I'm not sure of the time-scale, Guillaume, but I think
Barthes' work on language/myth in Ivan the Terrible
pre-dates Metz. Certainly, both Image Music Text and
Mythologies speak of myth and language occurring across
culture, and especially in cinema. Consider Barthes'
chapter on the Romans in film in Mythologies. As for the
French understanding of langue versus parole, see Myth
Today (M) and Rhetoric of the Image (IMT). But I don't want
to be too picky, as I think you've hit the nail right on
the head.
The subject of convention does interest me though.
(Nate might be interested in this) It's interesting that
you use 'table', as I've always used the word 'chair' to
help explain the concept of language and myth. In
particular, I find the Bauhaus Chair (you know, the one
that's plastic and steel tube) very useful. It runs
something like this:
We all use the word chair, but what actually does it mean?
Put another way, how do we know that chairs are for sitting
on until someone tells or shows us. The concept of chair is
not just the object itself but the perception of it being
there to be sat on. This perception flows form recollection
- you remember what you learnt when you were first
introduced to one. The object is independent of 'sitting'
as the source of its function (it does not know it will be
sat on) and your perception is independent of the chair you
can sit on a table, the ground, or not sit at all).
The perception of the chair, the object, the word, the
action, all flow from the recollection of the convention.
With the Bauhaus chair, we teach students that the Bauhaus
created objects that were purely functional (Form Follows
Function). However that's not really accurate, because the
form only follows a perception of function, as it would be
functional in many different styles. The perception here is
that it _looks_ functional, based on the recollection of
functional objects and materials.
Eisenstein was working in cinema at about the same time as
the Bauhaus, certainly on Strike, Battleship Potemkin and
October, and you can see how this particular analogy
translates. Eisenstein's development of film language via
montage, I would argue, does much more than give the
impression of movement, since in order to imply movement
efficiently he would just have to keep the shot going.
Instead he creates movement through an edit, which in fact
breaks up movement into discrete elements.
In this sense, the movement acts as a 'third meaning'
developed from two static shots placed in quick succession.
A really good analysis of Eisenstein is given by himself
(in Film Form) and a good re-reading is in Deleuze's first
book on cinema. Deleuze considered Eisensteinian montage as
creating a false movement, ie. movement extrapolated from
immobility, that is recognised through conventions. Deleuze
was suspicious of language(especially Metz) but the cinema
books are a pretty good reorienting of Peirce in any case,
and Peirce and Pasolini form the backbone of Deleuze's
study.
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Damian Peter Sutton
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