides the idea of "high art - low art," "object/ subject of desire," how do we view this scene in terms of an image, a set of iconic codes that are colors?
There are a lot of other facets of the film that evokes much curiosity and that I would like to touch upon... The scene with a flock of sheeps, role reversals between actors, the role of gaze, the notion of "collectivity," ... so much to discover and see - dans ce film!
The Hollywood-Indie Hybrid
So I almost prefer IMDB as a method of procrastination to facebook. Almost. That said, yesterday I noticed an article on IMDB's independent film page called "What's So Independent About American Independent Films?"
It was very interesting. The subheading read: "The current crop of American independent films have indie style but a Hollywood soul. Where's the integrity?" It listed films like Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Sideways, and Me and You and Everyone We Know as "dark comedies done in a light comedy way which have intelligence to spare but nary a bollock between them." It then went on to identify such films as out-of-place Oscar nods that "are all basically Hollywood films in terms of both funding and ethos."
The article then gave the genealogy of the indie film, starting with the low-budget 1950s film, Marty. It discussed the work of John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, and Richard Linklater, which can be "loosely defined" as "featuring everyday or highly plausible situations, naturalistic dialogue and character driven plots," rich with "social, political or philosophical implications." It equated realism with the audience's "voyeuristic discomfort."
A recent trend in indie films, according to the article, is to "flaunt 'authenticity,'" to use "troubled characters, inner city settings, post-rock soundtracks and conversation heavy plots."
The main problem with independent film today is that "indie has been swallowed up by Hollywood and with it so has its identity...the line between indie and Hollywood has bee erased along with the significance once attached to it."
A lot of this sounded familiar after reading Corrigan's "Glancing at the Past." As Corrigan notes, "The movement from a modernist to a postmodernist film industry remains, of course, part of a historical logic: the relative failure of an art cinema and avant-garde in the United States and to a lesser extent in Europe to create new institutions and audiences encourages the dispersal of that counterculture into the mainstream." According to Corrigan, mainstream Hollywood cinema absorbed counter cinema. I couldn't help but wonder if this absorption is what caused the undeniable present Hollywood absorption of independent cinema OR if what we are currently seeing is a separate but parallel occurrence of contemporary Hollywood absorbing what is essentially the 21st century manifestation of counter cinema in the independent film.
Another connection this article had to "Glancing at the Past" is independent film's attempt at mass appeal. Corrigan writes that with the onset of multi and megaplexes, studios were attempting to appeal to virtually everyone. Is current independent film trying too hard to satiate the cravings of both counter cultural 'youngins with trendily obscure soundtracks (à la Garden State and Juno) and more mainstream spectators with a happy ending (à la Garden State and Juno)? It seems to me that are definitely parallels.
Lastly, I couldn't help but wonder if postmodernism in its entirety hasn't set the stage for this current Indie-Hollywood phenomenon. Is it possible that during the 60s our culture incorporated counter cultural values into our collective mentality? Is it possible that we now inherently crave to "go against the grain" even when this desire is one of the masses?
On a different note, in the Godard screening and article, I was interested in the parallels between second and third cinema. The article used the word "revolutionary" several times to describe Godard's work. Godard himself even had a period - during the 70s, I think - where he didn't release any films commercially. His work resembled that of Third Cinema. I was wondering what Godard tells us about the mutual exclusivity, or lack thereof, of second and third cinema.
It was very interesting. The subheading read: "The current crop of American independent films have indie style but a Hollywood soul. Where's the integrity?" It listed films like Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Sideways, and Me and You and Everyone We Know as "dark comedies done in a light comedy way which have intelligence to spare but nary a bollock between them." It then went on to identify such films as out-of-place Oscar nods that "are all basically Hollywood films in terms of both funding and ethos."
The article then gave the genealogy of the indie film, starting with the low-budget 1950s film, Marty. It discussed the work of John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, and Richard Linklater, which can be "loosely defined" as "featuring everyday or highly plausible situations, naturalistic dialogue and character driven plots," rich with "social, political or philosophical implications." It equated realism with the audience's "voyeuristic discomfort."
A recent trend in indie films, according to the article, is to "flaunt 'authenticity,'" to use "troubled characters, inner city settings, post-rock soundtracks and conversation heavy plots."
The main problem with independent film today is that "indie has been swallowed up by Hollywood and with it so has its identity...the line between indie and Hollywood has bee erased along with the significance once attached to it."
A lot of this sounded familiar after reading Corrigan's "Glancing at the Past." As Corrigan notes, "The movement from a modernist to a postmodernist film industry remains, of course, part of a historical logic: the relative failure of an art cinema and avant-garde in the United States and to a lesser extent in Europe to create new institutions and audiences encourages the dispersal of that counterculture into the mainstream." According to Corrigan, mainstream Hollywood cinema absorbed counter cinema. I couldn't help but wonder if this absorption is what caused the undeniable present Hollywood absorption of independent cinema OR if what we are currently seeing is a separate but parallel occurrence of contemporary Hollywood absorbing what is essentially the 21st century manifestation of counter cinema in the independent film.
Another connection this article had to "Glancing at the Past" is independent film's attempt at mass appeal. Corrigan writes that with the onset of multi and megaplexes, studios were attempting to appeal to virtually everyone. Is current independent film trying too hard to satiate the cravings of both counter cultural 'youngins with trendily obscure soundtracks (à la Garden State and Juno) and more mainstream spectators with a happy ending (à la Garden State and Juno)? It seems to me that are definitely parallels.
Lastly, I couldn't help but wonder if postmodernism in its entirety hasn't set the stage for this current Indie-Hollywood phenomenon. Is it possible that during the 60s our culture incorporated counter cultural values into our collective mentality? Is it possible that we now inherently crave to "go against the grain" even when this desire is one of the masses?
On a different note, in the Godard screening and article, I was interested in the parallels between second and third cinema. The article used the word "revolutionary" several times to describe Godard's work. Godard himself even had a period - during the 70s, I think - where he didn't release any films commercially. His work resembled that of Third Cinema. I was wondering what Godard tells us about the mutual exclusivity, or lack thereof, of second and third cinema.
Single Digests v. Multiple Digests
"In Hollywood films, everything shown belongs to the same world, and complex articulations within that world-such as flashbacks--are carefully signalled and located."(77)
Time and space in cinema must follow a consistent order. It must be coherent and integrated, yet it does not need to observe compulsory, statutory constraints. (77) It's very interesting the only multiple digesis that is allowed is a "play within a play."
Take Week End for example, although you are wondering why there are so many crushed cars and dead people in the roads, you can still understand the story because of the timeline it follows. You can still understand that the couple is going on a trip to her mother's house to secure an inheritance, and that that does not end too well. You may not understand why certain things are happening because you are not informed of the political aspects, but even the times when the fictional bizzare characters appear, their stories are interlocked with the main story.
Thanks to this instead of saying "WTF?", you simply end up saying "No idea what that was for".
Time and space in cinema must follow a consistent order. It must be coherent and integrated, yet it does not need to observe compulsory, statutory constraints. (77) It's very interesting the only multiple digesis that is allowed is a "play within a play."
Take Week End for example, although you are wondering why there are so many crushed cars and dead people in the roads, you can still understand the story because of the timeline it follows. You can still understand that the couple is going on a trip to her mother's house to secure an inheritance, and that that does not end too well. You may not understand why certain things are happening because you are not informed of the political aspects, but even the times when the fictional bizzare characters appear, their stories are interlocked with the main story.
Thanks to this instead of saying "WTF?", you simply end up saying "No idea what that was for".
Film as Language
“Godard [. . .] is more concerned with ‘image –building’ as a kind of pictography, in which images are liberated from their role as elements of representation and given a semantic function within a genuine iconic code.”
While constructing films as something that can be read as a language, is an interesting idea, it is thoroughly problematic. Due to the innately subjective nature of vision, and processing images, it is highly difficult to create images that express the same thoughts to different people.
Wollen suggests that by “foregrounding” the equipment, the machination behind the film, one can create such a language. However, this does not remove the subjectivity in an images meaning. It acknowledges the image as an image, and something to be commented upon directly, more directly opening up the discussion of meaning, but does not provide a solid definition. More realistic, it seems to me, would be the construction of filmic language within individual films. Within a film, and image can grow to represent something through repetition. This, however, does not remove it from the construct of the film, and does not help with the construction of a language at larger, transferable to the readings of other films.
While constructing films as something that can be read as a language, is an interesting idea, it is thoroughly problematic. Due to the innately subjective nature of vision, and processing images, it is highly difficult to create images that express the same thoughts to different people.
Wollen suggests that by “foregrounding” the equipment, the machination behind the film, one can create such a language. However, this does not remove the subjectivity in an images meaning. It acknowledges the image as an image, and something to be commented upon directly, more directly opening up the discussion of meaning, but does not provide a solid definition. More realistic, it seems to me, would be the construction of filmic language within individual films. Within a film, and image can grow to represent something through repetition. This, however, does not remove it from the construct of the film, and does not help with the construction of a language at larger, transferable to the readings of other films.
Hollywood vs. Counter Cinema
After reading Wollen's article, it is obvious that counter cinema is vastly different from Hollywood cinema. Narrative intransitivity, estrangement, foregrounding, multiple diegesis, aperture, unpleasure, and reality are the seven distinguishing techniques used in counter cinema... but I'm not sure how it is that these combine to make a "good" movie. While it is an accomplishment to break from the traditional language of cinema, is it true that counter cinema devolves into "audio and visual sentamentalism"?
Are the filmmakers of counter cinema attempting to redefine the purpose of movies? If Hollywood movies are entertainment, meant to be absorbed by the masses and sold as commodities, what are counter cinema films striving for? If they are looking to produce art uncorrupted by the Hollywood system, why does narrative intransitivity, estrangement, etc. lead to good art? If you do not evaluate the films according to pleasure or popularity, by what standards should they be judged?
I dunno. Food for thought.
Corrigan, blockbusters, etc.
One thing I found interesting about Corrigan's discussion of the major studios producing movies that appeal to the lowest common denominator, and are more about marketing than substance (case in point: high-concept films), is how incredibly applicable it is to other art forms, even though Corrigan discusses it as a uniquely cinematic phenomenon. A particularly good example of this is novels. Much as how Corrigan explained, the mainstream blockbusters that attract the highest amount of viewers are most frequently movies that are dumbed down and try to appeal to everyone (thus, appealing to no one really), while the movies that are generally considered to be better crafted, deeper, and more artfully done, while often critically acclaimed, do not receive anywhere near the same level of viewership and often aren't even shown in many theaters--and it's largely the same way with books too. The writers that are most popular in any given time often are completely forgotten to history, while more obscure ones that did not attract much readership in their lifetime often become the geniuses of the generations succeeding them. An interesting illustration of this is Herman Melville's works: his earlier works were rather typical adventure novels, and did very well commercially. However, Moby Dick, which both he and the literary scholars who rediscovered him in the mid 20th century (and most people now) consider to be both by far his finest work, and a work of genius in general, was received with extremely little enthusiasm at the time of it's release, and did far worse than his earlier work.
Another good example is someone like Stephen King: he is enormously popular, churning out bestseller after bestseller and has had dozens of movies made from his work, but does anyone really think that someone like him will be considered the greatest writer of our generation? Does anyone even think that he will be considered as even an important author of his generation? Another interesting point that his example brings up is the connection between blockbusters and the modern popular novel. The focus of these books is all on story, and on keeping up a fast pace, with very little attention paid to language. In a similar way as the blockbuster movie, these mainstream novels also appeal to the lowest common denominator and do not have anywhere near the same level of artistic precision (as ultimately, profit and marketing, not art, is the aim of such movies and books).
Now, I only used the example of books, but I feel like the same logic (i.e., that the mainstream version of a medium is profit driven, and therefore appeals to the lowers common denominator, etc.) applies rather easily to most other art forms.
On a separate note, this article reminded me of one I had read recently about the recent trend of American networks taking already popular foreign shows and making remakes of them (e.g., The Office, ABC's new remake of Life on Mars--the first episode of which looks almost EXACTLY the same as the original series--many reality tv shows, and countless other examples). While I know that's TV and not movies, it shows the same motivation on the part of the studios: since they are mostly focusing on receiving reparations or the cost (and also profit obviously), they like an already neatly packaged product that is sure to sell. And what easier way to do that than to take a show that has already had commercial success and simply tweak it a little?
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