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FILM-PHILOSOPHY  2003

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Subject:

Re: The "Aesthetics of Failure" and the ad-hominem non-sequiter

From:

Susanna Chandler <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Film-Philosophy Salon <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Sun, 15 Jun 2003 23:30:46 -0400

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (149 lines)

To the group from Susanna Chandler:

After reading Matthew Niednagels continued postings, and rereading the
specific posting to which I reacted so viscerally, it is clear I owe him a
sincere apology. My apologies then for a far too hasty, unmediated, and
personally unkind response to his posting which referred to Michael Moore.
In these days of "Bush & Co" it is sometimes difficult to not feel the
weight of propaganda emanating from "stupid white men". It is therefore
imperative to not respond to intelligent discourse otherwise.

The questions Matthew has raised, on the subject of rhetorical strategies in
documentary exposition, are particularly compelling to my way of thinking.
What had primary escaped me in better understanding what was meant by
"aesthetics of failure" was, as Matthew put it, the "dramaturgical conceit
of ineffectuality and incompetence". Conceit being the operative word, and
an appreciated one as an admirer of John Donne.

Matthew's comments on providing alternative rhetoric to expository
documentary films, such as those by Ken Burns, are of great interest. On the
most basic level the presence of any documentary has become scarce among the
barnyard of infotainment pieces. As suggested in the reference to Ken Burns,
the classical presentation of the fully knowledgeable narrator can be of
genuine merit. I leave my appreciation of his particular work back with
Civil War, and his baseball series. [His serial film of Mark Twain was
terrible, and an example I thought of how the presentation of authoratative
[and by implication, complete] knowledge can be terribly misleading by
eliminating, or marginalizing, what is left out.

One of my favorite documentary series, in the classical style is, "Coming to
Light: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indians," by Anne Makepeace.
When a subject is deeply and thoroughly expounded, as is Makepeace's
documentary on Curtis, the classical narrative provides the freedom and work
of drawing interpretive narratives and conclusions to the viewer, while
delivering a fulsome presentation of the subject itself. Robert Flaherty
used to keep his production notes from his various documentaries, including
"Nanook of the North" on-line for his students. They made for fascinating
reading about his development of what is the epitome of classical narrative;
the filmmaker avoiding any form of self-presentation beyond the gaze of the
camera, and immersion in the film's subject.

A film I always thought quintessentially problematic in it's use of cinema
verité is Rossellini's Stromboli.  As he blurred the line between
presentation of the "real", and the story--which only Rosselline himself had
access to as the filmmaker, his aesthetics of the real seems to pose the
filmmaker as the story, narrated as it were by the facts as shaped by his
presence. From what I understand, R ruthlessly subjected everyone on the
island to a grueling form of hyper reality as he made production demands far
exceeding "real life" for the purpose of fulfilling his story line. This
would pose an alternative to the aesthetics of failure. Perhaps an
aesthetics of domination.

As mentioned above, my area of interest is in documentaries on scientific
subjects.  Most are templated examples of "prefabricated construction of
authority". Not only do they tell the audience what to think about what they
are presented with, but deeply rely on stereotypes and reductions of
"facts". For anyone who has genuine familiarity with a particular subject
being presented [though not necessarily the expertise of a scientist], the
number of half-truths, absence of complexity or caveats is more than
frustrating . Notions expounded of "advanced" scientific thinking, and are
often so dumbed down as to become unrecognizable with genuine scientific
thinking.  In addition what is presented is usually outdated and will fall
into the category of conventional thinking: what has been accepted within a
form a herd mentality for public consumption. In this sense, exposition of
what is presented as fact has eliminated most of what goes beyond audience
pre-knowledge, or beyond the purview of stereotyping.

In the area of science documentary, a quasi example of a cultivated schtick
by an on-camera narrator, is Alan Alda's Scientific American. In this he is
the bumbling but educable guy who asks the kind of questions someone in the
audience might, but doesn't attempt to rise to a level of genuine competence
within his self-presenting narrative. Still I like the show's format, and
Alda himself is witty and infinitely likeable. He's also very smart, and
asks good questions . . . as does Moore, in my opinion <grin>.

Reading Nichols and Bruzzi would clearly be relevant to concerns I have in
rhetoric of the "real". Matthew makes many good suggestions and obviously
has a good deal more to contribute than I do in film theory.

Best,
Susanna Chandler







on 6/13/03 3:23 PM, Matt Niednagel at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> In response to Susanna Chandler, I would like to kindly suggest that you
> _first_ read the three works I cited in my last post (Arthur, Plantinga, and
> MacLennan), and once you understand that the discourse I was invoking is
> about the rhetorical strategies of self-presentation that the filmmakers
> _themselves_ deploy in the films they make, __then__ decide if political
> polemics are in order.
> 
> My mail was merely summing up the concepts of "aesthetics of failure" and
> "epistemic hesitation" as they've been discussed _by their originators_ in
> the critical literature on contemporary documentary.  I will apologize for
> that _only_ if my shorthand synopsis was misleading for the uninformed.
> 
> My project (since you seem to be so interested into turning this into a
> personal thing) happens to be a critical revision of _both_ ideas to address
> what I perceive to be a number of heavy-handed ideological assumptions
> underlying them.  One of these, to which you seem to be reacting in part, is
> indeed reflected the choice of the term "failure" to describe a
> dramaturgical conceit of ineffectuality and incompetence that filmmakers
> like Moore and Broomfield carefully cultivate in their on-screen personas
> for a variety of reasons (e.g. humor, empathy, etc.).  The end result is
> anything but a "failure." AOF filmmakers have actually succeeded in making
> _popular_ non-fiction films.  In Moore's case, these are popular films with
> a message, which I find that commendable.
> 
> That said, the dramaturgy of incompetence has _nothing_ to do with the
> "factuality" of the phenomena it purports to be documenting.  Moore's
> schtick may be a response to the fact that he is dealing with powerful, and
> often quite inaccessible people (cf. Arthur on this), but this strategy of
> slipping into the role of the underdog is completely indifferent to whether
> the target he is chasing is the chairman of General Motors, Walmart, or Bush
> & Co.
> 
> Frankly, I haven't the foggiest clue how you might have construed my brief
> expository mail as an attack on Moore's political project.  The other terms
> you seem to be reacting to (i.e. "heavy-handed" and "prefabricated")
> actually refer to the film-historical discussion regarding attempts over the
> last 40 years to find alternative rhetorical strategies to the construction
> of authority in classical "expository" documentaries.  Expository films
> employed a style of commentary that typically formulated ("pre-fabricated")
> what viewers were to make of what they were seeing, and has frequently been
> characterized as "heavy handed" or "closed" by subsequent generations of
> filmmakers and critics.  This characterization of expository film is also
> not without its problems.  If this interests you, I recommend reading Bill
> Nichols and then his various critics, including Stella Bruzzi.
> 
> As for who is making this sort of "heavy handed" expository film these days.
> Go watch a film by Ken Burns.  I'm not passing judgment (I thoroughly
> enjoyed his "Jazz" films), I'm merely suggesting that you watch an
> "expository" Burns film and compare it to Moore's less-candid construction
> of filmmaking authority, and _then_ get back to me on the political
> implications of their cinematic rhetoric.
> 
> I'll leave the critique of whether Moore manipulated the chronology and
> context of his "factual" content in the Columbine film to the journalists
> for the time being.
> 
> Think first, re-read second, _then_ post!
> Matthew Niednagel
> Princeton NJ

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