Having now completed Cinema 1, I'll try to give an overview of it, to the best of my abilities. As the movement-image, it is concerned with three different kinds of movement images which represent the three different ways of making films, and then the fourth that calls them into question These are:
1.The affect-image, or affection. This mode of filmmaking corresponds to Peircean firstness; it is a thing in and of itself. It emphasizes close-ups to get the emotional affect of a human face. It does not take place in a realistic setting (which would render it secondness) but rather in an "any-place-whatever." The affect-image
2. The impulse image, or naturalism. The impulse image is a transitional place between firstness and secondness. It is concerned with real milieux, places that are really there, but it imposes on them an "originary world" where human beings are under the control of their animal impulses. It is neither an any place whatever nor a real milieu, but something in between.
3. The action image, or realism. The action image takes place in a real milieu, and it seems to be the dominant form of the movement image. It is the mode of secondness, what Deleuze calls the binomial or the duel, in which two terms are in conflict with one another and one must work to overcome the other.
Deleuze divides the action image into two main forms, the large form and the small form. The large form takes the form SAS' . A situation (a real milieu, it seems) is presented, a character must take an action to deal with that situation, and a new situation (S') is created due to the characters action. This is the mode of most westerns and of the gangster film. A negative corollary is SAS", where the new situation is worse than the previous one.
The small form, which is often dictated by a low budget and encompasses a noir, instead takes the form ASA'. What opens the film is action, which brings about a new situation, to which the character must respond with a new mode of action. The alcoholic hero is a version of this; he opens the film in a rut, a new situation presents itself, and he either rises (or fails to rise) to the situation and ends up with a new way of acting at the end of the film.
4.The mental image, or the crisis. This is a version of thirdness: not just the emotional affect, not just the relationship between the two things, but a third play considers them, interprets them, considers them logically. What matters in Hitchcock is neither who committed the murder (firstness) nor how they did it (secondness) but "the set of relations in which the action and the one who did it are caught" (200). Deleuze argues that this is the mode of logic and philosophy, and thus Hitchcock is the philosopher of the cinema. Unfortunately, the cinema could not rest there, although he wanted it too. By opening up the idea that the cinema could have a version of thirdness, could question its precepts, a crisis was opened up. Film moves beyond SAS and ASA (no longer believing that situations or actions can be changed) in favor of a much more diffuse and problematic mode of filmmaking. This mode, which appears in Italian neo-Realism, the French New Wave, German neues Kino, and certain films of American New Hollywood (Lumet, Scorsese, Altman), has these characteristics: "dispersive situation, the deliberately weak links, the voyage form, the consciousness of cliches, the condemnation of the plot" (210).
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Cinema 1: The Impulse Image
I have now read the chapter on naturalism in Cinema one 4 or 5 times, so I'm finally going to try to make sense of it. It will be a crucial text for me.
First, Deleuze situates the "impulse-image" between the action-image and the affect-image. In the affect-image, which highlights emotion, a part (especially face) is rendered such a way as to become a whole. And space isn't part of a larger environment, but becomes an "any-place-whatever" (123). Through these techniques, emotion is evoked. And moving beyond that, to the action-image, we'll get the "Determined milieu" where things are where they are, not any place whatever. This will trade in affect for action. But in between is the impulse-image, which takes place in an originary world.
To try and make sense of this: a determined milieux is a realistic place. An originary world, by contrast, is a place dominated by impulses, which is to say animal drives. In an originary world "the characters are like animals: the fashionable gentleman a bird of prey, the lover a goat, the poor man a hyena" (123). The impulse image creates a strange fusion of a real milieux and an originary world; it is a determined milieux which seems to have been invaded and controlled by an originary world, usually with a single setting where nature dominates infecting the entire film. Deleuze has a whole list of originary worlds in Stroheim and Bunuel films: "the mountain peak in Blind Husbands...the rock garden of the Golden age..." (125). He concludes that list with: " Even though it is localised, the originary world is still the overflowing location where the whole film happens, that is, the world which is revealed at the basis of the social mileiux which are so powerfully described" (125).
This idea - that the originary world is the originary point - has so much room for unpacking. First, it reminds me of Freud's/Lacan's navel of the dream, which is the place where the conscious mind's meaning-making system is no longer able to graft an interpretation on the overdetermined expression of the unconscious. This seems to be very similar to Deleuze's concept; in the impulse-image, the originary world erupts into the real milieux, rendering the entire milieux a naturalistic system. And at the point of contact between the milieux and the originary world (the desert, the rockgarden) the interpretive act becomes problematic - after all, the desert potion of McTeague/Greed has long troubled reviewers. Besides that navel, the milieux and the originary world seem to have the same relationship as the conscious interpretation of the dream and the unconscious expression lying below it: "But what gives their description such force is, indeed, their way of relating the features to an originary world which rumbles in the depths of all the milieux and runs along beneath them. This world does not exist independently of the determinate milieux, but conversely makes them exist with characteristics and features which come from above, or rather, from a still more terrible depth" (125-126).
Deleuze identifies a number of directors who attempt to be naturalist but fail, with some interesting results (p 134+, including Vidor, Nicholas Ray, Fuller, Renoir, and others). But he is mostly interested in the three directors who do succeed in being naturalist: Bunuel, Stroheim, and Losey. The most interesting part of Deleuze's commentary on these directors seems to be his distinction between how they treat degeneration. Stroheim does straight degeneration; he has an entropic system of degeneration, and he uses Expressionistic techniques of lighting and shadow to demonstrate how degeneration occurs over a period of time (126-127).
Bunuel has a much more interesting and problematic version of degeneration, one which, like Stroheim and expressionism, is linked to surrealism. Deleuze describes the system as follows: "The originary world thus imposes upon the successive milieux not exactly a slope, but a curvature or a cycle" (127). This cyclical nature of degeneration, which takes place as a "precipitating repetition, eternal return" means that there is never anyone who is completely evil (as they will always swing back to good) and that good figures play a stronger role than in Stroheim, as there always exist those on the upper part of the cycle. But ultimately things do not improve, as even the positive figures ("the male or female lover, the holy man") will eventually return and thus are "no less harmful than the pervert or the degenerate" (127). Either way, naturalism becomes very close to leaving the movement image and finding the time-image, but will never get there because it keeps its conception of time "subordinate to naturalistic co-ordinates" and thus naturalism could "only grasp the negative effects of time: attrition, degradation, wastage, destruction, loss, or simply oblivion" (127).
Much later than Stroheim or Bunuel is Losey, in whom the degradation takes the form of "the reversal against self" (137). In Losey, every character breaks down and degenerates when their own impulses are too strong to bear. "Fundamentally, there is the impulse, which, by nature, is too strong for the character, whatever his personality" (137). But Losey does seem to offer up, like Stroheim and Bunuel, an ambiguous form of salvation. This reversal only affects the men: "It seems that the world of impulses and the milieu of symptoms enclose the men hermetically, delivering them up to a sort of male homosexual game from which they do not emerge" (138). The women in Losey, by contrast, do not seem to feel the impules. "The leave naturalism to reach lyrical abstraction."
Well, I'm sure there's much, much more, but I think that's all I have for now. Whew. This Deleuze is a bitch to read and think through, but it's also very satisfying and above all rich with meaning.
First, Deleuze situates the "impulse-image" between the action-image and the affect-image. In the affect-image, which highlights emotion, a part (especially face) is rendered such a way as to become a whole. And space isn't part of a larger environment, but becomes an "any-place-whatever" (123). Through these techniques, emotion is evoked. And moving beyond that, to the action-image, we'll get the "Determined milieu" where things are where they are, not any place whatever. This will trade in affect for action. But in between is the impulse-image, which takes place in an originary world.
To try and make sense of this: a determined milieux is a realistic place. An originary world, by contrast, is a place dominated by impulses, which is to say animal drives. In an originary world "the characters are like animals: the fashionable gentleman a bird of prey, the lover a goat, the poor man a hyena" (123). The impulse image creates a strange fusion of a real milieux and an originary world; it is a determined milieux which seems to have been invaded and controlled by an originary world, usually with a single setting where nature dominates infecting the entire film. Deleuze has a whole list of originary worlds in Stroheim and Bunuel films: "the mountain peak in Blind Husbands...the rock garden of the Golden age..." (125). He concludes that list with: " Even though it is localised, the originary world is still the overflowing location where the whole film happens, that is, the world which is revealed at the basis of the social mileiux which are so powerfully described" (125).
This idea - that the originary world is the originary point - has so much room for unpacking. First, it reminds me of Freud's/Lacan's navel of the dream, which is the place where the conscious mind's meaning-making system is no longer able to graft an interpretation on the overdetermined expression of the unconscious. This seems to be very similar to Deleuze's concept; in the impulse-image, the originary world erupts into the real milieux, rendering the entire milieux a naturalistic system. And at the point of contact between the milieux and the originary world (the desert, the rockgarden) the interpretive act becomes problematic - after all, the desert potion of McTeague/Greed has long troubled reviewers. Besides that navel, the milieux and the originary world seem to have the same relationship as the conscious interpretation of the dream and the unconscious expression lying below it: "But what gives their description such force is, indeed, their way of relating the features to an originary world which rumbles in the depths of all the milieux and runs along beneath them. This world does not exist independently of the determinate milieux, but conversely makes them exist with characteristics and features which come from above, or rather, from a still more terrible depth" (125-126).
Deleuze identifies a number of directors who attempt to be naturalist but fail, with some interesting results (p 134+, including Vidor, Nicholas Ray, Fuller, Renoir, and others). But he is mostly interested in the three directors who do succeed in being naturalist: Bunuel, Stroheim, and Losey. The most interesting part of Deleuze's commentary on these directors seems to be his distinction between how they treat degeneration. Stroheim does straight degeneration; he has an entropic system of degeneration, and he uses Expressionistic techniques of lighting and shadow to demonstrate how degeneration occurs over a period of time (126-127).
Bunuel has a much more interesting and problematic version of degeneration, one which, like Stroheim and expressionism, is linked to surrealism. Deleuze describes the system as follows: "The originary world thus imposes upon the successive milieux not exactly a slope, but a curvature or a cycle" (127). This cyclical nature of degeneration, which takes place as a "precipitating repetition, eternal return" means that there is never anyone who is completely evil (as they will always swing back to good) and that good figures play a stronger role than in Stroheim, as there always exist those on the upper part of the cycle. But ultimately things do not improve, as even the positive figures ("the male or female lover, the holy man") will eventually return and thus are "no less harmful than the pervert or the degenerate" (127). Either way, naturalism becomes very close to leaving the movement image and finding the time-image, but will never get there because it keeps its conception of time "subordinate to naturalistic co-ordinates" and thus naturalism could "only grasp the negative effects of time: attrition, degradation, wastage, destruction, loss, or simply oblivion" (127).
Much later than Stroheim or Bunuel is Losey, in whom the degradation takes the form of "the reversal against self" (137). In Losey, every character breaks down and degenerates when their own impulses are too strong to bear. "Fundamentally, there is the impulse, which, by nature, is too strong for the character, whatever his personality" (137). But Losey does seem to offer up, like Stroheim and Bunuel, an ambiguous form of salvation. This reversal only affects the men: "It seems that the world of impulses and the milieu of symptoms enclose the men hermetically, delivering them up to a sort of male homosexual game from which they do not emerge" (138). The women in Losey, by contrast, do not seem to feel the impules. "The leave naturalism to reach lyrical abstraction."
Well, I'm sure there's much, much more, but I think that's all I have for now. Whew. This Deleuze is a bitch to read and think through, but it's also very satisfying and above all rich with meaning.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The Politica Unconscious
I should begin by saying that I found this book pretty unuseful. As Jameson himself admits, a great deal of the content is very technical. Having not read any Lukacs and very little Althusser, I found the complicated discussion of their two positions meaningless. And I felt less confused - as if Jameson was saying something important but I didn't understand it - than apathetic. He did not seem to be working in an area that seemed fertile.
This may be because Jameson, along with most Marxists, partakes in the Marxist myth which I find absolutely laughable: "In the spirit of a more authentic dialectical tradition, Marxism is here conceived as that 'untranscendable horizon' that subsumes such apparently antagonist or incommensurable critical operations, assigning them an undoubted sectoral validity within itself, and thus at once canceling and preserving them" (10). I couldn't agree with Jameson more that the various modes he's discussing - psychoanalytic, ethical, myth critical, structural, etc - deserve to be treated this way. They should all be canceled as all-inclusive systems but preserved for their own provisional value. But the fact that he accepts the Marxist orthodoxy that Marxism itself is outside of ideology and can be the Ur-system that preserves and cancels the others is just silly. Perhaps he explains why this is so the technical portion that I did not understand.
Besides this pre-eminence of Marxism, Jameson's main goal seems to be to historicize everything. - to turn all of interpretation into the retelling "within the unity of a single great collective story" (19). He seems to be rescuing interpretation from uselessness by hooking it up to a Marxist narrative of history, in which each text has something to tell us about it's historical time and place, which in turn will inform us about the march of history, which we hope to maneuver in favor of fairer economic distribution.
He also seems to side with Western Marxism in tossing aside Vulgar Marxism and accepting a more complex relationship between the base and the superstructure, one which requires an immanent critique rather than mere economic manipulation (see p. 36).
Outside of that big picture dismissal, I did find a few interesting things. First, Jameson argues that Anti-Oedipus is doing a similar sort of thing - Deleuze and Guattari are eliminating the mommy-daddy-me triangle in favor of a "reassert[ion of] the specificity of the political content of everyday life" (22). He ties this in with the Deleuzian command to ignore what a text means and look instead at how a text works. This seems to me to be an endorsement of Deleuze's pragmatism, although the rhizomes of Deleuze, as an alternative to the Freudian triangle, strike me as very far from Jameson's "collective story." Jameson is just reigning things in through a different, historical lens; Deleuze wants to let them all loose.
Some things that are interesting for naturalism: Jameson argues that Freud's theory of sexuality is truly just the theory of the flow of desire, but he seems critical of the fact that Freud has isolated sexuality from the rest of life, which seems to me a valid complaint (64). And he quotes Frye as saying desire is "the energy that leads human society to develop its own form" (71), which makes it sound opposed to naturalism and a good deal like Eros.
Finally, one thing that Jameson gets really, really right: "the mirage of of an utterly nontheoretical practice, is a contradiction in terms; that even the most formalizing kinds of literary or textual analysis carry a theoretical charge whose denial unmasks it as ideological" (58). Well said.
This may be because Jameson, along with most Marxists, partakes in the Marxist myth which I find absolutely laughable: "In the spirit of a more authentic dialectical tradition, Marxism is here conceived as that 'untranscendable horizon' that subsumes such apparently antagonist or incommensurable critical operations, assigning them an undoubted sectoral validity within itself, and thus at once canceling and preserving them" (10). I couldn't agree with Jameson more that the various modes he's discussing - psychoanalytic, ethical, myth critical, structural, etc - deserve to be treated this way. They should all be canceled as all-inclusive systems but preserved for their own provisional value. But the fact that he accepts the Marxist orthodoxy that Marxism itself is outside of ideology and can be the Ur-system that preserves and cancels the others is just silly. Perhaps he explains why this is so the technical portion that I did not understand.
Besides this pre-eminence of Marxism, Jameson's main goal seems to be to historicize everything. - to turn all of interpretation into the retelling "within the unity of a single great collective story" (19). He seems to be rescuing interpretation from uselessness by hooking it up to a Marxist narrative of history, in which each text has something to tell us about it's historical time and place, which in turn will inform us about the march of history, which we hope to maneuver in favor of fairer economic distribution.
He also seems to side with Western Marxism in tossing aside Vulgar Marxism and accepting a more complex relationship between the base and the superstructure, one which requires an immanent critique rather than mere economic manipulation (see p. 36).
Outside of that big picture dismissal, I did find a few interesting things. First, Jameson argues that Anti-Oedipus is doing a similar sort of thing - Deleuze and Guattari are eliminating the mommy-daddy-me triangle in favor of a "reassert[ion of] the specificity of the political content of everyday life" (22). He ties this in with the Deleuzian command to ignore what a text means and look instead at how a text works. This seems to me to be an endorsement of Deleuze's pragmatism, although the rhizomes of Deleuze, as an alternative to the Freudian triangle, strike me as very far from Jameson's "collective story." Jameson is just reigning things in through a different, historical lens; Deleuze wants to let them all loose.
Some things that are interesting for naturalism: Jameson argues that Freud's theory of sexuality is truly just the theory of the flow of desire, but he seems critical of the fact that Freud has isolated sexuality from the rest of life, which seems to me a valid complaint (64). And he quotes Frye as saying desire is "the energy that leads human society to develop its own form" (71), which makes it sound opposed to naturalism and a good deal like Eros.
Finally, one thing that Jameson gets really, really right: "the mirage of of an utterly nontheoretical practice, is a contradiction in terms; that even the most formalizing kinds of literary or textual analysis carry a theoretical charge whose denial unmasks it as ideological" (58). Well said.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Portrait of a Lady
Portrait of a Lady is one of the most dreariest, boringest books I have ever read. I was barely able to get through it; I spent months reading it. It was atrocious.
Anyway, I have very little to say about it. Gregg thought it might be interesting to view Osmond as a seducer in the tradition of naturalism, but I didn't find Osmond's character that interesting. Frankly, I didn't find anyone very interesting, least of all Isabel Archer, who deflects rich and perfect suitors Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton so she can have her freedom, marries Osmond for no clear reason, and then stays with Osmond even when he is (perfectly, precisely) horrid and hateful to her.
The most important thing I thought about this book is that Lord Warburton is considered a "radical" but that ideas are never broached. Unlike McTeague style naturalism, which leaves ideas out of it, or London style naturalism, which uses ideas point blank, this book suggests that ideas exists but then makes it clear that James simply has no interest in them at all. On p. 67, Isabel and Warburton discuss ideas, and Warburton disabuses her of all of her current ideas, but the ideas themselves are never mentioned. Everyone says that Warburton is a hypocrite for being a radical and a large land-owner, but never does anyone say that being a radical involves communal living or anything like that. Like EVERYTHING ELSE in James, ideas are obscured behind a blank wall of language.
I do think that, although Isabel is a character caught up in circumstances beyond her control, James' methods are the opposite of naturalism's. In the preface, he writes, that his idea flows not from any plot but from an idea of a character (p.4). This is the opposite of naturalism, in which the plot always comes first - it is usually drawn from the newspaper. I don't know if James works better as a realist or a modernist, but he's not a naturalist: his only concern seems to be individual psychology, and the controversial ideas that are naturalism's stock in trade are nonexistent.
Anyway, I have very little to say about it. Gregg thought it might be interesting to view Osmond as a seducer in the tradition of naturalism, but I didn't find Osmond's character that interesting. Frankly, I didn't find anyone very interesting, least of all Isabel Archer, who deflects rich and perfect suitors Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton so she can have her freedom, marries Osmond for no clear reason, and then stays with Osmond even when he is (perfectly, precisely) horrid and hateful to her.
The most important thing I thought about this book is that Lord Warburton is considered a "radical" but that ideas are never broached. Unlike McTeague style naturalism, which leaves ideas out of it, or London style naturalism, which uses ideas point blank, this book suggests that ideas exists but then makes it clear that James simply has no interest in them at all. On p. 67, Isabel and Warburton discuss ideas, and Warburton disabuses her of all of her current ideas, but the ideas themselves are never mentioned. Everyone says that Warburton is a hypocrite for being a radical and a large land-owner, but never does anyone say that being a radical involves communal living or anything like that. Like EVERYTHING ELSE in James, ideas are obscured behind a blank wall of language.
I do think that, although Isabel is a character caught up in circumstances beyond her control, James' methods are the opposite of naturalism's. In the preface, he writes, that his idea flows not from any plot but from an idea of a character (p.4). This is the opposite of naturalism, in which the plot always comes first - it is usually drawn from the newspaper. I don't know if James works better as a realist or a modernist, but he's not a naturalist: his only concern seems to be individual psychology, and the controversial ideas that are naturalism's stock in trade are nonexistent.
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