Film theory : creating a cinematic grammar

150 Pages·2014·1.25 MB·English

by  Colman

SHORT CUTS
INTRODUCTIONS TO FILM STUDIES
OTHER SELECT TITLES IN THE SHORT CUTS SERIES
THE HORROR GENRE: FROM BEELZEBUB TO BLAIR WITCH Paul Wells THE STAR
SYSTEM: HOLLYWOOD’S PRODUCTION OF POPULAR IDENTITIES Paul McDonald SCIENCE
FICTION CINEMA: FROM OUTERSPACE TO CYBERSPACE Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska
EARLY SOVIET CINEMA: INNOVATION, IDEOLOGY AND PROPAGANDA David Gillespie
READING HOLLYWOOD: SPACES AND MEANINGS IN AMERICAN FILM Deborah Thomas
DISASTER MOVIES: THE CINEMA OF CATASTROPHE Stephen Keane THE WESTERN
GENRE: FROM LORDSBURG TO BIG WHISKEY John Saunders PSYCHOANALYSIS AND
CINEMA: THE PLAY OF SHADOWS Vicky Lebeau COSTUME AND CINEMA: DRESS CODES
IN POPULAR FILM Sarah Street MISE-EN-SCÈNE: FILM STYLE AND INTERPRETATION John
Gibbs NEW CHINESE CINEMA: CHALLENGING REPRESENTATIONS Sheila Cornelius with Ian
Haydn Smith ANIMATION: GENRE AND AUTHORSHIP Paul Wells WOMEN’S CINEMA: THE
CONTESTED SCREEN Alison Butler BRITISH SOCIAL REALISM: FROM DOCUMENTARY TO
BRIT GRIT Samantha Lay FILM EDITING: THE ART OF THE EXPRESSIVE Valerie Orpen
AVANT-GARDE FILM: FORMS, THEMES AND PASSIONS Michael O’Pray PRODUCTION
DESIGN: ARCHITECTS OF THE SCREEN Jane Barnwell NEW GERMAN CINEMA: IMAGES OF
A GENERATION Julia Knight EARLY CINEMA: FROM FACTORY GATE TO DREAM FACTORY
Simon Popple and Joe Kember MUSIC IN FILM: SOUNDTRACKS AND SYNERGY Pauline Reay
MELODRAMA: GENRE, STYLE, SENSIBILITY John Mercer and Martin Shingler FEMINIST FILM
STUDIES: WRITING THE WOMAN INTO CINEMA Janet McCabe FILM PERFORMANCE: FROM
ACHIEVEMENT TO APPRECIATION Andrew Klevan NEW DIGITAL CINEMA: REINVENTING
THE MOVING IMAGE Holly Willis THE MUSICAL: RACE, GENDER AND PERFORMANCE
Susan Smith TEEN MOVIES: AMERICAN YOUTH ON SCREEN Timothy Shary FILM NOIR:
FROM BERLIN TO SIN CITY Mark Bould DOCUMENTARY: THE MARGINS OF REALITY Paul
Ward THE NEW HOLLYWOOD: FROM BONNIE AND CLYDE TO STAR WARS Peter Krämer
ITALIAN NEO-REALISM: REBUILDING THE CINEMATIC CITY Mark Shiel WAR CINEMA:
HOLLYWOOD ON THE FRONT LINE Guy Westwell FILM GENRE: FROM ICONOGRAPHY TO
IDEOLOGY Barry Keith Grant ROMANTIC COMEDY: BOY MEETS GIRL MEETS GENRE Tamar
Jeffers McDonald SPECTATORSHIP: THE POWER OF LOOKING ON Michele Aaron
SHAKESPEARE ON FILM: SUCH THINGS THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF Carolyn Jess-Cooke
CRIME FILMS: INVESTIGATING THE SCENE Kirsten Moana Thompson THE FRENCH NEW
WAVE: A NEW LOOK Naomi Greene CINEMA AND HISTORY: THE TELLING OF STORIES Mike
Chopra-Gant GERMAN EXPRESSIONIST CINEMA: THE WORLD OF LIGHT AND SHADOW Ian
Roberts FILM AND PHILOSOPHY: TAKING MOVIES SERIOUSLY Daniel Shaw
CONTEMPORARY BRITISH CINEMA: FROM HERITAGE TO HORROR James Leggott
RELIGION AND FILM: CINEMA AND THE RE-CREATION OF THE WORLD S. Brent Plate
FANTASY CINEMA: IMPOSSIBLE WORLDS ON SCREEN David Butler FILM VIOLENCE:
HISTORY, IDEOLOGY, GENRE James Kendrick NEW KOREAN CINEMA: BREAKING THE
WAVES Darcy Paquet FILM AUTHORSHIP: AUTEURS AND OTHER MYTHS C. Paul Sellors
THE VAMPIRE FILM: UNDEAD CINEMA Jeffrey Weinstock HERITAGE FILM: NATION, GENRE
AND REPRESENTATION Belén Vidal QUEER CINEMA: SCHOOLGIRLS, VAMPIRES AND GAY
COWBOYS Barbara Mennel ACTION MOVIES: THE CINEMA OF STRIKING BACK Harvey
O’Brien BOLLYWOOD: GODS, GLAMOUR AND GOSSIP Kush Varia THE SPORTS FILM:
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY Bruce Babington THE HEIST FILM: STEALING WITH STYLE Daryl Lee
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND FILM: SPACE, VISON, POWER Sean Carter & Klaus Dodds
FILM THEORY
CREATING A CINEMATIC GRAMMAR
FELICITY COLMAN
A Wallflower Press Book Wallflower Press is an imprint of Columbia University Press Publishers
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Copyright © Felicity Colman 2014
All rights reserved.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Written Matter of a Cinematic Grammar
1 Models
2 Technology
3 Spectators
Conclusion: Film Theory as Practice
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to the students and teachers of film theory that I have worked
with, and all encounters that have helped my thinking on and through this
discipline, especially Angela Ndalianis and Barbara Creed.
Special thanks to Apollonia Zikos, Erin Stapleton, Anna Hickey-Moody,
Roy and Dr Tang, who have helped me immeasurably in vital moments.
Thanks to Yoram Allon, Commissioning Editor at Wallflower Press, for his
tireless support of the discipline of film studies.
INTRODUCTION: THE WRITTEN MATTER OF A CINEMATIC
GRAMMAR
Writing about Werner Herzog’s documentary film Grizzly Man (2005) in
Cineaste magazine, Conrad Geller reminds his readers of one of the
unforgettable scenes of the bear-loving naturalist, Timothy Treadwell.
Geller writes of a moment selected by Herzog from Treadwell’s video
blog, where Timothy is ‘fondling a large pile of bear dung. It was, he says,
produced by one of his familiar bears, Wendy. “It’s still warm” he says
wonderingly. “It was inside of her!”’ Geller characterises this film through
such scenes, later asking ‘Did Treadwell do some good?’ He concludes
that Grizzly Man ‘comes down to a kind of metaphysical debate between
Treadwell and Herzog’ (2005: 52–3).
The type of approach that Geller takes typifies contemporary writing
about film. An affectively resonant scene from a film is re-drawn with
words with emotive emphasis (fondling; wonderingly), a conceptual index
is applied to the film (metaphysical), and a philosophical argument
concerning ethics is drawn in with the question of ‘doing good’. But how
would we describe Geller’s own mode of theorisation? Would we label
him a Marxist theorist as he looks to the relationship between Treadwell’s
social world of film production and that world’s continuation of social
inequities and hierarchies (not the least between man and animal)? Or
would we categorise him using a phenomenological approach, where the
‘encounter’ is deliberately not reduced to representational terms, but can
only be personified in terms of its sensate dimensions (for example, see
Sobchack 2004)? Geller further asks us to consider auteurist theory (see
Bazin 2008), with his equalising reference for both director and film
subject (such as we see in other theoretical accounts of Herzog, such as
Noys 2007). Or should we set up a polemic with Geller, and state that in
fact what he describes is not metaphysical, but more to the point, a post-
metaphysical, realist narrative (such as Ruiz 1995 might suggest), that is,
contingent upon his authorial position as a spectator of the spectacle of
‘beast, man, and nature’? In fact, all of these approximations might be
considered, but there are yet numerous other approaches we could take
to analysing this curious film.
What is film theory?
Film theory is a written interaction with and of the images and objects and
ideas produced in and of film, and the cinema industry. The film theorist
is a transdisciplinary practitioner, a writer of sound-images, connecting
the temporally determining worlds of moving sound-images with the
materiality of writing. The work of these practitioners, as I explore in this
book, creates and utilises a filmic grammar, one specific to the
expression of the cinematographic. This grammar ranges from the
opinionated story about watching a film of choice, to the construction of a
rigorous technical theoretical system of analysis, to the production of
speculative thought, abstract ideas that may or may not be realised. The
theory may be class, race or gender specific, or it may be couched in
broader terms, where ‘everyone’ is a complicit viewer. The grammar can
be enriched through intergenerational, transdisciplinary and
transtechnological research and teaching. Or the grammar shows itself to
be gender-blind, racially impervious, politically, philosophically and
theologically biased, and can be patronisingly colonial and/or patriarchal
in tone.
In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, film theory is still
marked by its medium obsession – look what this new technology can
do!; and look, here is another site of a demolished movie theatre. But, as
much as it must adhere to the restraints of a discipline that went under
the university’s official radar for quite a while, being taught in classes
such as Anthropology, Art History, Enthnography, English, Gender,
Languages, Music, Sociology, Philosophy, film theory has been largely
sidelined by the perceived vocational popularity of Media Studies in
universities, and its fate is ironically somewhat more secure than other
humanities disciplines, many of which from that list have been subject to
cuts in the early twenty-first century (such as Gender Studies
departments). It arrives, and is funded there, along with broadcast media,
animation and games studies, as a technological medium that is
recognised as playing a central role in politics and culture, and which can
reap huge political and economic benefits.1 Meanwhile, as a commercial
industry, filmmaking has shown itself to be forever tied to national funding
models, restrictions of censorship and political ideological impositions, as
the subject of propagandist themes, and the peddler of militarism,