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Vol. 5 No. 23, July 2001
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Thomas E. Wartenberg
Film, Philosophy, and the Ordinary
A Response to Butler
Brian Butler
Transgression: Ordinary and Otherwise
_Film-Philosophy_, vol. 5 no. 22, July 2001
http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol5-2001/n22butler
Reading Brian Butler's review of my book, _Unlikely Couples: Movie Romance
as Social Criticism_, was an extraordinary experience, for the context
within which he placed my book was one of which I had not been fully
conscious. While I am aware that my own work on film had been inspired, in
part, by Stanley Cavell, I had not connected his concern with the
'ordinary' to my discussion of the 'unlikely couple film'. Butler, however,
sees that my question of whether popular narrative film can be a site of
social criticism has clear links with questions of the ordinary, so I'd
like to spend some time thinking through the connection he sees in my book.
As I begin to reflect on the issue of the ordinary in relation to my book,
I find myself returning to the 1990 film _White Palace_ (directed by Luis
Mondoki), the film that initiated my study of the unlikely couple film, and
that I still find to be worthy of further reflection, despite my sense that
the film's ending undercuts its message. One thing that the film proposes
is that many of the hierarchical dichotomies that structure our thought --
upper class/working class; high art/mass art; depth/surface -- will not
bear the weight we put upon them. The film uses the story of its highly
unlikely couple in order to cast a critical glance at how such dichotomies
structure our thinking, our lives, and our society, making the case for
integrating both poles of these dichotomies into all aspects of our world.
In so far as the film makes this case, it makes contact with another film I
discuss, _The Crying Game_ (Neil Jordan, 1992). In my comments on that
film, I argue that it employs a strategy of critique that destabilizes the
central dichotomies that the film initially proposes. As Butler points out,
I argue that this strategy is a more adequate means of critiquing
dichotomies than the simpler ones, such as inverting the valuation of a
dichotomy, that I see present in other films.
It is worth distinguishing this type of film interpretation from one
favored by adherents of cultural studies, with which it might be confused.
My interpretations do not assert that a viewer has the ability to resist
the conformist agenda of a film like, say, _Pretty Woman_ (Garry Marshall,
1990), by developing a reading 'against the grain', one that tendentiously
highlights only those aspects of the film that contribute to an
interpretation that fits in with the ideas of the viewer. (In the book, I
point to Hilary Radner's interesting interpretation of _Pretty Woman_ as an
example of just such a cultural studies approach.) Rather, my
interpretations attempt to lay bare, in what may appear to be a most
ordinary object, a depth that might escape one's notice. In so doing, it
highlights aspects of the films that other readings might leave out, and
demands that they be taken account of. Such a strategy of reading claims to
be more true to the film than those produced within certain branches of
cultural studies.
Here I see myself as following in Kierkegaard's footsteps. How often have
we heard the story of Abraham and Isaac without really stopping to think
about it? Wasn't this just another one of those stories that those of us in
the Judeo-Christian tradition had learned to hear but not be bothered by?
And yet how extraordinary this story is, as Kierkegaard and others have
made us see.
Now this juxtaposition of a Bible story with popular film may seem
outrageous to many readers. But, as Butler points out, one of the goals of
my book is to bring an awareness of the illegitimacy of hierarchical
dichotomies into the study of film itself. And here there is no doubt that
my work follows in the footsteps of Cavell's. In much of his work on film
Cavell has argued that films that we take to be quite ordinary, and think
that we understand, have depths that have still not fully been plumbed. His
gestures of juxtaposing _It Happened One Night_ and _The Critique of Pure
Reason_, or _North by Northwest_ and _Hamlet_, are meant to undermine our
conviction that there is an intellectual gap between high and popular
culture.
There is another aspect to Butler's exegesis of my book that I would like
to discuss: that it demonstrates how cultures provide the materials for
their own critiques through their own contradictions. To make this case
would require going beyond what I argued for in _Unlikely Couples_, where I
was concerned to show the presence of a democratic spirit within this
genre. I am, in fact, in sympathy with the idea that cultures like our own
are not unities ruled by a single idea, but rather complexes with elements
that do not fit together into a unified whole. As a result, critique can
make use of elements within the cultural melange to undermine others. As
Butler points out, this accounts for the ability of popular films to be
socially critical: they need not resort to esoteric ideas in order to
criticize dominant values, but have recourse to equally fundamental aspects
of the culture that stand in conflict with those values. Throughout my
readings I emphasize how our belief in the underlying equality of all human
beings is used by these films to undermine different forms of social
hierarchy that threaten to destroy the possibility of romance. In so doing
the films take up an idea fundamental to our culture: that all people are
created equal. This idea may now seem rather ordinary to us, part of our
stock of cultural ideals; but the fact that it still has significant and
under-appreciated critical purchase is a central burden of my study of the
unlikely couple film.
Mount Holyoke College
South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA
Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 2001
Thomas E. Wartenberg, 'Film, Philosophy, and the Ordinary: A Response to
Butler', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 5 no. 23, July 2001
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol5-2001/n23wartenberg>.
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