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Ross Ross Macleay wrote: >Pascal > >I was very interested in your comments ( and later Daniels) on style. I >would be very interested in the article on Pasolini and the Dardennes. > I'll send it to your private address. > >As I understand it (from Deleuze) Pasolini thought that cinema in its >fullest sense was a medium of free indirect discourse. I would say this of >all narrative communication and especially narrative art. I would say it of >communication generally because I think the way humans work is that a >subject has to shift between different points of view and different takes on >the self and other just to make propositional and narrative communication >possible. To use Daniels term, I think communicative subjectivity has to be >(quasi, imperfectly, cunningly, and at times self-deludingly) >trans-subjective. I would even say that this kind of communicative thinking >is characteristic of linguistic and film thinking and actually very human. > Indeed, Pasolini see free indirect discourse is theoretically at work in all art forms and so in all films. But practically, only some film exploit this feature in its fullest potential. This is a distinction that we can find already in Bakhtin which is one major influence for Pasolini's concept of free indirect discourse. Bakhtin distinguishes between monologual and polyphonic works, giving Tolstoï and Dostoïevski as examples of each type. This distinction is also found in Pasolini literary criticism where he opposes the writings of Petrarch and Dante. He also makes a comment about "bourgeois" authors who reduce all experiences to their point of view. This means that free indirect style has a very political meaning for Pasolini (this was also important for Bakhtin but he could not so much develop this in the stalinist context). I think Bakhtin himself used the word trans-linguistic to describe his approach. I should check this however. >Like cinema, language and society, humans are, as it were, transhuman. > > As for transhumanity, this is something very important that Pasolini already finds in Dante's Paradise and gives as a title to a collection of his poems: "Transumanar e organizzar (1971)" (Transhumanize and organize). >When it comes to narrative art I think that free indirect style in film or >prose is a case of recognising a fact about narrative and using it to >develop a norm. A case of making a virtue of necessity. > > The purpose of free indirect style is indeed to develop a "norm". However, this is what Pasolini call "style" to distinguish between oral and written language where grammar function as a norm; and cinema, "the language of Reality", where there cannot be a grammar but only stylistic conventions. This distinction is important because free indirect style is used by Pasolini as a counter-practice that denounces normalization in society. Then, free indirect style is used as a means to show at once the "norm" and what can resists it. >I think film is still discovering what the term 'free indirect style' means >for it, and watching the Dardennes work with this in mind will give me >something to think about. I suppose if free indirect style is the proper >character of film and language in their fullest development we should be >able to watch any film with this in mind, and see its style as a matter of >modulations, restrictions and developments of the available visual and audio >discursive resources. > > >(...) >As for Cassavetes, if his cinematic style is direct, I think we should >recognize that direct style in its fullest sense is mimetic, and I think >that it is the deeply mimetic character of linguistic and cinematic >communication that makes free indirect style the fullest expression of >narrative discourse anyway. > > This is why Pasolini uses the term "divine mimesis" to describe his particular way to perceive things and film them. >These thoughts may be a bit garbled, and jargon ridden and I have made >vague, overstated claims about language and film that really demand careful >argument. So enough. > >Ross > Regards, Pascal