English 190, Section 002, Introduction to Film  

Spring 2002, UWEC, Professor Bob Nowlan

INITIAL QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: REPRESENTATION AND REALITY, NARRATIVE AND FILM

    Since many of your responses were either too skimpy to convey to me much sense that you understood the concepts these questions asked or seemed otherwise quite limited and problematic, I'm taking the time to write out what I minimally expect you to grasp in relation to each of these four sets of questions.  I suggest a number of you need to take the time to read the material much more carefully than you have.  Also, it is often extremely important in confronting new ideas to take time to read through the exposition of these ideas several times.  One reading, especially a quick and cursory one, is rarely enough.  When I eventually ask you questions that will require you to employ these concepts in papers and exams, I will expect you to employ the concepts accurately; you will need to understand them fully and precisely.  Please let me know if you do not.

1.    How does Robert Kolker challenge the way many film goers routinely use the label "realistic" in judging how good (or bad) a film happens to be?

    The Problem with "Realistic" as an Evaluative Criterion for Judging How "Good" or "Bad" a Film Is => All films provide a representation of reality; none simply show us "reality" in and of itself.  We have no access to "reality" other than through representations, yet all representations only provide us single, particular perspectives upon, and, more than this, single, particular re-constructions and trans-formations of reality.  Representations show us images of reality (and even a mirror image is not, of course, an exact duplication of the object it mirrors).  They stand in for, they take the place of reality, they are not the "thing itself."  That is why they are RE-presentations.  Think of it this way: a word represents a thing, but is a word the same as the thing? An elected official represents us, but is he or she us?  Obviously not. Film representations are NOT identical with what they represent either.

    Kolker suggests most people use the label "realistic" uncritically, even lazily, to refer to a particular style or mode of representation that doesn't seem like a representation, but instead seems like reality itself (even though it is not).  When these people use "realistic," therefore, they are blind to the fact that what they are seeing is not necessarily a closer or better rendering of "the real," but rather simply one way of looking at, and one way of re-presenting reality, one that has become so conventional, so commonplace, so culturally predominant that many of us don't recognize it as a way of looking at and re-presenting the real, but rather take it to be the only possible, or simply the unquestioned best, way of doing this.

    "Realistic" film making involves as much manipulation as any other kind, but most film audiences have been in effect so thoroughly familiarized with "realistic" ways of looking and thinking that they don't recognize they are being manipulated by this kind of film making.

    The problem, in sum, with using "realistic" is that it suggests we can simply look through film onto reality itself (like a window), i.e., that some kinds of film - "realistic" films - involve no process of construction/ manipulation/ fabrication, but simply show us The Truth, rather than one particular kind of truth.  This is, in fact, NOT the case at all: all representations of reality provide particular takes on the aspects or dimensions of reality that they represent, and show what these look like from particular vantage points, as well as in accordance with how these pictures of "reality" advance particular ends and serve particular interests - and this includes so-called "realistic" representations.

    When people commonsensically use "realistic" to describe a film they often in fact are simply saying the film shows them an image of reality that they have become thoroughly accustomed to seeing on and through the medium of film, and one which also tends, most often, to represent the culturally and ideologically dominant way of looking at what it represents; we take this so-called "realistic" image for "Reality" because we fail to recognize it as a re-construction and trans-formation of the reality it represents, and because the so-called "realistic" representation seems so much like what we have been everywhere most often told - and shown - "reality" is supposed to look like.

    After all, every film provides, at the most basic, a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world, and all we really see when we watch a film are projections of patterns of light, alternating with extensive amounts of darkness.  In fact, projected film images don't themselves even move; our eyes and our brain imagine these move.

    Kolker wants us to think about how what we see on the screen, as well as on a television or computer monitor, has been put together, and what particular point of view, vantage point, or perspective this representation of the real reflects.  In other words, all films (like all other human modes of representation) are biased: all represent an interested, and, as such, far from neutral position; the key for us is to inquire critically into how they are biased, from where this bias comes, toward where it leads, and to decide to what extent we find this bias compelling - as an argument for a position, and as a critique of other positions (even if this argument and critique is, as is most often the case, largely indirect, implicit, and even unconscious to the film makers themselves).

2. What, following Kolker, has film to do with "culture" and with "ideology"? In other words, how is what both film makers produce as well as what film audiences perceive a product of culture and of ideology?

    The ideas of what to represent, the ways in which we represent these things, and the reasons we represent what we do as we do in films are all products of the cultures in which we live and out of which we develop our ideas, our values, our attitudes, and our ways of thinking, feeling, believing, acting, interacting, and behaving.  What's more, our cultures provide us with the kinds and levels of artistic and technical resources with which we work in making films - as well as with which we work in responding to and making sense of them.  Nobody makes a film or responds to a film as someone who comes from or lives in or has been brought up in a world all of his/her own: we make films and we respond to films as a result of who we are, what we have been, where we are located, and what we do within our particular cultures.

    The organized, systematic ways of making sense that our cultures teach us concerning who we are, whom others are, where we are at, what is good and bad, what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is desirable and undesirable, what is possible and impossible and so on and so forth - that we all work with all the time - are called "ideologies."  All films reflect and respond to specific ideologies.  Ideologies are among the most powerful and significant forces within a culture - and since all films originate and develop within particular cultures and represent particular cultural ideals, values, outlooks, and perspectives, it should be no surprise that they also represent particular ideologies, which are, again, the most elaborate, systematic, comprehensive, coherent, and powerful conglomerations of ideals, values, outlooks, and perspectives within particular cultures. 

    Kolker wants us to examine the ways in which films always emanate from particular cultural positions and perspectives, while at the same time always representing particular ideologies.  Uncritical approaches to film rarely consider these questions.

3. What, following William H. Phillips, does it seem are some of the most common elements of narrative structure in film? How, again following Phillips, does it seem Classical Hollywood cinemas tend to arrange these elements? What are some ways in which alternative kinds of film making break with this conventional Hollywood style of story-telling?

    Characters, Goals, Conflicts => These should be extremely familiar concepts, yet it is important to pay attention to specifically how all of these factors work in a film.  For instance, how does a film work to construct its characters so that we get to know what they are like, what drives or motivates them, and how they relate to each other?

    To take another example: what specific goals do these characters pursue?  How?  Why?  Do They Change?  Do these goals come into Conflict with the goals of other characters?  Do Characters Pursue Conflicting Goals?

    Also, further, how does the plot develop in relation to the emergence, unfolding, complicating, crystallizing, intensifying, climaxing, resolving, ending, overcoming -- and/or dissipating, suspending, and retreating from resolution - of CONFLICTS?

    Phillips tells us that we can study how a film is structured in terms of what story it tells us and, even much more important than this, how it tells this story to us, by carefully analyzing the film's use of characters, goals, and conflicts.

    Beginnings, Middles, Endings => These concepts again make ready sense, but what we still need to ask, in approaching film critically, is what happens in each of these three parts?  How long is each?  Are they elaborated in a simple, straightforward kind of order - i.e., beginning followed by middle followed by ending - or does the film tell its story in a more complicated fashion than this?  Does the film end with closure, or is it open-ended?  Does the film begin in way that carefully and thoroughly prepares and orients the spectator, or does it throw the spectator into the middle of a puzzle and challenge the spectator to figure out what's going on, and what it all means?

    Plotlines => These are different "substories" within the overall "story" of the film as a whole, often intersecting and coming together at the end, but not always.  Take The Big Sleep , for example.  All of the following, and more, are plotlines within this film: Marlowe's pursuit of the blackmailers, The flurry of murders that develops shortly after he begins the case, The disappearance of Sean Regan, Mrs. Routledge's relationship with Eddie Mars, Marlowe's developing relationship with Mrs. Routledge, the friendship of Marlowe and Bernie Ohls, Jonesy's story, etc.  Obviously some of these are (much) larger and more central in importance than others, yet, as is characteristic of films based upon Raymond Chandler's novels and stories, The Big Sleep nevertheless is a good example of the use of multiple plotlines, and how these can all relate together in quite complicated, and often confusing ways - challenging us, again, to exercise our minds as we watch and listen to the film.

    Classical Hollywood Narrative Style => Typically, classical Hollywood narratives end with closure.  Typically, the main characters succeed, often against enormous odds, in achieving their goals.  Typically, the conflicts are all clearly resolved at the end.  Typically, the heroes are drawn from one or at most a select few individuals (who, even if seemingly at first quite "ordinary" usually demonstrate the ability to perform fairly "extraordinary" kinds of feats).  Typically, the film is made so as to focus our attention on character and plot to the point where we are strongly encouraged to lose ourselves in the story and forget we are watching a film while we are watching it.  In other words, we are encouraged not to reflect upon how the film has been constructed - how it has been put together - as we watch it, at least not as we watch it the first time.  Typically, moreover, even with flashbacks, and occasionally with flashforwards, and even with multiple, parallel, and intersecting plotlines, the classical Hollywood narrative film moves in a largely linear-sequential, progressive, chronological fashion while the beginning, middle, and ending are all ultimately fairly easy to discern.

    Alternatives to Classical Hollywood Narrative Style => Memento and Following are examples of alternatives.  Both tell their stories out of chronological order, and both, especially Memento, lack a full, final, decisive sense of closure.  What's more, the protagonists are not necessarily "the heroes," and their perspectives, although dominant and all that we have to follow along with for much of the film, are not necessarily reliable.  Also, these films are both deliberately designed to provoke us to think about the fact that we are watching something that has been put together, and to recognize we have to figure things out ourselves, not simply just think and feel as we are cued.  In it's own way, The Big Sleep is also a relatively quite challenging film too: so much is going on that we may not easily take it all in, or figure out how it all fits together, without watching the film multiple times, much is actually left unresolved at the end, and the main characters are complex and contradictory, often not what they initially seem while never collapsing into mere one-dimensional, cardboard stereotypes.  Furthermore, by definition, the noir world is one that is far too vast, complex, chaotic, threatening, and disturbing for any central character to master it all by himself or herself alone; the struggle to survive and do the right thing, when this is very hard to figure out and when what it means to do this continually shifts, is commonplace in most noir films - and this is one reason they are widely considered among the most complex and challenging of classical Hollywood film narratives.

4. Again, following Phillips, how would you say that films manipulate time by using flashforwards and flashbacks, as well as by contrasting plot versus fabula, and running time versus story time?

    Flashforwards => Show us what will happen in the future of the film's story world, i.e., show this to us before it actually happens, foreshadowing its eventual occurrence.

    Flashbacks => Show us what happened in the past of the film's story world, i.e., before the "present" time in the film's story world.

    Plot versus Fabula => The plot refers to everything from the story that we see happen and in the order that it does happen over the duration of the film's running time; the fabula, in contrast, refers to everything that must have happened in the film's fictional story world in the chronological order that it must have happened.  We see plots; we mentally reconstruct fabulas by recognizing how a film uses flashbacks, flashforwards, and ellipses (the cutting out of a significant amount of time that would have actually transpired in the fictional story world between one event or occasion and another) in telling its story to us.

    Running Time versus Story Time => Most fictional feature films today run approximately an average of two hours, yet few tell us stories about what happens over only two hours of time.  The two-hour film may well tell us a story about what happened over many years' time.  It is important to pay attention to what parts of the story the film does include in the plot, what parts it leaves out, which parts get emphasis and attention and which are passed over quickly, as well as how the film lets us know what happened over significant expanses of time that we do not see represented on screen.

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