A Philosophy of the Screenplay

Ted Nannicelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415521444
• eBook ISBN: 9781135085414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Recently, scholars in a variety of disciplines—including philosophy, film and media studies, and literary studies—have become interested in the aesthetics, definition, and ontology of the screenplay. To this end, this volume addresses the fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of the screenplay: What is a screenplay? Is the screenplay art—more specifically, literature? What kind of a thing is a screenplay? Nannicelli argues that the screenplay is a kind of artefact; as such, its boundaries are determined collectively by screenwriters, and its ontological nature is determined collectively by both writers and readers of screenplays. Any plausible philosophical account of the screenplay must be strictly constrained by our collective creative and appreciative practices, and must recognize that those practices indicate that at least some screenplays are artworks.

Part I

Definition

1 What is a Screenplay? An Intentional–Historical Formalist Definition

What is a screenplay? What makes something a screenplay? What features do all and only screenplays share? Or, what unifies the concept, “screenplay”? These are the questions that this chapter will address. At first glance, the answers to these questions may appear obvious. Perhaps it seems clear that something is a screenplay in virtue of its function as a sort of blueprint for the production of a film. Because I take this to be a reasonable intuition—indeed, the most likely intuition one might have about such matters—I begin the chapter by exploring the possibility of defining the screenplay functionally. I find, however, that a pure functional definition of the screenplay faces insurmountable objections. So too, I argue, do both a functional definition supplemented by conditions regarding form and a pure formalist definition.

The problem with all these definitions is that they presuppose an implausible kind of essentialism about the screenplay. I use the term “essentialism” here (and related terms such as “essence” in what follows) not in the rather loose, pejorative sense literary and cultural critics sometimes use it,¹ but rather as it is used in philosophy to denote a very specific idea: To wit, a given kind (e.g., a natural kind or an artifact kind) is defined in virtue of the properties that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for kind-membership. Inasmuch as all and only members of the given kind share that set of necessary, or essential, properties, the set constitutes the essence of the kind. We can, then, call those definitions that comprise necessary and sufficient conditions “essentialist definitions.”² I argue that certain essentialist definitions of the screenplay—in particular, functional definitions and all varieties of intrinsic essentialist definitions, that attempt to identify an essence in terms of underlying, intrinsic features like form—cannot succeed. For it seems unlikely that the screenplay has an essence along the lines of what these definitions suppose.

However, I suggest, this fact warrants neither the embrace of anti-essentialism about the screenplay, nor the abandonment of the definitional project altogether. To be sure, we ought to be wary of certain essentialist definitions and assuming that all concepts admit of essentialist definitions. When we attempt to define a concept in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, we presuppose that the concept is “classically structured.” That is, we assume the existence of a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions that demarcates the boundaries of the concept. (We may not know what those conditions actually are, but the search for a definition supposes that they are there, waiting to be discovered.) The paradigmatic example is the concept “bachelor,” which seems to be composed of the subconcepts “unmarried” and “man”—subconcepts that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for “bachelor”hood. As we shall see, though, very few contemporary philosophers and even fewer cognitive psychologists think this account, known as the “classical theory of concepts” or “the definition view,” offers a plausible explanation of how all concepts are structured.

Nevertheless, I think that a definition of the screenplay is worth pursuing, for the following reasons. First, from the fact that not all concepts are classically structured, it does not follow that no concepts are classically structured. In other words, it does not follow that anti-essentialism about any particular concept is correct. Indeed, my second reason for believing that defining the screenplay is a legitimate project is that philosophers of art have shown that there are good reasons to not accept anti-essentialist arguments about defining art. Third, not only do anti-essentialist arguments about art fail, but because the concept “screenplay” appears, prima facie, much less nebulous than “art,” we have even less of an incentive to accept them with regard to defining the screenplay.

Fourth, and most importantly, essentialism comes in different—and less and more plausible—varieties. Essences can be entirely intrinsic, wholly relational, or some combination of the two. In the first place, we ought to heed the recent warnings of some philosophers that essentialism is not to be conflated with intrinsic essentialism.³ Although intrinsic essentialist definitions of, say, a species or art may fail because neither a species nor art has an underlying, intrinsic essence, it may still be the case that both concepts possess essences, where essence is more broadly construed as a set of intrinsic and/or relational extrinsic properties.

On the other hand, I shall argue, we ought to reject the idea that the screenplay’s essence is wholly relational, for it seems that not just any sort of object can be a screenplay. Rather, if the screenplay has an essence, it seems likely to be constituted by both intrinsic and extrinsic properties. On one level, this is simply because the screenplay is a kind of artifact—an object whose nature is at least partly defined by its physical features, but whose existence necessarily owes to its relationship to human activity. The challenge is to say something more precise about what combination of intrinsic and relational properties the screenplay, in particular, has essentially. As I have already suggested, the intuitive view to adopt would be a sophisticated functionalist definition supplemented by some conditions regarding form. However, I shall argue that this strategy will not work.

Instead, I propose a different intrinsic/extrinsic hybrid—an intentional–historical formalist definition—whereby the screenplay is defined by an intended relationship to prior screenplays and some rough necessary conditions regarding form. My goal here will be to develop a descriptive definition rather than a normative one. Like Jerrold Levinson’s aim in defining music, my goal is to “capture the widest, most inclusive central usage of [the term] current at the present time, though stopping short of what are clearly metaphorical extensions.”⁴ At the very least, I take this to include screenplays for narrative fiction films (Hollywood and otherwise), screenplays for nonfiction films, screenplays for nonnarrative fiction or experimental films, and unfilmed screenplays. I also take it that the term “screenplay” is currently used to refer to a variety of dramatic manuscripts for moving image works other than films—in particular, television shows and all sorts of digitally created movies.⁵ (For convenience, I will use the term “film” to broadly refer to all of these various moving-image works.)

It seems to me that the need to be wary of metaphorical extensions is particularly pressing in the areas of film and screenwriting, where some theorists still—after years of semiotic theory—want to treat all sorts of aspects of filmmaking as kinds of writing. Steven Maras, for example, thinks that the screenplay is a normative form of “screen writing,” which includes “writing with light,” “writing with sound,” and “writing with bodies.” Maras also invokes Jacques Derrida to remind his reader, “both cinemato graphy and photo graphy are etymologically speaking forms of writing.”⁶ Here, the notion of writing for the screen is rendered so slack that it means nothing more than “filmmaking.” But, obviously, not all filmmaking involves the use of a screenplay, and I take it that competent speakers use the terms “screenwriting” and “screenplay” to do some work in ordinary usage—that they use these words to pick out a specific kind of writing (in the literal sense). I think this is justification enough for limiting my scope to such central usage. I should also say that I think there are numerous artifacts that can serve the typical functions of screenplays (e.g., drawings and photographs), but which are not screenplays properly so called.⁷ I take it that when a director claims that a novel, a painting, or a photograph “was the screenplay,” this is just figurative speech that indicates she used the object as a screenplay is typically used.

Finally, I should point out that a descriptive definition of a category as broad as, say, music will include musical works that are not art as well as those that are. This fact is perhaps even clearer when it comes to film; lots of things that fall under the concept of film are not works of film art. I mention this to point out that the question of whether screenplays can be works of art has no bearing on the definitional project beyond the possibility that one reason defining the screenplay might be interesting or worthwhile is that we suspect some screenplays are artworks (or, less controversially, important ingredients of artworks⁸).

Defining the Screenplay Functionally

At first glance, the screenplay appears especially well suited to be defined functionally. It may seem uncontroversial to suppose that the function of a screenplay is, generally, to serve as a sort of outline or blueprint from which a film can be made. That is, it might be thought that a screenplay is a kind of tool for making films, and, as such, can be defined insofar as it fulfills its function as a tool. However, even if this was commonly accurate, function, alone, could not be sufficient for something to be a screenplay; it could not constitute the essence of the screenplay. If the screenplay does, in fact, have an essential function, surely this is possible partly because of requirements concerning its form or structure. Something that had, say, the form of a chair, could not fulfill what might plausibly be considered the screenplay’s essential function(s). Therefore, it seems that any sort of purely functional definition of the screenplay, regardless of what it posits as the screenplay’s essential function, seems like a nonstarter.

To get a functional definition off the ground, then, we must add at least some general conditions regarding form or structure. Preliminarily, I think we can identify at least one necessary condition for something to be a screenplay: screenplays are verbal objects—at least as we presently conceive of them. Although I want to stress that this is a contingent fact rather than a matter of strict necessity, it seems true of our present concept of the screenplay, since it is hard to think of a screenplay without words or to imagine something without words being correctly called a screenplay.⁹ So, a very rough functional definition of the screenplay might look something like this:

x is a screenplay if and only if x is a verbal object from which a film can be made.

Despite having some intuitive appeal, this definition is clearly too broad. The idea that screenplays are things “from which films can be made” is just too general. As it stands, the definition would be forced to include many verbal objects from which films can be made—novels, short stories, and newspaper articles—but which are clearly not screenplays. So, we must narrow the definition to exclude those sorts of objects, while taking care not to narrow it so much that we end up excluding any screenplays. A second attempt at a functional definition might look something like this:

x is a screenplay if and only if x is a verbal object that suggests the plot, characters, dialogue, shots, edits, sound effects and/or other constitutive elements of a film.¹⁰

This second attempt at a functional definition is more specific to screenplays, but it does not solve our problem because it is still too broad. Again, verbal objects such as newspaper articles, novels, and stories often suggest constitutive elements of films, such as plot, character, and dialogue. Furthermore, this formulation of the definition raises another problem: it seems odd to say that screenplays suggest the constitutive parts of a film because some screenplays are never filmed at all. Or, to put it another way, assuming the screenplay has an essential function, we must allow for the possibility some screenplays fail to fulfill that function. The definition also must accommodate these issues.

One way to attempt to solve both of these problems—to (1) sufficiently narrow the definition so that it includes screenplays but not other verbal objects that suggest constitutive elements of films, and (2) include screenplays that are never shot—might be to appeal to the intentions of the agent who creates a screenplay. Such a solution might seem promising because screenplays are artifacts and a commonly held view is that an object’s belonging to an artifact kind, such as “screenplay,” is a matter of its intended function (regardless of whether that function is realized). In this view, a modified functional definition of the screenplay might look something like this:

x is a screenplay if and only if x is a verbal object that has the intended function of suggesting the plot, characters, dialogue, shots, edits, sound effects, and/or other constitutive elements of a film.

This revised definition has several merits. As I mentioned earlier, it seems true that screenplays are necessarily verbal objects—at least as we currently conceive of them. The “intended function” condition excludes other verbal objects, such as novels and short stories, from which films might be made but which do not have the intended function of suggesting the constitutive elements of a film. This condition also ensures the definition will include screenplays that fail to fulfill their intended function. Finally, the condition makes reference to the surely important fact that screenplays are artifacts whose existence depends on the intentional activity of humans.

But, although this version of the functional definition recognizes that screenplays are artifacts, it does not sufficiently account for an important consequence of this fact: Artifacts are embedded in particular socio–historical contexts. As Amie L. Thomasson puts it, “Artifactual kinds are notoriously malleable and historical in nature.”¹¹ We need, therefore, a definition that can account for the changes our screenplay concept has undergone with the passage of time. Here, the proponent of a functional definition would do well to draw upon the concept of “proper function” developed by Ruth Garrett Millikan.¹² In the present context, one significant merit of the notion of proper function is that “its basic form or general plan … looks to the history of an item to determine its function rather than to the item’s present properties or dispositions.”¹³ Millikan’s theory of proper functions is complex, but we need not review it in detail here. For our purposes, we can cash out the theory of proper function, in the context of artifacts, along the lines of Lynne Rudder Baker’s claim, “artifacts have proper functions that they are (intentionally) designed and produced to perform (whether they perform their proper functions or not) … [A]n artifact has its proper function essentially: the nature of an artifact lies in its proper function—what it was designed to do, the purpose for which it was produced.”¹⁴ Now, one potentially troubling element of Baker’s account of the proper functions of artifacts is the idea that proper function is not only necessary, but sufficient: “What makes something a clock is its function of telling time, no matter what it is made of.”¹⁵ But it is evident that one could hold a weaker view, on which proper function was an essential, or necessary, feature, but not a sufficient one. In any case, casting “function” in our definition as, more specifically “proper function” also acknowledges the screenp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Definition
• Part II Art Status
• Part III Ontology
• Part IV Appreciation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index