An Introduction to the Problematics of “Realism”
    in Film, Video, and Moving-Image Culture

    Print Lecture

    Bob Nowlan


    “Realism” in film, video, and moving-image culture is a far more complex issue than most of us, likely, commonsensically imagine it to be.  


    To begin, as Timothy Corrigan recommends, in A Short Guide to Writing About Film, it is important “to be suspicious of realism in the movies” (48), recognizing that film makers always construct what we perceive as “reality” in film, and, more than this, that “realism” is “relative” to different–and changing–conventions across time and place (i.e., what seems ‘realistic’ to one kind of audience at one place and time will not seem so to a different audience at a different place and time).  As Corrigan indicates, moving-image productions exert great power over us in fabricating “the illusion of realism” (47) , much more so than theater, which we tend much more readily to recognize as involved in fabrication.  


    The problem with "realistic," therefore, as an evaluative criterion for judging how "good" or "bad" a film is results from the fact that 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.


    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 tend to be 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 this 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 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" uncritically in relation to film is that use of this term often suggests we can simply look through film onto reality itself (like we do through 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 reality, and all we actually 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.


    At the same time, however, once we move past commonsensical understandings of realism, we can make productive use of “realism” to discuss particular kinds of approaches and aims in the history of film, video, and moving-image culture production.  Gill Branston and Roy Stafford in The Media Student’s Book (London: Routledge, 2003) offer us a good starting point for this critical approach to realism: “realism is an aesthetic construct, produced by means of recognisable codes and conventions which change over time” and “there is no single ‘realism’” as “different cultures and different contexts produce different ‘realisms’” (447).  Although all re-presentations of reality offer exactly that--representations, not replications--it certainly is possible to make a compelling case that different kinds of representations can, and do, represent the aspects or dimensions of ‘reality’ that they address in more versus less accurate and adequate ways.  Realism in fact represents a vitally important, and indeed a highly honorable, aim in film, video, and moving-image culture production: an attempt to help us better know, understand, explain, and act to better the ‘reality’ of which we are a part and which otherwise surrounds–and shapes–us.   Historically, in literature, theatre, and film, realist movements have very often been motivated by a strong desire to expose problems and limitations in existing social reality so as to inspire needed social change in order to solve these problems and overcome these limitations.  Realisms have also been strongly motivated by an ethical scientific impulse–to better understand natural (including human social) reality so as to enable us to relate to it better, and thereby to better the quality of lives we, as human beings, can live.  


    In the history of world cinema, a number of major kinds–or movements--of ‘realism’ can be cited, as Branston and Stafford do in chapter seventeen of The Media Student’s Book.   Let’s work with what they recount, and add a little here and there to flesh out this picture.  


    First, we have “Hollywood realism.”  This kind of realism depends upon “transparency” of form, invisibility of construction, and enticement of the spectator into the illusion of entering a seemingly internally consistent, seemingly life-like fictional world for the duration of the spectator’s direct engagement with the film.  The major focus here is to do everything possible to prevent the spectator from thinking about the fact that he or she is watching a movie while he or she is doing it, and, especially, that this movie is something that has been constructed out of various materials, according to various techniques and conventions, and in very different times, places, and media than superficially seems to be the case.   Audiences are encouraged to ‘suspend disbelief’ and ‘lose themselves in the illusion’.   Hollywood realism depends a great deal, in general, upon narrative continuity and, especially, upon continuity editing.   At the same time, the overriding goal of Hollywood film is entertainment, and, overwhelmingly, as a result, Hollywood films tend to represent moderate to conservative, mainstream, commonsensical, ideologically predominant kinds of American values and perspectives–such as focusing on the actions of a limited number of exceptional individual heroes and villains who are often only loosely connected with and defined by particular social positions.   In the “course description” section of our course syllabus I’ve offered further examples of some of the typical ways that Hollywood tends (overwhelmingly) to endorse, and to further, dominant, mainstream (American) values and perspectives (even without this being the conscious, deliberate aim of the film makers).   We will also take this issue up and explore it in further depth later in this course.
 

    Second, we have “Social realism.”   This kind of realism has developed much more substantially outside of the U.S., at least outside of Hollywood, and as Branston and Stafford indicate, (at least in the case of British social realism) maintains the following features:

1.)    Films are set in “recognisable authentic locations, usually industrial cities.”

2.)    Use of “authentic regional dialects and cultural references.”

3.)    Use of “non-professional actors (although often other kinds of performers such as comedians) or actors who are associated primarily with this kind of work.”

4.)    Focus on “narratives based on the hardships of social disadvantage.”

5.)    Focus on “lead characters who are ‘ordinary’ and working class.”

6.)    Reliance upon an “‘observational’, ‘documentary’ style of camerawork.”

7.)    Encouragement of a “‘spontaneous’ naturalistic acting style.”

8.)    Showing characters walking in and out of the frame as well as overlapping each other in dialogue.  (453)

    
    Third, we have so-called “Direct Cinema” and “Cinéma Vérité,” otherwise known, colloquially, as the “fly on the wall” approach to documentary.   As Branston and Stafford describe, “the simple premise of this approach is that a camera and microphone are as close to events as possible and that the film or tape is running continuously” so that “everything that happens is recorded” (454).   These film and video makers sought, as far as possible, to be unobtrusive, to avoid becoming part of the scene or to cause subjects to play to the camera; as leading direct cinema auteur Frederick Wiseman did especially strikingly in his work, all of these film and video makers deliberately strived to act as if they were “part of the furniture” and to “capture” rather than “create” images (Branston and Stafford 455).   Of course, as Branston and Stafford recount, throughout the history of documentary film and video, this has been only one established approach to non-fictional film making: such “observational” approaches have always competed with and been contested by “expository,” “interactive,” and “reflexive” approaches–as well as “performative” ones (460)–along with hybrid forms such as “drama-doc” and “docudrama” (462).   What’s more, documentary theory does not endorse the “fly on the wall” approach as necessarily simply “better,” let alone simply “more truthful,” than any of these other approaches.


    Fourth, we have cinematic “Neo-Realism.”  As Branston and Stafford point out, this mode of realism reflects the influence of theorist André Bazin, who argued that “realism in art can only be achieved one way–through artifice” (Quoted in Branston and Stafford 462), and that therefore it is necessary to start with a clear recognition of the fact that “realism is about a set of conventions–or rather, sets of conventions since different realisms use different conventions” (462).  Italian Neo-Realism, which flourished in the immediate aftermath of World War II and which has proven highly influential to many subsequent realist movement in film making since, worked with low budgets, location shooting, and non-professional actors while also giving considerable emphasis not only to long and extreme long shots but also to deep focus and long takes.  As Branston and Stafford recount, the specific formal choices that Italian Neo-Realist film makers made worked to emphasize, and to help convey, their politically progressive populist outlook and perspective on the social issues they represented.  Likewise the same is true of the African, Latin American, Iranian, Chinese, and British instances of ‘Neo-Realism’ that Branston and Stafford briefly cite as well.  


    Continuing their discussion of Neo-Realism, Branston and Stafford proceed to discuss Dogme 95 (which we have talked about in relation to Lars Von Trier) as a contemporary instance of Neo-Realism.   And on pages 467-468 Branston and Stafford reproduce the famous “vow of chastity” to which the Dogme 95 film makers committed themselves.   As Branston and Stafford indicate, the emphasis of Dogme 95 on rawness and authenticity, as well as on addressing social issues as a key concern, while eschewing Hollywood-style excess, allows this movement to fit within the category of Neo-Realism.   Classifying Dogme 95 in this way might prove a bit confusing to some of you, though, given our earlier discussion of the links between Brechtian theory and Dogme 95 cinema.   It might seem that Brecht’s denaturalizing theatre–and a similar Brechtian kind of denaturalizing cinema–would be hard to classify as ‘realist’, even as ‘neo-realist’.   But here, I want to make another important point about realism, and, then, subsequently, to introduce a further distinction between ‘realism’ and ‘naturalism’.   


    First, if a film is ‘realistic’ this can mean that it enables us accurately and/or adequately to understand, and appreciate, some aspect or dimension of ‘reality’.   This aspect or dimension may not be something which is superficially apparent, something empirical that we directly perceive by way of our senses, but it may, nonetheless, at the same time, be very much real–it may be something of a different kind of level or quality of reality (such as an ‘emotional reality’) or it may represent an essence not just an appearance or a collective category not just an individual instance or an abstract dimension of the real as opposed to a concrete one (for example, social class is a “real” entity, but not one that we directly perceive by way of our senses, as what we do perceive by way of our senses are instances of social relations which testify to, and which manifest, the existence of something which unites them all in common that we call ‘social class’).   My point here is that a film which may not present a ‘like-like’ set of superficial appearances may be in other respects far more ‘realistic’ than one that looks, sounds, and feels just like something we might readily encounter in the actual world outside of the cinema.   Indeed, Bertolt Brecht saw himself as working to conceive and produce a highly ‘realist’ kind of theatre.  Brecht argued that ‘realism’ is ultimately not a matter of a singular set of appearances, or a singular set of forms and conventions to represent these appearances, but something of a fundamentally different nature altogether:


    Our conception of realism needs to be broad and political, free from aesthetic restrictions and independent of convention.  Realist means: laying bare society’s causal network/showing up the dominant viewpoint as the viewpoint of the dominators/writing from the standpoint of the class which has prepared the broadest solutions for the most pressing problems afflicting human society/emphasizing the dynamics of development/concrete and so as to encourage abstraction.   It is a tall order, and it can be made taller.  And we shall let the artist apply all his imagination, all his originality, his sense of humour and power of invention to its fulfillment.  We will not stick to unduly detailed literary models or force the artist to follow over-precise rules for telling a story. . . . Methods wear out, stimuli fail.  New problems loom up and demand new techniques.  Reality alters; to represent it the means of representation must alter too . . . . The oppressors do not always appear in the same mask.   The masks cannot always be stripped off in the same way . . . .  Anybody who is not bound by formal prejudices knows that there are many ways of suppressing truth and many ways of stating it . . . .  One cannot decide if a work is realist or not by finding out whether it resembles existing, reputedly realist works which must be counted realist for their time.  In each individual case the picture given must be compared, not with another picture, but with the actual life portrayed.   And likewise where popularity is concerned there is a wholly formalistic procedure that has to be guarded against.  The intelligibility of a work of literature is not ensured by its being written in exactly the same way as other works which people have understood.  These other works too were not invariably written just like the works before them.  Something was done towards their understanding.  In the same way we must do something for the understanding of new works.  Besides being popular there is such a thing as becoming popular.   (Bertolt Brecht, “The Popular and the Realistic,” in Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans. by John Willett, New York: Hill & Wang, 1964, pp. 108-110, 111, and 112.)  
 

    Brecht here aims for, and endorses a conception and practice (of political) “realism,” which can be conceived of as seeking to produce a true representation, and thereby a true understanding and appreciation, of reality.  This is not the same as “naturalism,” which attempts to convey a representation that looks, sounds, and feels just like the actual world outside of the work of art–or as close as conceivably possible–at the level of superficial, empirical appearances.  “Naturalism” gives us an appearance that looks, sounds, and feels just like we would expect the same kind of thing naturally to look, sound, and feel like in the actual world, and, especially, in ordinary, everyday life.  Naturalism strives to project an aura of ‘capturing’ ‘live’ something that, even though we ultimately know it is fiction, seems like it is not–seems that it is non-fiction, that it is actual ‘reality’ happening immediately right in front of us.  Realism takes a distance from naturalism and doesn’t necessarily immediately, superficially, empirically look, sound, feel, or act like anything we would actually expect to encounter in the actual real world outside of the artistic medium itself.   


    It is possible to make a strong case, therefore, that even the seemingly most ‘fantastical’ or ‘bizarre’ of films we have screened to date this semester maintain at least strongly “realistic” elements–films such as Mulholland Drive, The Devil’s Backbone, Happy Together, and Dogville.   However, none of these four could rightfully be characterized as “naturalistic.”   But, it is possible to contend that The Return, The Celebration, Bloody Sunday, Elephant, and Night and Fog are all, in many (but not all) respects, substantially naturalistic as well as realistic films.