DEFAMILIARIZATION, DREAMS, AND FRAMES--AN INTRODUCTION

DEFAMILIARIZATION

   
    Many leading theorists have suggested that this is one of the principal distinguishing attributes of genuine art versus mere craft.


    = Making the familiar appear strange.


    Why do so: force us to have to see, hear, think, feel, and otherwise respond to and engage with what we tend not to pay much conscious attention to because this is so commonplace, so seemingly obvious, and so seemingly self-evident.  


    Works versus habitualization of perception.  Habitualization occurs when regular, frequent, routine interaction with something (or someone) tends to render the way we respond to this thing (or person) a matter of habit, something we largely aren’t aware of any more because we have come to accept that we simply don’t have to pay it (the thing or the person) any substantial attention, perhaps because we have become satisfied that we recognize all we need to recognize, or all that is worth recognizing about this thing (or person).  


    Defamiliarization compels us to look with fresh eyes, to hear with fresh ears, to think with fresh thoughts, to feel with fresh feelings–i.e., to stop the process of habitualization and force us actually to see, to hear, to think about, and to feel in relation to something (or someone) rather than simply move right past it.   Defamiliarization forces an intense degree of alertness, and even seeks, beyond this, to promote a sense of wonder.


    How does it do so: by making the familiar look, sound, or feel very different from the way we normally perceive it: i.e., to make it appear strange.  For example: look, hear, feel from very different kind of angle, perspective, or vantage point than normal.  For example: zero in to focus on in much greater detail than normal, or to slow down the pace of perception far beyond what is normal.  For example: to see, hear, feel in new contexts, in new kinds of relations with different kinds of surroundings and surrounding factors, influences, objects, et. al., than we normal expect to associate with this thing (or person). 


    Famous example from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace: depicts how capital punishment, and war, appear and make sense from a horse’s perspective.   In film, it  especially often employed to make us consciously question, reflect upon, experience the sense of being challenged, even provoked and disturbed by, what we see and hear–because what we see and hear doesn’t seem quite right, natural, or normal while still  bearing some strong sense of connection with the latter; defamiliarization in and through film puts the film spectator (and auditor) in the position where she needs to expend effort at investigating, and interpreting to understand what he sees (and hears).   Sparks the following questions among others:  What exactly are we seeing?  From what (or whose) vantage point?  Involving what kinds of internal connections among its various parts?  As part of one kind of larger sequences or series? 


MD  (Mulholland Drive): defamiliarization by compelling us to see and hear first through a dream-(un)consciousness, and then through a severely traumatized, virtual suicidal, near-death waking-consciousness dominated by tortured memories, fantasies, and hallucinations. 


MD: defamiliarization that compels us to consider precisely what kind of relationship we actually bear with what we see and what we hear when we watch and listen to a film–emphasizes that this is all, always, pre-recorded, all, always, illusion, or fabrication, not reality.  In short, compels us to recognize the distinction between representation and reality, and more than this the power of representation to become a new kind of reality, even a super-reality that maintains often greater power than the actual reality that provided its initial source material.  Dreams, illusions, fantasies enormous power for and over us, and these are fabricated and manipulated in ways that aren’t always, by any means, innocent or benevolent.



DREAMS


Disguised fulfillments of unconscious wishes.


Disguised how by means of ‘The Dream Work’:


1.)  Condensation: a larger number of actual phenomena from waking life are represented by a much smaller number of phenomena in the dream world, while the former also converge in the latter to become composites or hybrids.   For example: multiple different people in actual waking life are represented by one person in he dream world.

2.)  Displacement: actual phenomena which are the focus of concern, the source of the dream’s emotional energy, from waking life are represented by different phenomena in the dream world.   For example: the person from actual, waking life that one really wants to get back at is represented in the dream world by a totally different person, especially someone only remotely connected, at best, to the situation that sparks the desire for revenge.

3.) Symbolization: dream-entities are richly resonant with multiple layers of meaning, and simple objects often stand in for complex ideas.  For example: a love-hate relationship toward a specific person might be represented by a shiny polished red stone.

4.) Secondary Revision: this refers to a final scrambling of the superficial appearance of what happens in a dream, in terms of temporal and spatial relationships, so that it is even harder to see what it actually represents, and so that at first to the one who wakes up it seems in many respects quite nonsensical.   For example: dreams may include lots of examples of movements across time and space that are illogical or simply impossible by everyday waking standards, and it may include similar kinds of bizarre, even absurd changes in the size and form of people, or of other beings or objects (a person might shrink or grow gigantic or turn into a dog or a dog into a person).

–>Why all this disguising takes place: because dreams give free play to unconscious desires that it is often difficult to face up to in conscious waking life, and this is because dreams often involve challenges of norms, conventions, and taboos–as well as the return of what we have repressed in conscious life because we don’t like to admit this to ourselves or to others because it is embarrassing, painful, contrary to the ways we are customarily expected, even required, to act and behave.

–>Work of dream-interpretation: take the manifest content of the dream (what appears to happen in and over the course of the dream) and translate this into its latent content (show what this manifest content actually represents–actually means).  For example: show that a seemingly bizarre and absurd narrative about causing trouble people that one doesn’t really bear much hostility toward is actually about resentment over how a best friend has treated one.



FRAMES

    Most important, in a critical approach to making sense of film, is NOT

what we see, BUT how we are invited, and encouraged to see

NOT what we hear, BUT how we are invited, and encouraged to hear

NOT what thoughts are shown or recounted, BUT rather how we are invited, and encouraged to think

NOT what feelings are shown or recounted, BUT rather how we are invited, and encouraged to feel

NOT what beliefs are shown or recounted, BUT rather how we are invited, and encouraged to believe

NOT what actions are shown or recounted, BUT rather how we are invited, and encouraged to act

NOT what behaviors are shown or recounted, BUT rather how we are invited, and encouraged to behave

–> Key in all cases: WAYS of seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, believing, acting, behaving

–> These are figurative ‘frames’: i.e., ways not only of directing and focusing our attention, as well as distracting and preventing it from focusing on what we are ‘not supposed to focus on’, but also of shaping how we will make sense of and respond to what we do see and hear. 

Pay attention to how a film positions you versus what you see and hear: i.e., inquire into how does it encourage you to see, hear, think, feel, etc.?  

Then consider the following issue: If you do see, hear, think, feel, believe, act, and/or behave, in these ways (the ways the film invites and encourages you to), outside of and beyond the time you spend attending to the movie itself, what kind of person will you be? What kinds of relations with yourself, with others, and with the larger world will you pursue?  What kinds of social, and political, ends will you work to advance (whether you consciously realize this is what you are doing or not)?  And what kinds of social, and political, interests will you work to serve (whether you consciously realize this is what you are doing or not)?