John Searle has argued: "Every subject matter has its catchphrases to
enable us to stop thinking before we have got a solution to our
problems. ... it is easy to stop thinking about the logical status of
fictional discourse if we repeat slogans like 'the suspension of
disbelief' or expressions like 'mimesis'. Such notions contain our
problem but not its solution.” (_Expression and Meaning_, 1979, 60-61).
One of catchphrases in film studies is, of course, ‘film is a
language’. But Metz did at least clarify some of the confusions
surrounding this phrase. Another, worse catchphrase is the often-heard
statement ‘film is a language is meaningless’. Such statements prevent
us from thinking about the problem.
I have at least attempted to investigate the ‘film is a language’
catchphrase in Chapter 1 of my recently published book _The Cognitive
Semiotics of Film_ (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and in my paper
‘Film Semiotics’ in Miller and Stam (eds) _A Companion to Film Theory_
(Blackwell, 1999). I concluded that the very idea of ‘film language’
for film semioticians is not simply an analogy (as it was in the
pre-linguistic film-language comparisons of Raymond Spottiswoode, the
filmology movement, etc.), for the semioticians’ analysis of film is
not premised on identifying any direct resemblance between film and
natural language. Instead, film semioticians argue that film is a
medium that possesses its own distinctive, underlying system of codes
that confers intelligibility on and lends structure to all films. (The
term ‘code’ is simply a term that designates the underlying system that
constitutes the specificity of, lends structure to, and confers
intelligibility on phenomena.)
The problem with Metz’s phrase that film is a ‘langage sans langue’ is
that it simply reveals the limitations of his structural linguistics.
Recently, researchers such as Roger Odin have argued that Metz is
simply developing a pragmatic theory of film, although Metz did not
have the tools to develop this idea.
Warren Buckland
Liverpool John Moores University
Dean Walters Building
St James Road
Liverpool
L1 7BR
ENGLAND.
+44 (0)151 231 5111
The Cognitive Semiotics of Film, available from
Cambridge University Press:
http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/scripts/webbook.asp?isbn=0521780055
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