Psychoanalytic Film Criticism

[matrixschmatrix]

Oh, man, I was recommended Benjamin's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction essay on another forum in the context of the idea of fascist filmmaking and aesthetics when I was like a sophomore in college, and I don't think I have ever been so thoroughly baffled in trying to get through something. Though it's actually been something fairly important in my conception of the world, full of ideas I reference pretty often (for all that I think that Benjamin is fundamentally wrong that one's interaction with mass and reproducible artwork can't attain an aura of its own.)

I do think there are times when people with interesting ideas wind up being shut down because they can't contextualize them into one school of thought or another- the 'if you haven't read Schopenhauer, you can't possibly have anything to add' device- which is obviously elitist in a really problematic way and generally a dull way to approach conversation. I can't say that's something I've seen here particularly often, though.

[knives]

I have to agree with Dom. I don't read much philosophy because most of the thinkers are awful writers, but Benjamin has a talent with letters better than most professional authors. His stuff is nearly poetry and his work on Kafka is probably the best anything I've ever read and the basis of so much of my thought since college. He's the guy I go to to make sense of the stuff that doesn't. Also I feel like it's impossible to appreciate something like Certified Copy without having read the exact piece you have pointed to. In fact I feel Kiarostami's whole career has a lot in common with him with the differences coming mostly from Jewish-European culture versus a Islamic-Iranian one.

[Matt]

Does anyone still read/teach Raymond Bellour? I always found him the most sane of the psychoanalysis-influenced film theorists.

[Mr Sausage]

Am I the only one on this forum who prefers a formalist methodology centred on close reading and structural analysis and who, for the most part, doesn't use a lot of the abstruse 20th century theories?

Also, re: their prose style: a lot of these guys write so impenetrably because they seek the authority inherit in obscurity.

[MacktheFinger]

Does anyone still read/teach Raymond Bellour? I always found him the most sane of the psychoanalysis-influenced film theorists.

A class I took last fall in Chicago used him as a primary model, but with the caveat that it would do us no good to stick to it. It was simply a model from which we could see how formal film analysis was performed.

[knives]

Am I the only one on this forum who prefers a formalist methodology centred on close reading and structural analysis and who, for the most part, doesn't use a lot of the abstruse 20th century theories?

Also, re: their prose style: a lot of these guys write so impenetrably because they seek the authority inherit in obscurity.

I mostly use them to center my own ideas.Like my relationship with Benjamin was that reading him helped to verbalize and settle concretely a lot of thoughts I've gone through in my life. I use the theory to help focus my own and pick and choose accordingly. Also as I said above I don't think he uses that awful prose style which has put me off of a lot of people (for the same reason I appreciate early Nietzsche). Certainly you won't see me rallying Zizek or Hegel amongst many others.

[Matt]

Am I the only one on this forum who prefers a formalist methodology centred on close reading and structural analysis and who, for the most part, doesn't use a lot of the abstruse 20th century theories?

I rarely engage in any kind of film analysis anymore (I find film history—specifically the history of film style—much more interesting and rewarding), but I'm pretty much a pure formalist at heart. I do, however, think that theories can provide other ways of looking at a film and often uncover interesting points for discussion. They can also be a lot of fun. I once wrote a paper on Fatal Attraction using orthodox feminist psychoanalytic theory and it was a blast (though ultimately a pretty silly, inconsequential exercise).

Metz and Bellour, though they veer into semiotics and psychoanalysis, provide excellent models for close film analysis (as MacktheFinger has mentioned).

[matrixschmatrix]

I don't think I could enjoy Robin Wood's writing as much as I do if I didn't enjoy feminist/queer/Marxist tangles of interpretation, and I suspect my own mind is such a rat's nest of various critical theories that the bedrock reaction I get in viewing something is very much rooted in abstruse 20th century theories (if one considers those to be such.)

lso I feel like it's impossible to appreciate something like Certified Copy without having read the exact piece you have pointed to.

I actually take issue with that- though I can't really cite my own experience, not being able to un-read the essay, I would say at the very least that Benjamin's ideas have filtered into the general culture enough that one could certainly understand and appreciate the film without having read a word of his, however much they have in shared intellectual space (along with Lacan and Derrida and Baudrillard and whomever.) Moreover, I think the movie explains itself perfectly well, and could as easily serve as an introduction to Benjamin as the other way around- I think it's sort of problematic to assume that whatever piece of philosophy or theory is a prerequisite to understand a work of art, and if the work is solely an explication of a specific philosophical idea (which Certified Copy surely is not) then I don't think it would have very much value to me.

Incidentally, I've always assumed the dense nature of a lot of the philosophical writing in question derives as much from being translated from German as anything inherent to the writers or their goals- I mean, even Rilke and Goethe have that quality at times, I've always thought it was something about German as represented in English. Though I've definitely read English language originals that ape that style, however unintentionally.

[Mr Sausage]

I do, however, think that theories can provide other ways of looking at a film and often uncover interesting points for discussion.

I definitely agree with this, and have used post-modern theorizing on this forum a few times before (I'm rather fond of theories of post-modern allegory). Theory has the potential to allow you an interesting place to think within, even if you don't use it as a primary hermeneutic framework. I am pretty skeptical of a number of highly regarded theorists, however, and even more skeptical of the heavy, sometimes dogmatical reliance on theory that I've seen going on (not here). I'm not that happy with the abuses many theorists subject language to, either.

So I have an ambivalent attitude to theory, but at its best it can be useful indeed. I suppose it's not so much the theory as who's using it; an ingenious critic can really open things up. Most of my favourite teachers, no matter how far-flung their theoretical interests, always grounded their approach in the text itself and never lost sight of it.

[knives]

Incidentally, I've always assumed the dense nature of a lot of the philosophical writing in question derives as much from being translated from German as anything inherent to the writers or their goals- I mean, even Rilke and Goethe have that quality at times, I've always thought it was something about German as represented in English. Though I've definitely read English language originals that ape that style, however unintentionally.

Though that doesn't really explain the unnecessary obtuseness of French writing. I find Deleuze, Lacon, etc to be more inarticulate than several of the Germans when translated and this is with me having a better grasp on reading French then German. I should also probably explain my earlier comment you were responding to which seems more like a bad case of not enough words on my end. Obviously Kiarostami is plain spoken enough where one can achieve satisfaction without Benjamin, but I feel reading that essay illuminates and adds complexity to points to give a more full idea of the issue at hand. Both works give an expansion to the other that for me at least makes the issue more interesting to think of. So impossible was definitely hyperbole on my part, but I do think that one adds to the other in ways that in hindsight of the two seems complimentary to the point of necessity.

[Mr Sausage]

It's not really in the nature of either German or translations from German to be obscure. German grammar isn't too far removed from English, and this theory wouldn't explain cool, clear stylists like Mann or Kafka. Goethe and Rilke aren't any denser than their English equivalents (Shakespeare's language is as dense and ornate as it gets, and no one will accuse Wallace Stevens or Hart Crane of being transparent). Those Germans who are notorious for their near-incomprehensible writing (Kant, Heidegger) have the same reputation in Germany and are not thought of as common cases. They aren't dense for the same reasons, either. Kant is dense because he truly had to create a language that could represent the genuine complexity of his ideas. Heidegger, like a lot of French theorists, hides in the obscurity of his language, hoping the complexity of the rhetoric will lend complexity to his thoughts. Derrida and Lacan are guilty of this, too.

Philosophical language is often difficult because the ideas it's expressing are themselves difficult, but just as often difficult in order to disguise the fact that its ideas are not. Read skeptically anyone who isn't clear and forthright in their explanations.

[bamwc2]

Just as a general overview, it would perhaps be good to do a little history here to tease out the problem underlying much of the disagreement. Within philosophy, most of Europe was working on the same problems up through Kant in the late 18th & early 19th centuries. Post Kant there were two different reactions. In mainland Europe there was a period of romanticism and idealism that dominated German philosophy for the next century. This influence of romanticism saw a noticeable rejection of things like commitment to clarity, rigor and logic in an effort to sound poetic and profound. The influence of Kantian idealism cannot be overstated in British philosophy of the same time, but the romanticism of the continent never made its way to the island. Logic was still seen as a critical tool for the philosopher as was clarity and economy of expression. While this was the beginnings of the split into two schools, it went unnoticed by those involved. At the dawn of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell (who along with GE Moore eliminated the vestiges of idealism in England) was influenced by Edmund Husserl. Similarly, before he joined the Nazi party Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein admitted mutual admiration. However, the split would be far more profound in the period between the World Wars as this saw the rise of logical positivism in the analytic camp and the ascendancy of phenomenology (and later existentialism) in the continent. To this day the sides don't really mingle much with each other. In the US it's typical (Catholic and SUNY schools seem to be the exception) for philosophy departments to be 90-100% analytic. The opposite is generally true today in much of Europe. There's some occasional sniping from both sides, but we generally leave the other to do their research and teach their classes in peace. Rather than antagonism, the two sides just usually greet each other with indifference. There have been some attempts made to bridge the two side. Richard Rorty (before quitting philosophy altogether) set off on a project of ecumenicalism, and to lesser extents philosophers like Martha Nussbaum and Cornell West have kept feet in both camps. I personally spent all of my training in analytic philosophy and almost any exposure that I've had to the continental side came in reading done on my own. I've liked some of it (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and the purely historical work of Foucault in particular) while I couldn't stand others (Hegel, and almost everything written in twentieth century continental tradition aside form Camus and Sartre). I don't think that the approach isn't worthy of study, it's just that I generally haven't been exposed to it, but truth be told, I do strongly disapprove of much of the conceptual relativism coming out of the postmodernist schools. It seems so easily refuted (by that dang logic that they reject) that it's hard to take it seriously.

No less related than the list you gave above.... only coming from the 'anglo-american' strand of thought which, from my experience, claim to come from a more 'scientific' or 'logical' approach that you seem to advocate. My point is not to dismiss these approaches, but to point out that none of these get actually get past the problem of the interpreting subject using a scientific and logical method any more than say Zizek's approach...

I don't want to argue against a straw man here since I've never actually read anything by Zizek (though I did see him in the film The Examined Life and found his scenes to be all but incomprehensible), but are you saying that Zizek believes in discounting "logical" or "scientific" approaches to interpretation? I not sure what that would mean exactly. Could you please explain.

I'm very much with jwd on this, the presumption that one can watch a movie without an analytical lens of any kind is borderline Objectivist, or at least modernist in a fairly dull way. Inevitably, one brings baggage to one's reading of anything, andusing a formal school of thought as a guideline merely means consciously organizing one's reading into a recognized pattern, not arbitrarily restricting an otherwise somehow pure and unaffected reaction.

(Though admittedly I'm pretty unlikely ever to agree with anyone who dismisses the Marxist reading of history as 'utter baloney' even on underlying principles)

I'm not saying that we don't bring experiences, preconceptions, etc. when we watch a film. I certainly did not mean to imply that we're some kind of blank slates emerging into the world with every viewing. My point is that it's myopic (or perhaps just false) to think that we'll get to the truth by filtering everything through -isms. Perhaps the Marxist (and I am very sympathetic to his complaints against capitalism) or the Freudian does have something important to say about a given issue or work of art, but since they do not give us the whole picture (despite their claims) it would be incorrect to filter everything through them.

I'm genuinely amazed that you would hold Marx's view of history in high esteem. I don't even know any Marxists working in academia who accept this view any more. Throughout his writings, Marx made a number of testable predictions based on his Hegelian view of history. Every last one of them failed. Every last one. This is as definitive as a refutation as you can get.

I don't read much philosophy because most of the thinkers are awful writers...

So many of them are. If you'd like to see well-written, Nobel Prize wining analytic philosophy, I'd recommend the popular writings of Bertrand Russell. I've actually considered writing a follow up to his Marriage & Morals in the past, but that's the kind of thing that should probably wait until after tenure.

I find film history—specifically the history of film style—much more interesting and rewarding

I'm with you 100% here, Matt!

[bamwc2]

It's not really in the nature of either German or translations from German to be obscure. German grammar isn't too far removed from English, and this theory wouldn't explain cool, clear stylists like Mann or Kafka. Goethe and Rilke aren't any denser than their English equivalents (Shakespeare's language is as dense and ornate as it gets, and no one will accuse Wallace Stevens or Hart Crane of being transparent). Those Germans who are notorious for their near-incomprehensible writing (Kant, Heidegger) have the same reputation in Germany and are not thought of as common cases. They aren't dense for the same reasons, either. Kant is dense because he truly had to create a language that could represent the genuine complexity of his ideas. Heidegger, like a lot of French theorists, hides in the obscurity of his language, hoping the complexity of the rhetoric will lend complexity to his thoughts. Derrida and Lacan are guilty of this, too.

Philosophical language is often difficult because the ideas it's expressing are themselves difficult, but just as often difficult in order to disguise the fact that its ideas are not. Read skeptically anyone who isn't clear and forthright in their explanations.

Well put, Mr. Sausage. I agree with all of this. Within analytic philosophy the use of an abundance of flowery or unclear language is one of the surest signs of a weak argument.

[jsteffe]

Regardless of what one thinks about psychoanalytic theory, anyone studying 20th century culture ought to have some familiarity with it, given how widely read and discussed authors such as Freud, Jung, and to a lesser extent Lacan were. It really helps to understand Surrealism and individual filmmakers such as Hitchcock. Hell, when I was growing up you could buy paperback editions of Freud in the drugstore! In that way, I view psychoanalytic theory as the alchemy of the 20th century. Similarly, anyone studying culture in the middle ages and the Renaissance should know something about alchemy to understand where artists were coming from at that time. Psychoanalysis is also like alchemy in that it has somewhat passed out of favor in mainstream psychological circles these days, although it played an important role in the field's development.

As for Lacan, I've taught "The Mirror Phase" and "The Signification of the Phallus" in a film theory course, and I think they're worth reading for anyone in film studies. His later writings, which involve elaborate mathematical formulas, are too fibrous to digest. Even if I don't ultimately buy into Lacan I do very much enjoy reading Žižek, who is a provocative and entertaining writer regardless.

[matrixschmatrix]

I should also probably explain my earlier comment you were responding to which seems more like a bad case of not enough words on my end. Obviously Kiarostami is plain spoken enough where one can achieve satisfaction without Benjamin, but I feel reading that essay illuminates and adds complexity to points to give a more full idea of the issue at hand. Both works give an expansion to the other that for me at least makes the issue more interesting to think of. So impossible was definitely hyperbole on my part, but I do think that one adds to the other in ways that in hindsight of the two seems complimentary to the point of necessity.

Yeah, that's fair and I thought it might be what you were getting at- intertextuality nearly always helps in one's reading of both texts.

I'm genuinely amazed that you would hold Marx's view of history in high esteem. I don't even know any Marxists working in academia who accept this view any more. Throughout his writings, Marx made a number of testable predictions based on his Hegelian view of history. Every last one of them failed. Every last one. This is as definitive as a refutation as you can get.

I think we must be talking about two different things here, because Marx's general construction of history as being fundamentally based on class struggle (rather than nationalistic or religious or cultural struggle) is as far as I know still very much in currency and very applicable to virtually any subset of history as a whole- and was not terribly concerned with prophecy, except in his belief that an ultimate victory of the proletariat was inevitable (which, obviously, is not proven wrong by it not having happened yet.)

[knives]

I prefer Bakunin's take on that aspect of history over Marx's which tends to be so serious in proving its smaller points it often forgets to make sense of the larger ones.

[Lemmy Caution]

The Norton Critical Edition of Alice in Wonderland (1992)
includes William Empson's classic essay, "The Child as Swain," which notes sexual overtones of the story.

[MichaelB]

Tangentially, if anyone's in or near London, I thoroughly recommend the Institute of Psychoanalysis's Beyond the Couch film screenings, which are bookended by expert appraisal and followed by an audience Q&A.

For Jan Švankmajer's Little Otík a year ago, I was hired as the token Švankmajer expert, and shared the stage with two psychoanalysts, the three of us facing an audience who had (for the most part) neither seen that nor any other Švankmajer film before (I asked for a quick show of hands at the start). To say that this triggered a lively discussion both in the auditorium and for some time afterwards would be a massive understatement - it's one of my fondest memories of any film screening.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Within analytic philosophy the use of an abundance of flowery or unclear language is one of the surest signs of a weak argument.

You might find that messrs Adorno and Horkheimer would disagree with you. Part of my first year's reading list of 'Critical Theory' meant wading though them and was like a dying salmon's upstream struggle. It was only slightly alleviated by our tutor explaining that part of their strategy in riling against the barbarism of mass culture was to couch their argument in deliberately obscurantist prose. Mind you given some of the TV we get I can hear them shouting 'Told you so' from the grave.
I note also that you seem to have confined Marx to the dustbin of history like some third rate fortune teller. Does not Marxist theory in its variety of guises play no role for you. Gramsci's theory of Hegemony for example seems as valid now as forever and not just confined to a particular historical moment within the PCI.

Having said all that the doctrine free writing on film that works for me most is Perez and Durgnat,and also his heir apparent Adrian Martin.

[Mr Sausage]

Ok, it needs to be pointed out that there is a difference between prophecy and the concept of predictive power. Predictive power is the ability to make testable predictions based on a theory. It is one of the prime ways scientists measure the usefulness of a scientific theory, for instance. Darwinian evolution is a great example. Based on the theory, certain things have to hold true: eg., we should find that modern species are not present in the earliest periods of the living record, which proved true when we found the Burgess Shale and carbon dating. Conversely, Goethe's Theory of Colours goes unused by scientists because it offers no testable predictions.

So what bamwc2 is claiming is not that Marx failed as a prophet, but that his theory of the workings of history offered numerous testable predictions, certain things that had to hold true if his theory were correct, and that it failed in every instance.

[rrot]

So what bamwc2 is claiming is not that Marx failed as a prophet, but that his theory of the workings of history offered numerous testable predictions, certain things that had to hold true if his theory were correct, and that it failed in every instance.

Going a bit into the weeds here, but for those of us non-academic types (or, maybe, just me) on the outside of this discussion, though following it with interest, having only passing familiarity with Marx, but believing that "Marx's general construction of history as being fundamentally based on class struggle (rather than nationalistic or religious or cultural struggle) is as far as I know still very much in currency and very applicable to virtually any subset of history as a whole," as matrixschmatrix said, it would be helpful to know more specifically what "had to hold true."

[Mr Sausage]

I'll have to leave that one to bamwc2, since I tend to forget Marx as quickly as I read him.

[Satori]

I am also very interested in how Marx's historical method is a "failure" since many of his analyses of capitalism (esp in Capital and the Grundrisse) continue to have quite a bit of validity (the world market, the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, ect). David Harvey's work neoliberalism and the 2007/8 economic crisis provide, in my opinion, an astute analysis of precisely how applicable Marx remains.

But, more to the point of this whole thread, I think there is a definite critique to be made of an over-reliance on any critical theory when analyzing texts; i.e. forcing every single thing about a text to fit into the narrow framework you have chosen while ignoring major parts of the work. I much prefer a "toolbox" methodology that can draw from a variety of sources (Marxist/feminist/queer/postcolonial, ect) and remain attentive to the specificity of the text itself (and yes, close reading remains absolutely crucial to any interpretation regardless of how much theory one uses. I actually think that Robin Wood's work (mentioned earlier in this thread) provides an excellent example of this is practice, especially his attempts to synthesize Marxism and psychoanalysis. I also think his work gives a great justification for the use of these methods as well: in his mind (and mine as well), if you are a film critic who is a political radical, these methods can allow you to use your position in the university or whatever to make political arguments. Reading "Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan" as an undergrad film lover committed to leftist politics was a revelation to me.

Finally, I think that regardless of how far-fetched any given interpretation is (and some of Zizek's can certainly be construed as far-fetched), I still think it is valuable as yet another way of looking at a piece of art. It should never be a matter of formalist versus psychoanalytic arguments (not that anyone in this thread was saying this); both can be valuable. The solution to bad criticism is always more criticism.

[bamwc2]

It may be a few days before I can adequately reply since my family has a busy weekend planned and this will take a bit of digging in to, but I can tell you that Popper would be the place to start.

[matrixschmatrix]

Is there a single school of historical thought that is scientific by Popper's standards?