Film Paper Series: The Piracy of the Cinematic

The Piracy of the Cinematic

Today’s cinemaphile has been robbed by the cinematic. Certain perceptive abilities, both psychological and tangible, exist in the present after undergoing an intensive transformation. Over the past century, the cinema has invaded the everyman’s mind while pillaging our neural pathways and corrupting our methods of information acquisition. The very idea that some form of media can be deemed cinematic in nature is evidence of the prevalence of thinking in cinematic terms. Expanding on this idea, media can be cinematic in a variety of ways: television series are strikingly similar to films in narrative style and editing, news show borrow dark and ominous music from the dramatic films, even something a simple as a video game being marketed like a film would easily fall into the cinematic realm. These examples are harmless; the media borrow amongst themselves and always will. The problem here is one media, namely film, encroaching on the inherent appreciation of another. One specific example that displays the aggressive expansion of film into our modes of thought is film’s assault on literature. The way one absorbs and digests the written narrative has been forever altered due to the heavy exposure of the general public to the cinematic. This has a negative affect on how literature can be appreciated, and this is a problem.

Think about reading your favorite novel. How do you picture what you read? Before films came into popular culture, the ideas of the author, transposed into written word, were translated into our minds in a way that was intended by the author. He or she had a story in their mind, created solely by them; that story was meant to be shared with society and was relayed to the reader directly through text. That simple process, providing the over-stressed with an escape, the bored with an adventure and the hopeless romantic with the girl of his dreams; that process was torn open into a circular hole with a square cinematic block shoved in. What, you might ask, is cinematic thinking and how does it affect how I read a book?

The idea of cinematic thinking is similar to the idea that theater affects our behavior or that a painting can skew how we interpret what we see. When someone is acting “dramatic” in a given situation, it is understood that his or her reactions are exaggerated, as a character in a play. When someone gazes upon a Dali masterpiece and sees their personal life reflected in the particular placement of the molten clocks, we understand that they are using the painting as a way to make sense of their confused thoughts. The fact is, those particular pieces of art can have those effects because they are the product of the depths of human imagination; and everyone is going to interpret and react to them differently. Whether fine art, performing art or the cinematic art, what we are actually taking in is the product of one person’s imagination and making it a part of our own subconscious, because it is impossible to take that idea and copy what the author was thinking. The cinematic is a little different because it combines several sensory modes, complicating the information gathering process.

Now that we’re used to synthesizing sound, moving pictures and special effects, with gigantic screens as the exclamation point, let’s go read a book. The problem is, now there is only one mode of idea communication. Written word will never be read the same again. It has become more cinematic, twisted cinematically if you will. Try reading a character description of a middle aged Italian man, with slicked back hair and petting a white cat in the crook of his elbow. Bam! Marlon Brando is in your head and he’s not going away for the entire novel. This is an extreme example, but it is nonetheless more difficult to get a good sense of the physical and behavioral descriptions of a character without casting a famous movie star in their place. Imagine trying to take that description for what the author intended it to be if the novel has been made into a film. It is unlikely that anyone will ever know what the Godfather looked like in Mario Puzo’s mind when he wrote the novel. He envisioned a different character entirely. Don Vito Corleone, as Puzo saw him, is lost forever into the depths of literature’s purgatory; cinema put him there.

The reason why we are so compelled to interpret written narratives with a cinematic mind is because of the vacuum, for lack of a better word, that is created by a film. We, as viewers, get sucked into this void through various holes made by film characters. In What is Cinema? Andre Bazin wrote that, “Characters on film are objects of identification.” (Braudy 348) This idea scratches the surface. Characters are the human element in the cinematic, and therefore the method of association. Basically, there is our entrance into the narrative paved with golden bricks. Our emotions are twisted and our heartstrings pulled as a single unit, an idea broached by Mr. Bazin in the essay listed above. “film renders the audience a mass with uniform emotion.”(Braudy 349) Now that we have all screened the movie, seen the character and felt what we were supposed to feel, we will skip the character description in the novel because we are now handicapped to the point where we cannot think creatively, as intended by the author. This is not to say that only the novels made into movies are tainted, Literature as an art has lost its appeal to the individual. ()

So why is cinema such a powerful force, able to break into our minds and scramble our sensory perception? Sigfried Kracauer might be able to give us some insight. In his essay, Theory of Film, he discusses film’s methods of establishing physical existence. According to theorist Kracauer, the cinema has several inherent abilities to capture physical reality. Cinema, as the essay points out, is especially adept at revealing, to name a few, “Things normally unseen, blind spots of the mind and special modes of reality.” (Braudy 262-272) Elaborating on what Kracauer thought of film’s abilities, I would assert that these potent cinematic skills make the viewer lazy. So lazy, in fact, that the viewer becomes incapable of analytical thought outside of the cinema. Because we cannot live our entire lives in the movie theater, we must occasionally take in information and decipher it ourselves.

Returning to the literature example, now we have a better understanding of the basic problem. Literature does not blatantly reveal things normally unseen, it does so poetically. We must read the story, and figure out what is going on in between the lines. This is subtext, and it is difficult to gather from the written word, especially if one is used to the omniscient view from the theater seat. In other words, cinema grabs the audience by the chin, points them in the right direction and says: “Look there! That is the refuse of human existence!” Now you cannot reasonably expect the same person to take up a piece of literature, ripe with the creative effluent of a brilliant mind, and expect them to draw the same conclusions. Such is the aftermath of the cinematic assault.

Realistically speaking though, one can only develop a cinematic mindset if one has been exposed to the cinema, or at least the cinematic represented in another media. Jean Baudrillard, the cultural theorist and philosopher, not the photographer, said, “Where is the cinema? It is all around you outside, all over the city, that marvelous, continuous performance of films and scenarios. Everywhere but here.” (America 56) Everywhere but here. Cinema is certainly not physically there when one is reading a novel. In fact, it is rarely there, but the cinematic will always be present as its residue. Baudrillard, being the late blooming believer in post-modern theoretics that he was, is commenting on the powerful intertextuality that film exerts on other media. You do not even need to see a movie anymore to be infected by the cinematic. Just watch TV or listen to a film’s soundtrack.

Allow me to reiterate, there is a problem with our post-modern world. Intertextuality is fine, but in the hands of the cinematic, it is an unstoppable force. Poor, poor literature, doomed as you are to the merciless and unrelenting spread of filmy thinking; we shall know your author’s innermost creative soul nevermore.

Source:

Bazin, André, and Vsevolod Pudovkin. "What Is Cinema?" Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. 41-53. Print.

Film Paper Series: Form and Meaning in Jaws (1975)

Form and Meaning in Jaws (1975)

Many films are produced with specific goals in mind regarding how the film’s director would like to affect the intended audience. More often than not, a narrative film seeks to cause a certain emotional reaction in the viewer. It follows reason that the stronger the emotional reaction, the more exciting and, therefore, the more interesting the film. Whether a film director wants to attract more paying customers or hit that much harder on a hot-button issue, the ultimate goal is to make the audience feel more strongly the target emotions expressed by the film. More specifically, it is the emotional swing (from one extreme to the other) that hits more effectively since creating a simple emotion is fairly easy. The method one uses to control the viewer’s emotions does vary, and since the early 1900’s, film scholars have developed two of the more popular schools of thought on the subject: a focus on editing and a focus on the mise-en-scene. These two schools, or paradigms governing how one could approach the twisting of emotions, each have radically different ideals and are both employed by Steven Spielberg in his blockbuster Jaws. The idea here, in this paper, is to address both of these paradigms in order to arrive at a better understanding of how Spielberg affected, on his audience, an emotional swing from sympathy and security to anxiety and terror.

One scene from Jaws in particular can act as a microcosm of the methods used in the entire film because it offers a blend of montage editing and careful attention to the mise-en-scene. The scene begins with an establishing shot of a large boat in complete darkness with a bright searchlight emanating out into the ocean. Chief Brody and Matt Hooper are the sole occupants of the boat and are out hunting for the infamous killer shark. Earlier that day, some amateur hunters from Amity captured a shark, which they believed to be responsible for all of the terror the small town had experienced recently. Hooper strongly believes, citing scientific evidence, that the captured shark was not responsible for the killings, thus he and Chief Brody have taken it upon themselves to venture out into the night to look for the real killer.

It is obvious from the beginning of the scene that the search initiative lies in Mr. Hooper’s hands because Brody is shown in the first shot of the scene to be rambling drunkenly. He was convinced by Hooper in the previous scene to go out on the water, something he hates to do. On the boat the audience views him from on high through a camera angled down at him while he slurs about “making a difference in Amity”. He stumbles around the deck while the camera pans to follow him and his wine bottle, instead of cutting to new angles, in order to emphasize the stumbling. The cumulative effect is that Brody is in a very powerless position. Spielberg contrasts this feeling of powerlessness by cutting immediately to Hooper as he dismisses Brody’s ramblings and offers him a pretzel. The medium close up of Hooper is shown through an upward angled camera so the Hooper is above Brody. There is a strong feeling that Hooper is in complete control, both over Brody and, by extension, over the safety of the audience. Hooper knows what he is doing and as long as he sits at the helm, Brody (the audience) is safe from any underwater creature. The director decides to underline this feeling with the long take aesthetic instead of a rigorous shot/reverse shot method as he films the ensuing, and information rich, conversation that follows. Film scholar André Bazin would have loved this approach because he believes that, “The camera cannot see everything at once, but it makes sure not to lose any part of what it chooses to see.”(Film p.44) Spielberg understands that the conversation, taking place at the helm, is far more important than anything happening around the boat, and he wants to make sure that the audience does not lose any part of what the camera is seeing. After Brody climbs up to the pilot’s level of the boat to join Hooper, the conversation is shot in a single take at a medium distance. The conversation covers why Hooper is able to have so many high-tech gadgets on a boat and the reason is because he is a wealthy man from a wealthy family. The conversation takes about 30 seconds, quite a long time for a single take in an action/suspense film. Throughout the conversation Brody learns that Hooper is simple a rich man who loves to devote his time and resources to his fascination with sharks. We learn that he’s not being paid to chase sharks; he does it because he loves it. These qualities in Hooper reinforce the idea that he is competent and reliable and will not let anything happen to Brody, reassuring the audience that he (they) are safe from any scary sharks at the moment. There is a recurring theme that sutures the audience’s feelings with Brody because they are being “led” through the same psychological rigors that he is. Brody is no shark expert and is terrified of the sea, so it is up to Hooper to make him (us) feel safe. Hooper isn’t even wearing a life vest in this part of the scene while Brody is. He is clearly the expert while Brody is the vulnerable character.

It is important to mention, as a side note, the use of sound during this scene. In previous scenes, when the director wanted to put a feeling of unease out into the audience, it was usually accompanied with ominous music in the background. The absence of that music, along with the constant sounds coming from the boat’s engine, is an indicator that no one is about to be eaten. The idea of the boat’s engine being reassuring may be a stretch, but can be related psychologically to the universal fear of the dark. When we think back to childhood, the scariest part of sleeping in the dark was most likely the silence. This effect was easily negated by a large ceiling fan, perhaps, that provided a background noise to ease away the random creaking of a house for example. The sound of the engine in the background is no mistake and it serves a purpose here of adding to the feeling of safety that Spielberg conveys through his actors and his set.

The end of Brody and Hooper’s conversation marks a third of the way through the scene under analysis. Spielberg has done a wonderful job heretofore of making the audience, sympathetic with Chief Brody, feel completely at ease. The lack of ominous music as well as the continuous chugging of Hooper’s boat has had a reassuring effect as well. That is all about to change as Hooper’s aptly named instrument “the fishfinder” starts beeping. A quick check by Hooper confirms his suspicion as he says, “There’s something else out there.” Cue close ups, montage editing and the ominous music. It would seem, at this point in the scene, that Spielberg decided he did not like the ideas of Bazin anymore (as have many other in various periods of the last few decades) and taken up the beliefs of scholars Vsevolod Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein, the former having written: “The compulsory and deliberate guidance of the thoughts and associations of the spectator is editing.”(Film p.10) Indeed the director picks up the frequency of cuts and zooms in on important features within the scene to guide the audience’s emotions through the more action packed part of the scene. More specifically, the rate of cutting before Hooper’s line about “something being out there” was doubled in the action afterward. A blunt mathematical analysis can still offer important information about the pace of the scene. As Hooper acknowledges the presence of something in the water and the ominous music begins, so stops the reassuring presence of the engine chugging. The first close-up of the two characters together begins the change in editing technique. They are framed with nothing but blackness in the background, completely alone. Brody and Hooper are now floating in the middle of the sea, having found a deserted fishing boat, and the silence within the diegesis emphasizes their lonliness, while the music they cannot hear makes the audience start to cringe for the unexpected.

Spielberg also begins to cut from inside the boundaries of the boat to a long distance away to show the searchlight scanning the water. The viewer’s eyes are directed to the location of the spotlight so that they are searching along with the characters. The act of searching is a way to begin the process of building tension. There are even a few titillating details, like a floating barrel, to increase the anxiety to find what the characters are looking for. After finally locating the deserted fishing boat, there are several cuts that depict Hooper’s boat in the background with the apparently damaged boat in the foreground. This arrangement gives the searchlight the opportunity to shine in the audience’s eyes rather brightly. Frustrating the audience was the obvious design of the camera placement because we could just as easily have looked on the new boat from the character’s point of view. As if to relieve this frustration, Spielberg cuts to a view of the fishing boat from Hooper’s boat, but Hooper is standing right in front of the camera! Placing a character in between the viewer and the object of interest was, again, no accident and a recurring theme (leit motif) that Spielberg employed in the whole film to affect a surge of frustration in a given scene.

If the feeling of security amongst the audience was not getting shaky by this point, it was certainly erased when the realization hits that Hooper is going out into the water. In a bit of foreshadowing, the audience gets another view from the abandoned boat with the searchlight focused on an obvious bite mark on the hull. We now know that the shark has definitely attacked the boat and even eaten part of it. As Hooper dons his underwater gear, the cut frequency increases even more as he plunges into the dark water. It is in a curious fashion that the underwater segment of the scene is shown. The audience does not take on Hooper’s point of view, but gazes upon him from several feet away. This is probably because the director wants the audience to be free to look out into the dark water and expect the worst. The worst happens as Hooper finds what he is looking for: A hole bitten out of the side of the boat with a shark’s tooth lodged in. As Hooper examines the tooth the audience gets another opportunity to examine the black abyss behind him before he looks again at the hole. With our attention temporarily off of the shark and looking along with Hooper for another tooth or similar clue, Spielberg abandons subtlety altogether. Unexpectedly, a dead body floats into view accompanied by a shrieking high-pitched sound designed to strike the terror that Hooper is feeling directly into our hearts. So ends the scene.

By the end of the scene, Steven Spielberg has taken his audience from one emotional extreme to the other. He built up our faith in the expertise of Mr. Hooper and our security in the safety of both him and Chief Brody. As Hooper emerges from the water gasping for air, even with the absence of the actual shark, our security is shattered and we fear for both of their lives. It was the clever combination of long takes in the beginning and quick cuts in the end that swung our emotions from one side to the other in order to hammer in the idea that this shark is dangerous and we should all be afraid of it.

Source:

Bazin, André, and Vsevolod Pudovkin. "What Is Cinema?" Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. 41-53. Print.