New Philosophies of Film

Thinking Images

Robert Sinnerbrink

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781441128737
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

This is a critical exploration of analytic and Continental philosophies of film, which puts film-philosophy into practice with detailed discussions of three filmmakers. The book includes philosophical readings of three key contemporary filmmakers: Malick, Lynch and Von Trier. It also features links to online resources, guides to further reading and a filmography.

PART I: THE ANALYTIC-COGNITIVIST TURN

CHAPTER ONE

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: CRITIQUES OF ‘GRAND THEORY’

In Part I of this book I introduce some of the new approaches to philosophizing on film, which I have dubbed the analytic-cognitivist paradigm, analyzing the related strands of its critique of the preceding model of film theorizing, so-called ‘Grand Theory’. This approach has produced a host of powerful theories addressing philosophical, psychological and aesthetic aspects of film (see Livingston and Plantinga, 2009). In Chapter 1 I examine the influential critique of ‘Grand Theory’ developed by David Bordwell, Noël Carroll, Richard Allen, Murray Smith, and a host of other theorists. Underlying this critique is a dispute between competing ways of doing philosophy, associated with the vexed analytic/‘Continental’ philosophy divide (see Sinnerbrink 2010). After addressing some of the basic elements of the critique of ‘Grand Theory’, I examine Carroll’s philosophy of film (his ‘dialectical cognitivism’), which argues against ‘medium essentialism’ (the idea that film has a definable medium that would determine aesthetic style and value); against interpretation (which conflates film theory with film criticism); and against the ‘film as language’ thesis (that language provides an appropriate model for theorizing film). I also consider Bordwell’s related critique of film hermeneutics and of speculative film theory, suggesting that there are problems with Bordwell’s critique of the hermeneutic (interpretative) approach to film. Although generating a rich array of new theoretical work, the analytic-cognitivist turn can also be challenged for its sometimes ‘reductionist’ approach to the complex aesthetic, hermeneutic and ideological dimensions of film. In good dialectical fashion, the challenge is to incorporate theoretical innovations in the new approaches, yet retain what remains valuable in the older paradigms. The aim, in short, is to avoid both reductionism and dogmatism (the bugbear of so-called ‘Grand Theory’).

THE PHILOSOPHICAL TURN IN FILM THEORY

As Adrian Martin observes (2006), every fifteen years or so film studies seems to undergo a distinctive kind of theoretical ‘turn’. From the Psychoanalytic Turn of the 1960s and 70s through the Historiographic Turn of the 80s and 90s, we now find ourselves, Martin remarks, in the midst of a ‘Philosophic Turn’ that was sparked by Deleuze’s Cinema books in France and Cavell’s works in the United States (2006: 76). The Deleuzian turn was followed by ‘various certified philosophers exploring their passions for cinema — Bernard Stiegler, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben, and Jacques Rancière, among others’ (Martin 2006: 76). To explain this ‘philosophical turn’ in film theory, some philosophers have cited the general cultural popularity of film, its pedagogical potential (particularly for teaching philosophy), and the rise of cognitivist approaches in psychology and philosophy of mind (see Carroll 2008; Gaut 2010; Shaw 2008). Although these are all relevant factors, the most obvious reasons for the turn were institutional and theoretical: the collapse of what Bordwell and Carroll called ‘Grand Theory’ — 1970s and 80s film theory that combined psychoanalytic, semiotic and ideologico-critical perspectives — and its replacement by historicist, culturalist, and media-oriented approaches (1996a). In the so-called ‘theoretical vacuum’ that followed the demise of ‘Grand Theory’ and the cultural-historicist turn, so Carroll claims, philosophy offered the kind of theoretical resources required to renew the ‘classical’ problems of film theory that had been left in abeyance (see Carroll 1988a, 1988b).

Whatever their theoretical orientations, the new wave of ‘post-Theory’ philosophers of film defined themselves against the older paradigm of institutionalized film theory of the 1970s and 80s inspired by psychoanalysis, structuralism, semiotics, cultural theory, and various strands of German critical theory and French poststructuralism.1 The title of Noël Carroll’s 1988 book says it all: Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory (1988a).2 The new philosophical film theory challenging the prevailing models styled itself as analytic rather than ‘Continental’ in inspiration; cognitivist rather than psychoanalytic in approach; scientistic rather than hermeneutic in orientation; concerned with framing and testing empirical hypotheses rather than engaging in speculation or interpretation. It aimed at a ‘rational’ understanding of film rather than at plumbing unconscious desire, and was concerned to use plain language and theoretical arguments rather than what critics derided as metaphysical jargon. With its preference for analytical argument and empirically testable models, analytic-cognitivist film theory has become an increasingly dominant way of pursuing the study of film.

The story becomes rather intriguing at this point, for it is a very specific approach that the new philosophers of film were challenging. Noël Carroll usefully distinguishes between the then ‘contemporary film theory’ (semiological approaches that also drew on psychoanalytical and Marxist theories of ideology) and ‘classical film theory’, which included earlier theorists (such as Arnheim and Bazin) as well as more recent ones (such as V. F. Perkins and Stanley Cavell) (1988a: 1). According to Carroll, semiological film theory had a first wave (for example, Christian Metz), taking its inspiration from linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and then a second wave (1970s Screen Theory), in which this semiological approach was combined with (Lacanian) psychoanalytic and (Althusserian) Marxist theories of ideology. This second wave of film theory was also given a political inflection during the later 1970s through the feminist analysis of gender and a critique of the ideological function of Hollywood film.

THE CRITIQUE OF ‘GRAND THEORY’

Noël Carroll’s critique of ‘Grand Theory’ targets its uncritical commitment to eclectic strains of ‘Continental’ philosophy (1996: 37–68). Carroll identifies what we might call ‘five obstructions’ to more rational ways of theorizing on film; difficulties which all stem, he claims, from the flawed foundation of ‘Continental’ theory:

(1) A monolithic conception of film theory, according to which a ‘foundational’ theoretical paradigm has to account for all relevant aspects of film; this is linked with an implausible ‘medium-essentialism’, which sought to explain all relevant phenomena in terms of the film medium.

(2) The conflation of film theory with film interpretation, in which film theorists adopt a theoretical framework (Lacanian psychoanalysis, for example), and then ‘confirm’ the theory in question by finding its concepts or ideas instantiated in specific film examples.

(3) Political correctness, in which the progressive ethico-political claims of film theory are bolstered via solidarity with emancipatory social-political movements of the 1960s and 70s.

(4) Charges of formalism, in which ways of theorizing about film without a ‘political’ or ideological focus are dismissed as ‘formalist’ or as lacking substantive content.

(5) Biases against truth, which refers to the alleged postmodernist dismissal of truth as an ideological construct, a claim that rests on an untenable ‘argument from absolute truth’ (any truth claim about film presupposes an absolutist concept of truth; there is no such concept; ergo truth claims about film are ‘ideologically suspect’) (Carroll 1996: 38–56).

Taken together, these five obstructions hampered philosophical theorization of film, prompting the need for a ‘paradigm shift’ towards more analytic-cognitivist forms of theory (Carroll 1996: 56–68).

There are two features of so-called ‘Grand Theory’ deemed most suspect or troubling by analytic-cognitivist critics: (1) the ‘decentred’ conception of the human subject whose claims to rational autonomy are undermined by the role of the unconscious in psychic life, and by the shared background structures of language, culture, and ideology; and (2) the conviction that film, whether in its popular or modernist forms, is an important ideologico-political battleground over forms of social and cultural representation (in particular, of gender, sexuality, class, race and cultural identity). The upshot of these two theses — the challenge to rational autonomy (posited by psychoanalytic theory) and the ideologico-political function of film (posited by Marxist and feminist theory) — was to suggest that film theory provided a privileged site for the examination of psychic mechanisms of desire and for the related critique of social and cultural ideology.

Indeed, the paradigm of ‘Grand Theory’, whatever its theoretical shortcomings, clearly questioned two key assumptions of the new analytic-cognitivist paradigm: (1) that the human being is a rational autonomous agent whose cognitive powers are not subject to irrational ‘unconscious’ forces or to ideological manipulation; and (2) that film is a popular form of entertainment that does not have any pernicious ideological function, that operates using transparent visual and narrative techniques, and that can be analyzed and understood in broadly ‘naturalistic’ terms (with reference to physical, physiological, biological and evolutionary processes). In short, the battle between ‘Grand Theory’ and the analytic-cognitivist paradigm turned on our assumptions concerning human nature and the relationship between subjectivity and culture. To what extent are we rational beings, unperturbed by unconscious or ideological forces? And to what extent does film — the mass artform of the modern age — have the tendency to serve ideological ends?

Suffice to say, these are difficult and important philosophical questions that cannot be answered glibly here. I raise them in order to signal that there are deeper issues at stake in the dispute between competing paradigms in film theory. It is by no means obvious that these questions have been settled either way; the assumption that they have is closer to dogmatism than to criticism. This point has been forgotten in the fractious debates over ‘Grand Theory’ and its critics, and remains pertinent today given the analytic-cognitivist turn in film theory. For the pendulum swing from the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ practised by ‘Grand Theory’ to the analytic-cognitivist defence of a rational, commonsense approach to the movies has now reached the most extreme point of its amplitude.

The polemical character of Carroll’s critique of ‘Grand Theory’ was intended to challenge the dogmas of a once-dominant paradigm in crisis, and to advocate in its stead a more rationally defensible model of film theorization. Despite its ‘Culture Wars’ rhetoric, it is worth making some critical remarks on this critique, which was crucial for the development of what we might call ‘post-Theory theory’. I shall take each of Bordwell/Carroll’s ‘five obstructions’ in turn.

Monolithic theory and ‘medium essentialism’

One of the sharpest criticisms of ‘Grand Theory’ was that it adopted an all-encompassing theoretical paradigm — psychoanalytical, semiotic, and so on — that was used to account for the manifold aspects of film. There is some truth to the claim that ‘Grand Theory’ relied on what seemed like all-encompassing theories, even though they were not ‘monolithic’ in the sense of being homogeneous or univocal. It is worth recalling, moreover, that the motivation for so doing was to account for the two assumptions outlined above: that human subjects are subject to ‘irrational’ forces that conflict with our rational capacities; and that film is not only an accessible medium of mass entertainment but also a complex instrument of ideological influence. That is why ‘Grand Theory’, far from being ‘monolithic’, was typically characterized by various theoretical ‘fusions’ (psychoanalytic-semiotic theory, psychoanalytical-feminist theory, structural linguistic-ideology critique, and so on). ‘Grand Theory’ may have struggled to find theoretically convincing ways of articulating these two assumptions, but it was at least concerned to question the view that human subjects are rational masters of their conscious experience, and that the medium of film need not be considered a powerful ideological force.

Conflation of film theory with film criticism

One of the most striking elements in this critique is the assertion that ‘Grand Theory’ conflated ‘film theory’ with ‘film criticism’, confusing theoretical claims about film with hermeneutic claims about the interpretation of particular films or genres (Allen and Smith 1997: 6). As a result, post-Theorists generally insist on a firm distinction between film theory and film criticism, arguing that the two should be kept well apart, lest we lapse into the kind of ‘fallacy of exemplification’ — ‘proving’ the claims of a theory via selective film interpretations — to which ‘Grand Theory’ was supposedly prone.

One consequence of this critique, however, has been the proliferation of theories about film that often remain aloof from the detailed analysis of particular films, save as useful illustrations of theoretical problems explored by the theory (see, for example, Carroll 2008; Gaut 2010).3 It is one thing to say that theory should be general in scope and explanatory in nature; it is another to claim that such theorizing should avoid the anomalous or deviant cases studied in film criticism. Aesthetic theories, including philosophies of film, find their rigour and plausibility in the degree to which they illuminate our experience and understanding of singular works of art.

‘Political correctness’

A regrettably pejorative phrase, it conjures up images of stoical cultural warriors fighting off the barbarians at the university gates. Shorn of its unpleasant rhetorical aspect, it refers to the manipulating of theory or rejection of valid inquiry due to implicit ideological commitments (at least according to those making the criticism). To be sure, any attempt to stymie theoretical reflection in the name of ideological or political orthodoxy is rife for criticism; but then again so is political vacuity — or indifference towards the larger social, cultural, historical and ideological forces that also contribute to the context of film. Although some theorists deride attempts to explore the ideological dimensions of film, few would deny that film remains ‘ideological’ in some respects. Indeed, some cognitivists have begun to acknowledge that this remains an important topic to be addressed (see Plantinga 2009a: 12–14). The relationship between the empirical social, economic and historical circumstances of a film’s production or reception within the broader cultural-ideological fields within which we live remains an important question, especially for those pursuing a methodologically pluralist approach.

(4) and (5) Formalism and biases against truth

The complaint concerning so-called ‘biases against truth’ is fair enough, assuming it is true that such theories have the kind of bias attributed to them by their critics. Here the classic critique of ‘Grand Theory’ sometimes runs afoul of caricature in its presentation of such theories, translating their claims in reductive terms, or else construing them as narrowly concerned with problems of interest to contemporary philosophers.4 Nonetheless, Carroll and other critics of ‘Grand Theory’ were right to insist that questions of truth and falsity remain important, provided we do not assume that there is only one paradigm of knowledge — modelled on the natural sciences — that can provide a foundation for philosophizing on film. This is not to deny the importance of scientifically informed theorizing, but to point out that the relationship between philosophical naturalisms and the theorization of art remains a subject of debate. Indeed it is part of what we reflect on when we do philosophy of film.

The important question to be drawn from these remarks on the critique of ‘Grand Theory’ is how the new philosophies of film are to navigate the twin perils of dogmatism (stereotypically attributed to ‘Grand Theory’) and reductionism (stereotypically attributed to analytic-cognitivist theory). On the one hand, theorists within the analytic-cognitivist paradigm sometimes court the risk of assuming a too-narrow conception of what counts as knowledge, thus dismissing alternative ways of thinking about film as mere ‘pseudo-argumentation’. On the other hand, ‘Continental’-inspired theorists can court the danger of reproducing theoretical dogmatism in their assumption of a conceptual framework that is then applied uncritically to various aspects of film. The challenge for the new philosophies of film, therefore, is to steer a successful course between the Scylla of dogmatism and the Charybdis of reductionism. It is to find new ways of synthesizing, rather than dismissing, alternative theoretical frameworks and critical philosophical perspectives.

CARROLL’S DIALECTICAL ...