What we talk about when we talk about movies (Part 2)

Jim--

Your "The unexamined film is not worth watching" argument echoes what I consider the key sentence of my latest 24Lies essay, namely: Cinema only exists when it is seen.

For me, this sentence - coupled with the notion that too many people watch but don't actually see - bridges the gap between formalist criticism, which focuses on a more or less "pure" interpretation of the text, and reader-response criticism, which is less interested in the film's intended meaning and values the viewer's interpretation above anything else.

I'm always caught there in the middle. I definitely agree with you that films and film criticism are two parts of the same coin, and that there is no such thing as objective criticism. And yet, I wouldn't go as far as David Lynch, who recently stated: "Any interpretation of my films is the right interpretation. What I mean is irrelevant."

I've always been a firm believer in the concept that the individual is fundamentally a culmination of their own personal experience. Basically, we are who we are because of what we've experienced. The thing thats so attractive to me about film criticism is that every person gets something different from a film. You, Me, Girish, Roger Ebert and everyone else will all see the movie through different eyes (both literally and figuratively.) What you thought might not be anywhere near what I thought. It only makes me appreciate a film even more when you can sit around with 5 friends and hear 5 different opinions about a film.

Lord, you guys are too good. Almost makes a newbie want to quit before he gets started, know what I'm saying?

That's just the trick isn't it - seperating the self-avowed from the critical. Many times conversations with some can lead down the path of "everything this person touches is perfection". Then such conversations can become infuriating - then analysis doesn't exist - then I stop caring what the other person thinks which hurts for later conversations. A terrible, terrible cycle to enter.

Peet:

I can see how somebody like Lynch, whose work is so deeply rooted in his own subconscious, would adopt that attitude. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm all for the pre-post-modern "close reading" of the "text." In order to make any claims to validity, interpretations of film (or art in general) have to be based on specific observations of the work itself. (Another of my favorite sayings: "If it's on the screen [or the soundtrack], it's fair game.") Yes, I think everything -- including criticism of the arts -- is validated by empirical evidence and the scientific method! In my youth (my 20s and 30s), I sometimes had to be physically restrained to keep from confronting strangers I overheard (usually in bars or restaurants or theaters) making idiotic statements about movies that not only completely misrepresented what was actually IN those movies, but which were based on nothing but the pontificator's own baseless "opinions." I feel better now.

So, I'd better go read your essay!

Be my guest, Jim! It's the one that starts off with Mickey Mouse meeting Travis Bickle.

Thanks for your thoughts, by the way.

I've always felt a good critic's verdict is the least interesting thing he/she has to say about a particular movie

I completely agree, Jim. It's always such a shame to see a critic's review summarized so neatly that you can at a glance see how "good" the film is. Yet, so often that's the first thing I look for (and why I always check places like metacritic), so it's refreshing when someone like Dennis writes something that can't be easily summarized. It forces me to actually read what he has to say, which, as you point out, is the most interesting part anyway.

I like your dichotomy Peet, the film-centered criticism and the viewer-centered reviewing, looking in opposite directions, one looks at the screen the other looks at her/himself.

This Lynch quote doesn't apply to anybody else though... His films, in a pure surrealist tradition, are vessels assembled to cause free mental association in the viewer's mind.
But meaning in a narrative sense isn't always the goal. Sometimes the interpretation isn't in uncovering the story but in understanding the creative process itself or the atmospherical experience.

JE: Well put, Harry! The experience of watching a Lynch movie is, in the Surrealist sense, meant to be unmediated -- a direct connection to the subconscious, an attempt to bypass or overthrow what Breton called the "reign of logic." But, of course, once those images are at loose in the world, we can't help but interpret them. As pattern-seeking animals, that is what we do. And if our brains weren't built that way, we wouldn't feel the need (or have the ability) to create art in the first place. (BTW, I think Lynch falls short of surreal daring in "Blue Velvet," which has too many self-aware, cutesy, nudge-nudge wink-wink, it's OK passages for me -- but he's really getting close to something powerfully and terrifyingly out-of-control in "Eraserhead," "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Dr.")

http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/F98/SurrealistManifesto.htm

SURREALISM, noun, masc., Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.

ENCYCL. Philos. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought. It leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to its substitution for them in the solution of the principal problems of life.

Deep down, a subconscious (ha ha) part of me knew that I chose the wrong quote to illustrate my case! You guys are so right about Lynch and surrealism being the exception to the rule. Thanks for clarifying that. (Can't help noticing that you put reader-response criticism in the "reviewer" camp, though, Harry. Might be a little unfair ;-)

And just in case, I'd hate to leave the wrong impression: I loooove Lynch.

Lynch wouldn't want his own interpretation (if he has one definite one at all) to circulate as THE "official interpretation", which would properly "spoil" the virgin imagination of his audience. That's why he's being so shy about discussing his films.

I know I slightly deformed your idea Peet... ;) Although these archetypes are extreme poles... and there is still room for a grey area in between. One could be both, alternatively or simultaneously in the same review.
But aren't reviewers the ones who practice the reader-response? They interpretate, they value viewability, they analyze their personal experience in the theatre. This isn't a critical judgement of the medium, but an observation of its consequences on one (of many) viewer. Well that's my point of view anyway ;)

Harry:

Reader-response criticism comes from the literary world and opposes the New Critical concept of the "affective fallacy" (Stanley Fish came up with the counter-term "affective stylistics")--which was a VERY touchy issue in the comment section of Dave Kehr's blog about half a year ago. Put in a fancy way, it views literature (film) as a performing art where each reader (viewer) creates their own, possibly unique, performance.

To quote the Wikipedia entry on Reader-Response criticism:

Because it rests on psychological principles, a reader-response approach readily generalizes to other arts: cinema (David Bordwell) or visual art (E. H. Gombrich) and even to history (Hayden White). In stressing the activity of the scholar, reader-response theory justifies such upsettings of traditional interpretations as, for example, deconstruction or cultural criticism.

Thanks Peet, I didn't know about this theory actually. I was under the impression Bordwell was a formalist... I guess I was wrong all along.
I don't see as clear now the distinction between your two propositions... How do you reconcile the "scholar" approach (general models of responses for everyone) with the "individualistic" interpretation (one response for yourself)? They sound quite antithetical to me. (I guess that's where they make distinction between types of reader-response theorists on the wikipedia page)
I think I get the wrong idea of the "reader-response" position. Could you give me exemples of phrases in film criticism typical of each theory to show their opposition?

For instance I tend to follow formalist ideas, but I'm very much interested as well in the author's intentions, and I don't find it contradictory.
If the screen is the frontier, with film, filmcraft, auteur on one side and emotional response, audience on the other side, I would always look "behind" (or beyond) the screen, not into myself, to understand the film. The "effects on the audience" is usually integrated by the auteur during creation to control and provoke them purposely.

Lynch's films resist definite interpretation, but the study of the form is more meaningful than the random free-associative fantasy an individual viewer will project on the incomplete story, because it will reveal more about the viewer's personal psychological conflicts (that were there before the film) than about film art itself. That's why I see this approach more of a study of people (sociology/psychology) rather than cinema (film criticism). Anyway it departs from the theory of auteurism which is central to me.

What disturbs me is that this reader-response theory seems to be indifferent to which film is the stimulus, like if every films were interchangeable catalyst to cause emotional responses in the viewer.

In the end, I'm not the ideal person to ask, Harry. I'm a filmmaker who likes to write and think about the medium--not an academic. Theory fascinates me, but I'm still learning to swim. Or, to put it differently: I swim without realizing exactly how.

My interest in the affective fallacy and the New Critics put me on the track of reader-response criticism. Like I said, it comes from the literary world and even there it isn't seen as a full-blooded movement. Possibly because, as you observed, the gaps between the different types of reader-response are pretty wide.

Besides being associated with neoformalism (whatever that is), Bordwel founded cognitive film theory, which may or may not have clear parallels with reader-response.

Bottom line: Reader-response criticism is the most elaborate counter-argument to the "affective fallacy" concept that I could find. Since my essay questions the modern spectator's willingness to surrender to the screen, I play around with some of its philosophies in my essay.

I didn't know about Bordwell's cognitive film theory side, that's why i'm lost, and like you say the relation to reader-response isn't obvious.
The reader-response individualists and experimenters sound like scientific lab surveys on panel samples. I don't know what statistics have to tell us about literature or cinema...
I'll have to look deeper into it.

thanks for the discussion.

Lynch was quoted as saying once (I think it was in an interview with Ebert), and I think some of the best films fall under this definition, "My films are like music." You feel it. It may not make logistical sense, but you're taken away by it. From the very first frame of "Mulholland Drive" it is a purely visceral experience, completely seperate from a visual motif or story that is completely understandable - it's all very primal in a sense - very much like "Lost Highway". How else to talk about "Lost Highway" other than how it felt, or made you feel.

I remember seeing "Cache" last year with a smaller sized crowd here in LA - very intimate feeling. You could hear everyone's reactions as certain things happened - the gasps, the chuckles, the uneasy silence. The film had us in the palm of it's hands. Then the final moments played out, the lights came up, and you could feel the frustration build. One gentleman (whom I admittedly wanted to punch) stood up, turned to everyone, and asked if anyone else understood (using some choice explitives). I could have strangled the man. He had just experienced something incredible, and instead of trying to understand it on a level other than a hit you over the head until you get the point form of storytelling, he rejected it, as did many of the audience members. They all somehow forgot the experience of what they were watching, they stopped feeling it, and started trying to logically put the pieces together. Some movies aren't meant for that.

You wrote:

"(I might question whether this applies to certain applications of "film theory," however -- stuff that's not really intended to convey ideas, or be read or understood even by other academics; it's just meant to be published. Job security, you know.)"

This is uncharacteristically anti-intellectual of you, Jim. Shame on you.