Genre vs Movement

Genre attempts to cover too many aspects of film over a long period of time to be useful for the detailed examination of any set of film. Cannons are naturally formed in describing movements, yet it is acknowledged that no movement has an exclusive cannon any more than a set beginning or end. The nature of influence over the course of time cannot be so sharply cornered. Thus genre criticism is ultimately doomed to be contradictory as Altman says. This contradiction is easily seen in the criticism of Altman himself. He, like Shatz and the others we’ve read, fall into the trap of the very idea they are criticisng. The terms we use to describe similar films, what they are calling “genre”, fail because the natural tendency is to use any similarity a basis for grouping of films.

Within these critical essays, two examples held on high are Westerns and Musicals. According to Altman, Shatz, and Neale, these are both clearly genres. Yet the aspects of the films grouped that make them a genre are incomparable. A western is a western because its major themes are good vs bad on the edge of civilization. A musical is a musical because it has diagetic music. How can we accept both of these categorizations of film as genres? The definition of “western” as a genre is based on thematic similarities, and any discussion of the role of music is rather arbitrary to its moralistic codes. Yet the definition of “musical” as a genre (from Les Miserables to Hello Dolly) is based entirely on the presence of diagetic music – with overarching consistency of theme or location or time period. The criteria to include or exclude into or from these “genres” are completely unrelated.

Rather than attempt to redefine the method of defining film under definite systems of categorization, I honestly suggest that we attempt to dismantle “genre” as a label to describe our natural attempts at making inter-contextual sense of what we see. I have two ideas of how this will play out in film criticism.

The first is the realization that genre has been a tool used in discussions about film trends that are far more logically defined. Schatz’ divides film into two structural types – those of determinate space and those of indeterminate space. Unlike any notions of genre which overlap greatly or disconnect entirely, these two categories are in opposite to each other. There is not a question he asks of one that he does not ask of the other. He uses the above two “genres” as primary examples of each type his describes, yet one examined aspect of the whole of each is a defining element that places a film categorically. For example, Schatz says that the type of film we typically refer to as a “Musical” falls into the category of determinate space because it usually follows and man and woman adjusting themselves to each other and to the codes of their society. “Westerns” fall into the opposite category – indeterminate space - because it typically involves following a (male) protagonist that follows his own codes rather than the ones of the nearby society. Thus, judged by the same standard, in this case a thematic one of the protagonist relationship to societal codes, there are found to be two different thematic categories for film.

Because we still require a language of theoretic categorization within a historical context to be able to compare and discuss film, I suggest a different terminology. As an art history student, the need for this debate perplexes me. Throughout our class discussion of film noir, I constantly found myself tossing out the idea of “genre” and replacing it with the notion of a “movement.” I believe the reason film noir has such a difficult place falling into the idea of “genre” is because most of the theoretics of genre appear to be based in literature. Seen as a movement, film noir presents no problem whatsoever. Movements or -isms are broken down first by stylistic concerns, then by time period/ historical events, then by location, then by theme. They are almost always a reaction against to previous stylistic constraints and easily admit the influence over multiple other sources. A movement has a cannon but it is one naturally created written specifications from the artists rather than an exterior mold posthumously cast onto the work from a time period. The idea of a movement is much more open to the influencing and cross pollination of ideas than a genre is.

The one aspect of a movement that is questionable when discussing film noir is the fact that movements are always more or less self-defined by a specific group of similarly interested artists. Typically their titles are the inventions of a few people who act both as practicing artists and as theoreticians. Granted a true movement cannot happen within Hollywood film, because the individual voices of directors, screenwriters, and cinematographers are drowned out by the control of those with control over financial support systems. A movement implies a group of individuals with common interests and influences working in similar yet distinct styles. This does exist in film but I’m not sure it can exist in Hollywood film because of the collaborative nature within a film. But the relationship between the auteur and the Hollywood system is a blog of a different color.

The Importance of Indeterminate Space in Determined Women

Upon reading the first few lines of Rick Altman’s A Semantic/Syntactic Aprroach to Film Genre, I must admit I found it quite reasonable that no one ever asked or answered the questions he labels as fundamental: “What is genre? Which films are genre films? How do we know to which genre they belong?” Though I myself am often guilty of indulging in seemingly irrelevant questions of art (the typical doom of anyone hyper-interested in a subject), I found myself posing my own fundamental question for this essay: Who cares? Why does the method of defining inconcrete labels for so-called “types” of film matter? How would genre ever aid me in analyzing how a film affects its audience. Thus I waded through this essay in manner similar to a woman listening to her significant-other passionately ranting about what exactly is wrong with the current method for measuring and analyzing baseball-player statistics; “Absolutely-honey, could you pass the potatoes?”

And finally, halfway through the meal, the angle on the subject matter is gloriously switched and we are talking about how it is all relevant to the real world: I have just started diving into Thomas Schatz’s “Film Genre and the Genre Film” from Hollywood Genres.

We can agree, based on the writings of Metz as well as our own experiences that, even just momentary, film has influence over the viewer’s sense of identification. While it is perhaps unfair to claim that one’s identity is formed by the films he or she watches, it is absolutely true that each person’s repertoire of role models has a collection of examples from movies they have seen. It is no mistake that “hero” is both a term for the protagonist of a film and a synonym for “role model.” Because in essay form it would not hold to bring examples from real experience, let me point to a filmic example of the influence of role models from genre.Though we are never called out particularly to pay attention to it within the film, there is a shocking disparity between the amount of self-assurance these characters have in proportion to their situations. Hank’s character is praised for his sensitivity “it’s so wonderful when a man can truely express his feelings” yet never truly has a moment of weakness. Despite the lost of his wife and his difficulties with work or his son, he has a plan and does not falter in believing in his decisions; “What we need is change…a new city,” “Jonah and I will be okay.”

Ryan’s character, on the other hand, has a loving family, a devoted fiancée, a caring best friend, and a stable job. Her motivation in this film revolves entirely around her subconscious attraction to ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ – putting her on the same level as the child in the film “The reason I see this is because I’m younger and more pure, so more in touch with cosmic forces.” (The idea of woman being more pure, childlike and connected with her id is one that is left over from Freud and pervades the artwork of the Surrealist movement, which I cannot explain here, despite its relevance.) Yet, unlike Jonah. Ryan is constantly riddled with doubt and asking for the affirmation that she cannot provide for herself; “Is this crazy, Becky?” “It’s just cold feet, isn’t it?” My question is this; Why, if the 8-year-old son of Hanks’ character has the confidence to pursue the attraction with the constant disapproval of his father, cannot Ryan’s well-to-do character have a similar confidence with the constant approval of her best-friend? Even her own fiancée, played by Bill Pullman, is convinced before she is; as she watches the Empire State Building light up Ryan says, “It’s a sign!” Pullman replies simply, “Who needed a sign?”

I believe Meg Ryan’s character’s insecurities in her own beliefs are the symptom of the lack of role model that no amount of encouragement from her friend can alter. When in need of encouragement, Tom Hank’s character in Sleepless in Seattle turns to both of two types genre described by Schatz to aid him in the simplest of daily difficulties- asking a woman out on a date. And he locates his role models – one in the form of an actor who is the embodiment of the male hero of determinate space film: “You do it in your own suave way- think Cary Grant” and the other in the form of a song emblematic of a whole genre within films of indeterminate space: Gene Autry’s 1939 “Back in the Saddle Again.” The lyrics to this song fulfill two of the principles of the indeterminate space hero. “Where you sleep out every night” this cowboy hero is an independent spirit with the ability to do as he pleases. But, as in most westerns (and other genres of indeterminate space) this independent hero also has an important role in creating and codifying community, which he enters and exits in the course of the film; “and the only law is right.” When his logic (concern for community) overrides his romantic inclinations (the Cary Grant lover-boy), Hanks is reinforced in his path by the voice of righteous independent (the cowboy). Thus Hanks has two powerful role models: one who always gets the girl and lives happily ever after, and the other whose independence is a virtue but in the end is always in some sense righteous.

Meg Ryan, on the other hand, has one role model An Affair to Remember and love songs are Ryan’s only sources of inspiration – which all fall rather neatly into Schatz’s description of the themes from determinate space film. She finds as her role model Debra Curar, who plays the engaged woman who, even after the apparent strength of her practicality and duty to her fiancée, is hopeless swept up by her emotions and the “irresistible” charms of the Cary Grant. He too has moved away from his fiancée- but we are to expect this from such a notorious bachelor – he is simply following his already established independent streak and this foray into the unknown is no particular evidence of Curar’s power to influence him. Yet Curar still gets her man, which is to be celebrated, but at what cost to her dignity? “Please, Becky, don’t tell anyone. I would be absolutely mortified if anyone we knew ever did anything remotely close to what I have done.”
At no point in this film is Ryan ever truly confident that her independent nature is correct. She has one, surely, how else could she fall in love haphazardly with a man she had never met? Yet during the whole film she is convinced she is wrong. It is not surprising that she only has one generic mentor to turn to - as the majority of the indeterminate space films have no opening for a heroine. Those women with independence are certainly not virtuous and those who are virtuous are permanently tied to their community as mothers, sisters, wives and perhaps even leaders. Yet no woman ever strolls into town, is briefly attracted to a man, stirs up trouble with the current codified law, pushes the envelope, saves the day, and leaves – free as a bird to wonder again in a whirlwind of righteousness.

What she requires, what I believe I have required in my life (growing up watching movies like An Affair to Remember and Sleepless in Seattle), is a genre within Shatz’s category of “indeterminate space” films to encourage her when her impulses did not fall so neatly into the community hailed in the Yet, how could she find her confidence in the rugged independence, unconcern with the opposite sex, and 5 o’clock shadow of Clint Eastwood? For the most part, Ryan’s heroines and mine are limited to the sort whose strength is based in their ability to make love work within their social constructs. And I believe it will be that way until there is an entire genre (not just a few movies and shows – I willingly recognize that these exist)  that truly glorifies (rather than occasionally represents or mocks) an independent woman who creates her own righteousness and does not allow society to weigh her down.

Peeping Tom

Greatly intrigued by the effect of 16 mm film in theentirety of Michael Powell’s 1959 Peeping Tom with the intension of it being fodder for this blog. Little did I know what I was getting into. In dealing with Lacanian psychoanalysis and the writings of Dayan, Metz, and Mulvey, I’m not sure there actually could be a better film to view. It seems to go through their theories- exemplifying each one in dialogue and plot, and in camerawork that feels like screen-tests for pure theoretics of film. If I could be permitted the use of the term – Peeping Tom serves almost as a fetish object in itself opening sequence showed in class, I chose to watch the ; it is a film whose narrative is moved forward by elements which replace the pleasure/power felt through taking someone’s picture

Though almost every moment of this film was a force to be reckoned with, there was one particular facet which still holds a persistent place in my thoughts. I watched this film directly after finishing from Laura Mulvey’s text “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” which – combined with the overpowering moments of voyeurism in the opening sequence – led me to the assumption that Powell’s Peeping Tom would be the outlawed poster-child for the objectification of women. And there are many ways in which it could: the main character is male, all the other important characters are rather flat, the view from the 16mm camera has cross-hairs chopping up everything in sight, etc. For these reasons I felt perhaps Mulvey had her perfect opportunity to prove her point.

Mark Lewis clearly desires to see – but I am not sure that there is convincing evidence within the work to make the claim that this desire to see has any sexual implications (the character shows no particular interest in the pornographic “view” shop where he works). It seemed to be almost coincidental that the individuals murdered by the main character Mark Lewis all happen to be women. The women are indeed objects but in no manner beyond that any representation on screen is an object. Mark does not just document women but his effect on the world he is afraid of, forever mediated by the camera – stuck in Lacan’s Imaginary stage – taking a position not far from that of the viewer. Yet, as we watch him watching we are confronted our Symbolic social selves, with a sheer awareness of the voyeurism took away any pleasurable effects it usually has for our Imaginary selves.

Towards the end of the film, when the character Helen and her mother attempt to pull him into the world of the Symbolic, we become the unaware voyeur once again. The structure of the film becomes more “normal” and we are soon given the omnipresence to peep knowingly onto the secret life of Mark. Yet we are again confronted with our voyeurism as Helen’s mother walks out of the shadows of Mark’s darkroom. Here we serve as the artificial eyes of a blind woman – having observed Mark every night without his awareness.

You remain a voyeur – but not in the sense that Mulvey means it – the objectifying-women voyeurism within the film is such an academic study of the idea that it looses its power to control the viewer’s mind. The voyeurism in which the audience of Peeping Tom takes part is a more abstract one. I believe this is due to the complex relationship caused by the viewers’ awareness of the two cameras present at all times: the camera Mark is holding and the camera filming Mark. During one murder scene, we see Mark moving around the woman in an almost dance-like manner and after a few moments of this we realize that the way his movement is communicated is by fact that the other camera (whose point of view we are adopting) is also moving in a similar manner.

This is just once example of the multiple points of view. Because of this it would next to impossible to accurately describe all the forces at work in a film like Peeping Tom and quite difficult to approximate the complex interrelations of it. This will be a film I will return to, because as off yet the criticism I have read falls short of being able to aid in one’s understanding of the place of the spectator in a film about the films and filming practices of a scopophile.

Réflexion Cachée

“…the ‘subject’ is no more than a unifying reflection.” (Lacan paraphrased in Dayan 109)

What I found striking about Michael Haneke's Cache was not the lack of reverse-shots: there were multiple instances when Haneke chose to follow this convenvention for most scenes that included a conversation (perhaps to avoid a complete revolt from the audience). Nor did I find the lack of a knowledge of “who is watching” particularly peculiar. What was so jarring about Haneke’s Cache, was the lack of subject –the lack of a unified whole with which the viewer can identify.

In his blog, Michael Jacob note

d that in viewing the opening shot of the house “continues until the frame begins to rewind – [when] we realize that we are seeing the point of view of George watching a tape.” While I fully agree with Jacob’s use of this moment in film, I would like to make one correction; when we see the frame begin to rewind (we know this through the black and white swiggles across the screen) we realize that we are watching what the director wants us to perceive as “a tape”. We have absolutely no knowledge of many things we expect to be aware of. As Jacob points out the lack of a reverse shot makes us conscious that we have no idea who filmed it. Yet even stranger to me: we have no idea who is watching it. We begin to hear the voice-overs of Juliette Benoche and Daniel Auteuil - Haneke is clueing us into the fact that we are among a small group of spectators. Yet, in becoming members of this small group, we presumably join them in their space – their off-screen space. We are now privy to the fact that we are not just watchin

g a house but joining in three separate gazes: that of two disembodied voices and a third with whom we never

 come in contact. This becomes as disorienting as the scene in Being John Malkovich when we adopt the view of John Cusack looking out into the world through the eyes of an unknown individual. Yet even then the director, Spik

e Jonze. gives us a mask to indicate to us that we are looking through someone else’s eyes.

Haneke gives us no such aid – at least at first – and I believe that it is this moment of disorientation (and the dialogue’s claim of its creepiness) that sets us up to perceive the later lack of counter-shot as unsett

ling. Yet I would claim that it is this distance that allows us to view the very world of its characters so differently. Rather than succumbing to persuasive power of one point-of-view (what Dayan and Bonitzer call ideology), we are detached – forced (apparently unfortunately f

or most American viewers) to maintain our own point-of-view.We are not connected enough to the character of George Laurent to r

ealize instantly that the small Arab child that appears on screen is a moment of flashbac

k. Here we must maintain our own frame of mind rather than letting Haneke reframe it for

 us. Yet this is difficult: Haneke gives us no individual with whom we can ground our confusion 

and th

us gives us no place for identity within the fantasy of the on-screen space. In his essay “The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema” Daniel Dayan points to Jacques Lacan’s theories of the forming of human reality as a useful tool to understanding the role of film (108-109). Quite si

mplified, Lacan agrued that a child without language (us without a grounding in the on-screen space) identifies with their mother (the subject-usually the protagonist whose thoughts we share) and through this identification imagines their reality as a unified one analogous to that of the subject.

If one were to do as Dayan recommends and compare to film language to spoken/written language – to look at it on the level of a sentence – one would find that Haneke’s film is a sentence without a subject. This signifies a disappearance of the “imaginary” (which serves to unify as one subject) and places the viewer in the place of the schizophrenic: struggling to make one identifying “truth” out of the plurality of (unnamed) views provided for them. But in this film there is distinctly no distinct truth, in fact, as Haneke said, “film is a lie at 24 frames per second, but to serve the truth.” And this is, indeed, far more “true” than being sewn (sutured) into the ideological viewpoint of one subject whom you are supposed to reflect.

Relationship To Reality

While I am unsure that Hitchock’s Suspicion fits all the analysis Stephen Heath projects onto it, I find the value he puts into the study of space gratifying. Yet I think this sort of questioning of space is better suited to films that use it more specifically to create a mood. It is telling that the only point in Hitchock’s Suspicion that Heath examines is one that breaks away from the classical: “Out of the action, breaking the clarity of direction, obstinately turned away, one of the inspectors is pulling to the left, gazing abruptly at something hidden from us, without reason in this scene” (Heath 21). Here Heath turns away from expected Hollywood form just as the inspector Bensen turns away from the narrative action of the scene – and they both find themselves examining an abstract piece (moment) of art. Perhaps it is a “Hitchcock joke” as Heath says – though I believe that in this case it might be fair to say that the joke is on him – as Hitchcock forces the critic to stand in a position mirroring that of subject.

Yet I believe that it is from this perspective that one can truly appreciate the ability of space. “[F]or Vertov, cinema could be made to challenge that vision by constructions of dissociations in time and space that would produce the contradictions of the alignment of camera-eye and human-eye in order to displace the subject-eye of the social-historical individual into an operative-transforming-relation to reality” (Heath 33) In other words, cinema has the ability to open the viewer to new ways of experiencing – challenging one’s “relation to reality.”

This ability to challenge is a valuable one but, in his essay, Heath limits the ability of space solely to it’s communication of traditional narrative space: “…scenographic space, space set out as spectacle for the eye of spectator.” (Heath 30) this is the basic point on which I find myself disagreeing with Heath. His continuous references to the “Quattrocentro system,” based on the above definition of it assumes the system’s reliance on the artist to create space “as spectacle” for a “spectator.” Yet I believe this is a boundary to the abilities of the camera’s relationship to space which have been overcome (in experimental film such as Michael Snow's Wavelenth – as is cited in Cooper’s essay “Narrative Spaces”). While the camera is very good at presenting the classical Hollywood spectacle for the viewer, the camera also has the distinct capability of creating a space without spectacle – it can create a mood – the camera itself can be an actor (such as in the early work of Stan Brackage) and the portrayal of space does not have to be dominated by a plot..

There is one other note that I would like to make in addition to Heath’s examination of the visuals of narrative space. Heath admits that “film is said to destroy the ‘ordinary laws’ of pictorial organization because of its moving figures which capture attention against all else” (32) This claim is in a certain context undeniable – our eyes are programmed to follow movement as the most identifiable –most traceable – element of film, yet I believe this perception is one perpetuated by a classical film industry, and it is one I would like to challenge.

To harness the powerful attraction of the human I towards movement, a director must use continuity editing to guide the audience. I believe, however, that spectators are used to director’s reliance on editing space that the expectations of the movie-goer depend mostly on this visual language to communicate influence. I also believe this is crippling to the active awareness of an audience. For example: we typically rely on the opening sequence of a film to introduce us to the figure who will be our main focus for the majority of the film. Yet this expectation is not always fulfilled. In the 1967 film Playtime by Jacque Tati, our opening scene is in an airport that we enter by following two nuns through one shot into another, crossing from left to right. The first temptation is to assume we will continue to follow them until we are greeted with the magically audible voices of the couple at the front of the room. The first pair we attach too through the cuts and action within space (following Heath’s claim about action through narrative space), and in the second case we pick up on the couple nearest us in the frame through their voices – the only clue given in this static visual composition. And soon enough we realize we are wrong as we begin to hear our way around the image – searching for one character’s path to hold onto: from a noisy cart, to an officer’s clicking heels, to a baby’s cry, to a woman with a carriage.

We sit expecting a cut to divide the broad space we are confronted with and to take up an actual narrative by following one of the many creatures we hear and see pass through the screen, and when the cut finally occurs new characters entirely are followed and our ears pick up on a new pair: two women talking who too soon exit the screen to loose our attention again. Our ears place us in different spaces throughout this first scene – ignoring the usual hierarchy of visual composition – but taking up not the absolute supremacy of moving figures as Heath says, but by taking interesting the dichotomy between our fixed visual perspective and our dynamic audio perspective. Here, the viewer’s relationship with reality is challenged mostly by the film’s distinctive presentation of sound “within” a space rather than by the space itself but similarly calls to mind the questions posed about the relationship between the spectator and world they project themselves into.