View image Superbad-position: I don't know what this photo has to do with this post. I just think Michael Cera is a genius and his face is hilarious.
Excerpts from two pieces I've read recently that to me (of course) get at the essence of movies, and how we perceive them: First, a paragraph from Jonah Lehrer's introduction to his book "Proust Was a Neuroscientist" (look for the madeleine on the cover!), a most enjoyable volume dedicated to the proposition that the arts understood science long before science did. (Lehrer, the 26-year-old author, is described in the jacket blurb as a Columbia grad and Rhodes Scholar who "has worked in the lab of Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Erik Kandel and in the kitchens of Le Cirque 2000 and Le Bernardin." His book includes chapters on Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cezanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf.)
Unfortunately, our current culture subscribes to a very narrow definition of truth. If something can't be quantified or calculated, then it can't be true. Because this strict scientific approach has explained so much, we assume that it can explain everything. But every method, even the experimental method, has limits. Take the human mind. Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces. What science forgets is that this isn't how we experience the world. (We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of the matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.On the other hand, the mind is what the brain does. We just have no way of knowing how or why. But this paragraph speaks directly to experience of all kinds, including vicarious or representational ones -- and to my conviction that valid criticism of any kind needs to be both empirical (drawing on specific examples) and aesthetic (a subjective attempt to explain how something feels). Blanket terms like "beautiful" or "ugly" can only be defined/refined in this context. I think of it this way: A dog's butt doesn't smell "bad" to a dog. And poop doesn't offend a dog's sensibilities. Canine responsiveness to scent is roughly 40 times greater than ours, so perhaps you could say that dogs can smell "past" the limitations of our olfactory abilities to detect something more fully dimensional (the way some people savor the flavor of stinky cheese, perhaps). Or, they just like stink, in which case we may consider them to have bad taste. Or, maybe, admire them as perverse primitivist punk rebels who enjoy wallowing in filth for the sheer animalistic pleasure of it. Or would that be anthropomorphizing them? If only dogs could explain what and how they see and smell and hear and feel...
OK, moving on to number two....
From a recent Scientific American article about physicist Hugh Everett, who introduced the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, which posits the existence of countless alternative universes:
In the quantum world, an elementary particle, or a collection of such particles, can exist in a superposition of two or more possible states of being. An electron, for example, can be in a superposition of different locations, velocities and orientations of its spin. Yet anytime scientists measure one of these properties with precision, they see a definite result -- just one of the elements of the superposition, not a combination of them. Nor do we ever see macroscopic objects in superpositions. The measurement problem boils down to this question: How and why does the unique world of our experience emerge from the multiplicities of alternatives available in the superposed quantum world?No, I don't pretend to understand the first thing about quantum physics. I just like metaphors (see above). And what is a metaphor but something that is one thing and another at the same time? I think this is the most compelling argument for "dancing about architecture" that I've ever seen. Substitute "movie" for "superposed quantum world" in that last sentence, and that's the kind of question movie critics should be asking every time they (we) set out to write something. A movie can never be definitively measured. It exists in space and time and other sensory dimensions that are irreducible and inaccessible to language. So, how does our own experience of a particular film emerge from the possible alternatives? Or, returning to the Lehrer quote, how do you convey what happens in the gap between the synapses? I hope that's what the best of us are asking.
[Side note to Lehrer's paragraph: "Our culture" (by which I believe he means Western culture, specifically American culture) is also permeated by strong beliefs in the non-empirical and unscientific -- pervasive feelings that the world can be explained by supernatural or mystical forces. That's the impulse behind the unique 20th century (worldwide) rise of the phenomenon known as fundamentalism, a reaction against the rational and materialistic aspects of modernity. Polls show that more Americans believe in the devil than in the validity of evolution, a finding that Reuters says reflects "America's deep level of religiosity, a cultural trait that sets it apart from much of the developed world." The same 2007 Harris Poll estimates that 31 percent of Americans believe in astrology, 68 percent in the devil, 27 percent in reincarnation, and 69 percent in a literal afterlife that includes hell. My favorite stat from the (unscientific, I'll bet) 2003 Harris Poll: "... some people who say they are not Christian believe in the resurrection of Christ (26%) and the Virgin birth, Jesus born of Mary (27%)." Talk about your superpositions: If self-defined non-Christians hold core Christian beliefs, then what makes a Christian a Christian? Or not?]
a note on the parenthesis and what makes a christian a christian. i don't think that the bible supposes at any point that belief of existence or reality is the same as faith in that reality. i think there's a chance you could believe in the resurrection of christ, but also contest that his resurrection means nothing for you. the other option here is that some christians are getting nervous about the very term "christian". they understand that it carries loads of baggage with it, and they want to disassociate themselves with the culture (fundamentalism in particular) that has surrounded christianity both present and past. as a christian i'm not sure how much is accomplished by this disassociation other than confusion. however, i can understand the sentiment. there have been plenty of things said and done in the history of christianity that i wouldn't want to be associated with. anyway, those are the options that i'd guess.
sorry this isn't more directly relevant to the post
**how do you convey what happens in the gap between the synapses?**
Neurotransmitters are released which bridge the synaptic cleft and carry the electrical pulse to the next neuron.
Signed,
Your friendly neighborhood reductivist. :)
JE: Holy dendrite!
Lehrer's article reminds of how I felt about the end of Every Man For Himself And God Against All. The enigmatic Kaspar Hauser leaves the world as mysteriously as he entered it when he is murdered apparently without motive or clues. During his autopsy, his brain is removed and his lobes measured, and one of the onlookers reflects what a fine report it will make.
This analysis seems so petty after the rest of the film. For all the empirical data it provides, it doesn't bring us any closer to understanding the reality of who Kaspar was and what his presence meant to those around him. It's what Herzog often refers to as "accountant's truth."
I don't doubt that it will be possible, one day, to precisely control the state of the brain, and thus induce specific experiences. I don't know if I'd want to, though. Would you rather go out for a drink with friends, or stay at home and inject yourself with the precise quantity of alcohol to produce the desired state of inebriation?
I don't really know what you're trying to get at with those religious stats, but I do know it would be a very poor atheist who dropped one set of irrational beliefs, just to take up a different set of irrational beliefs. The American public's dim view of Evolution is not shared by any other Western country, not even historically religious countries like Spain or Italy.
***Yet anytime scientists measure one of these properties with precision, they see a definite result -- just one of the elements of the superposition, not a combination of them.***
Ahh, Heisenberg's Principle of Indeterminacy... Hello, old friend. We meet again.
It seems to me it all comes down to the difference between fact and truth. The difference of which I have to remind myself every time I watch a Michael Moore film.
I saw "Atonement" last night, and I'll be exploring this a little more on my own blog, but a moment came to pass (how biblical is that?) that I still can't quite fully comprehend; like a word that I know but have forgotten. A moment it seemed that the film and my own personal history or understanding meshed unexpectedly. It wasn't even one of those moments in which the movie with strings and such wanted me to, but I leaned over, placed my brow in my hand and started crying. I think if I had been alone I would have been weeping. And I'm not exactly sure what place between synapses this moment in the film landed in. That's the thing I wait for in movies, the unexpected, and it rarely comes anymore, but usually I understand even the unexpected. It's difficult for reviewers to write about such things, because most movies don't draw upon these instinctive feelings, they don't cause us to fire our synapses. It's pure delight when they do though - look at all the writing "NCFOM" has provoked, or last year's "The Departed". Reviewers have it in them, but like any film maker, most of them anyway, they are waiting to be inspired.
Nathan, I think as in all things, people are not as bright as we'd like them to be. There's a gaggle of people out there who confuse being Christian with being religious. Many people carry Christian points of views but are not religious and disassociate themselves from the Church and not from Christianity. After having spent my youth in the Church (my Father being a Pastor) I can tell you that when people come down to it, they act like...people. And sometimes, depending on what kind of people they act like, that's a horrible way to run a Church and can be very off putting. Especially when non Christian people or non-Church people need something bigger than the squabbling, backstabbing, gossip mongering hatefulness that you'd expect to find in politics. It's like caring about the state of our political world without being political.
As far as I can see, this article is an extension of the previous discussion on whether critics know anything or how on earth they came up with "year's top 10 movies."
Part of the issue is the limitation of language. The regions in the brain that process and form words through abstract and symbolic thinking are only part of a much larger brain. Other neurons feel and remember and talk to each other, but no words are involved. Some of them do, however, have an important role in our emotions, especially the primal and powerful emotions -- fear, desire, anger, joy, sadness. I recommend the book "The Emotional Brain" by the neurologist Joseph LeDoux about the amygdala region. Basically, the most powerful forces that influence how we feel and behave and interact with the world are beyond words and cannot be (easily) rationally described.
How does this translate into film appreciation and criticism? Or any other art? I guess we can recognize that when we encounter a work of art, we first form a viceral reation -- love it, like it, indifferent, hate it... The rational explanation about why we react in a certain way will come later. Words and reason can only explain to a very limited extent why we love this and hate that, but often such explanation are just an excuse to convey our more primitive and direct emotions. Sometimes, the explanation may be limited, unreliable, self-deluding, dishonest, or false.
There has been some interesting neurological research into the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is probably little more than an "explainer", a spokesperson who makes up stories about our behaviors and motivations and emotions. Consciousness might fool itself into thinking that it has the total control of what we do and who we are, but it really doesn't.
It's a fascinating topic. I believe it is important to help critics understand the limitations and underpinnings of their opinions that seem to be sooooooooo rational but really aren't. But one's irrational, emotional reaction should be accepted and not be looked down upon. Film theory and analyses are nice and lofty, but one shouldn't dismiss the visceral effects on individual audience.
"My favorite stat from the (unscientific, I'll bet)2003 Harris Poll:"
If it's unscientific, that just means it's creative and artistic therefore filling in the blanks that science can't fill.
Touche Phil Kelly...touche...
After Jun's post, I feel a little underqualified for this discussion but that hasn't stopped me before. A new dictionary might help me, since mine defines "amygdala" simply as "an almond" or, at best "an almond-shaped part."
Anyway, I just wanted to throw in something that's been bugging me a lot. A while ago the media began to refer to religious- identifying people as "people of faith" while in many cases I thought "people of nothing but faith" would be more appropriate. Do they have something extra or are they lacking something? I'm not trying to generalize--I hope I'm stating my annoyance about a generalization. Lately, at least in the political world (Mitt Romney), the word "faith" has evolved some more (irony intended) as simply a substitute word for religion, or so it seems to me, rather than referring to an integral part, to lesser or greater degrees, of most religions. Is this just a clever Rovian way of upgrading the conservative catch-all "Judeo-Christian tradition" or something more (or less)? Just curious.