Hi all,
First, a qualifier: I am very interested in the connection between film and language --
but am not well versed in film theory. I just watch a lot of movies (and use film on
occasion to provoke discussion in my philosophy classes) and try to read what I can.
Here's an example that I can use to develop a thought about the relation between image
and idea (inspired by Eisenstein), and I'd like to hear whether this sounds plausible,
and if not why not:
1. a picture of a gun is just a picture of a gun, an image.
2. an image of a gun, and then a shot of a man, and then a shot of a startled horse, and
then a shot of the man fallen to the ground (from Dovzhenko's Earth, as I recall it
vaguely) is not just a sequence of images because in addition to being that, it calls
forth the thought: this man was just shot and the gun shot startled the horse. The
sequence of images, in this case, "says" something to the viewer.
A single image does not convey a thought, does not speak directly, because it is too
open. The single image can be taken up in a number of different ways. The question
"what does the gun mean?" has no answer, but the question what does this sequence of
images mean does. In this sense, and perhaps many others, film can operate as a kind of
language. That is not, of course, to say that the answer to the latter question is
uncontroversial or obvious -- subsequent developments within a film could challenge or
modify my "reading" of this sequence -- but neither does any sentence have an obvious or
uncontroversial meaning.
One perhaps serious problem with what I have said is that the units of significance here
are particulars -- i.e. this particular sequence of shots means something particular,
like this man was just shot by that man -- and someone might say that a language involves
a conventional system of codes (i.e. types or universals). If that is how we agree to
use the term "language", then I would say that my example of a unit of significance isn't
linguistic, but still remain convinced that it can convey ideas (including ideas that are
much more complicated than the one portrayed in my example above). I think, moreover,
that the juxtaposition of both analogies and contrasts through images at a number of
levels is at least one way in which ideas can be conveyed in a film.
I'd love to hear responses to this point (that I basically steal from scattered and
unsystematic readings early Russian theorists).
Cheers,
Nate
--
Nathan Andersen
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Collegium of Letters
Eckerd College
4200 54th Ave. S. Phone: (727) 864-7551
St. Petersburg, FL 33712 Fax: (727) 864-8354
U.S.A. E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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