_____________________............._____

    F I L M - P H I L O S O P H Y

    Journal | Salon | Portal
    PO Box 26161, London SW8 4WD
    http://www.film-philosophy.com

    Vol. 5  No. 12, April 2001
_____________________............._____




    Torben Grodal

    Old Wine in Old Bottles



Warren Buckland
_The Cognitive Semiotics of Film_
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000
ISBN: 0-521-78005-5 (hb)
xi +174 pp.

In most ears the book title _The Cognitive Semiotics of Film_ sounds a bit
strange. Warren Buckland has set himself the goal of demonstrating that it
is possible to combine semiotics with cognitive science and to build a
bridge between these two fields of research, and this is indeed a very
valuable idea. However, Buckland has made it easier to make a pair out of
semiotics and cognitive film studies by not allowing all strands of
cognitive film studies to be included in this effort of bridge-building. He
states that, 'I do not report on the knowledge generated by the well-known
cognitive film theorists in North America . . . but discuss the much lesser
known film theorists working in the cognitive tradition in Europe' (1). The
project becomes even easier because Buckland only wants to deal with
Francesco Casetti, Christian Metz, Roger Odin, Michel Colin, and Dominique
Chateau, of which only Michel Colin would ordinarily be thought of as a
cognitivist, the rest being semioticians. And he further excludes those
three European film scholars that he himself mentions as three out of seven
'pure' cognitive film theoreticians (myself, Ed Tan, and Murray Smith),
because they belong to an 'American' paradigm. The project therefore does
not seem to be one of bridge-building, but aimed at conferring the honorary
title of 'cognitivists' to some European semioticians.

The fundamental problem of the book is that it systematically promises more
than it is actually able to deliver. Buckland claims that (cognitive?) film
scholars 'successfully demonstrate that the impression of unity and
continuity is based on a shared, non-perceptible underlying system of codes
that constitutes the specificity of, lends structure to, and confers
intelligibility on the perceptible level of film' (10). But, as I will
show, even by Buckland's own standards, the 'cognitive semioticians' have
not come close to identifying such a system of specific film codes. On the
contrary, the book makes it obvious that Bordwell's demonstration of how
film comprehension is based on general cognitive schemata and heuristics is
far superior to a description of a system that should make up a specific
film language. Whereas natural languages are based on specific innate
dispositions, films draw on a series of general perceptual and cognitive
competences.

Another problem of Buckland's presentation is that he claims that whereas
the North American cognitivists break with 'contemporary' film theory, the
cognitive semioticians continue that tradition. However it is Bordwell that
represents innovative continuity within film theory. He integrates and
innovates classical film theory (formalism, realism) into a modern
framework of cognitive psychology that continues the way in which classical
film theory was often based on perception psychology (Munsterberg,
Eisenstein, Arnheim, Mitry, et al.). Bordwell (and Kristin Thompson)
further integrates some of the valid insights of structuralism into film
theory. Bordwell integrates work on narrative theory (e.g. Gerard Genette,
partly via Meir Steinberg); and he and Thompson combine ideas of excess
(Barthes and Heath) into a cognitive framework, just as the idea of
parametric narration is inspired by structuralist thoughts and aesthetic
praxis. Metz's heavy reliance on linguistics is a break with strong
traditions within film theory, and his concept of narrative is in some
respects a dead end compared with central structuralist thought, as worked
out by Greimas and Genette (and Barthes in the 60s). Furthermore, Metz was
forced (by Eco, among others [1]) to relinquish those aspects of his
thoughts that pointed to psychology in order to accept Eco's belief in the
fully cultural foundation of visual perception. Thus, in many respects
Bordwell is much closer to classical and modern film theory than Metz, and
his important innovations are made possible by that fact.

_The Cognitive Semiotics of Film_ is divided into five chapters, an
Introduction (that I have already commented on), a chapter on an
application of Lakoff and Johnson, a chapter on enunciation, a chapter on
Odin's semio-pragmatics, and a chapter on film grammar. The chapter 'on'
Lakoff and Johnson, 'The Body on Screen and in Frame', is (contrary to the
rest of the book) special by being mostly based on Buckland's own
theorizing. Buckland needs Lakoff and Johnson in order to make some trendy
remarks on the way in which meaning is embodied. A further reason for
including Lakoff and Johnson is to claim that what is wrong with David
Bordwell is that his schemata are transcendental (despite the fact that
Bordwell himself has pointed to Lakoff and Johnson in 'A Case for
Cognitivism' and used their terminology in _Making Meaning_). Buckland does
not mention those European cognitive film scholars (myself, Tan, and Smith)
that have analysed a central aspect of embodiment: emotions in film viewing.

However, Buckland has fatally misunderstood Lakoff and Johnson, especially
their basic term 'embodied' in relation to their schema-theory. Buckland
uses Lakoff and Johnson's idea of embodiment as if they think that embodied
schemata means schemata about the body. But the correct description is that
'embodied' means that the interaction between the embodied mind and the
world is the basic foundation of meaning. Lakoff and Johnson's idea of
embodiment is not a theory of the body, but a theory of the embodied mind
in interaction with the world.

The crucial point where Buckland goes astray is on page 47 where he claims
that: 'To say that the frame and diegesis are understood in terms of a
kinaesthetic image schema is to suggest that they are comprehended in terms
of our experience of our bodies as containers.' In this sentence Buckland
confuses 'the body' as one instantiation of the 'container schema' (caves,
jars, etc., are other objects that afford the container schema) with an
erroneous belief that container schemata are always representations of the
body. The implicit argument must run as follows: the body is a container,
image schemata are embodied, the film frame and the diegetic world are
containers, ergo: the diegesis and film frame are 'comprehended' as
metaphors/schemas of our bodies. But the fact that the body is comprehended
as a container schema does not entail that all other containers are bodies.
Buckland is led into arguments very much similar to those of
psychoanalysis, for instance when he claims that 'the fixed frame of
painting reaffirms the fixed boundary of the body' (49). Again, this
argument is based on the erroneous belief that the body is the prime or
only basis for container schemas. The misapplication of Lakoff and
Johnson's concepts culminates on page 50, when Buckland thinks that 'the
spectator's projection into the film [?] is in fact the result of the
container schema. This schema, directly motivated by the spectator's body,
is metaphorically projected onto the film by the spectator'. Buckland
confuses the fact that many spectators try to construct a unified diegetic
world by means of container schemas (that are embodied in the general sense
of reflecting basic bodily interaction with the world), with a belief in a
projection of the body on the screen. Although Buckland elsewhere has
admitted that the critique of psychoanalysis that has been made by
cognitive film theoreticians is well-founded, he nevertheless (and probably
without being consciously aware of this) re-launches a (slightly modified)
version of Metz's psychoanalytical idea of primary identification as if it
was warranted by Lakoff and Johnson. A better understanding of the
cognitive film theories about emotions in film would have spared Buckland
this inconsistency.

Chapter three on 'reflexivity, enunciation, and film' is a strange one.
Buckland shows how Metz in his last work, _L'Enonciation impersonelle, ou
le site du film_, criticises Casetti's very linguistic ideas of the film
experience as based on a model of verbal communication (I = addresser, you
= addressee, he = characters). And he notices that Metz was influenced by
Bordwell's critique of the linguistic model: 'Metz comes close to
Bordwell's rejection of the narrator' (66). Buckland even concludes that
'Metz's innovation therefore seems to be primarily negative -- a critique
of Casetti's analogies between film and natural language' (75). In order to
provide some positive and linguistic results to the chapter, Buckland, for
instance, discusses the way in which the spectator produces a context of
production when receiving some types of audiovisual communication. It is
certainly true that we, as argued by Buckland, may feel that old black and
white films are 'dated', that we perceive its historical context of
production. But it is only because Buckland refers to that process by the
linguistic metaphor of 'deixis' that this process has any special relation
to enunciation in a linguistic sense, based as it is on general cognitive
competences. Buckland also includes a discussion of some
'deconstructionist' Anglo-Saxon theoreticians (Rodowick and Conley) as
padding, but why this is important for the main theme is unclear. The
bottom line is that regarding 'enunciation' the chapter has not provided a
cognitive-semiotic alternative to Bordwell, but on the contrary shown that
even Metz nearly accepted Bordwell's position as it was argued in
_Narration in the Fiction Film_.

Chapter 4, on Roger Odin's semio-pragmatics, is less problematic,
especially because it is more pragmatic than semiotic. Odin's idea that
there are different modes of attention when watching different types of
films is a rewarding one. His comments on documentary are very much in line
with the positions taken by the American cognitive film scholar Carl
Plantinga. [2] Furthermore, Buckland point out some inconsistencies in
Roger Odin's terminology.

The last chapter, on film grammar, is, however, just as problematic as
chapters two and three. Buckland himself mentions that most linguists have
abandoned the idea of a transformational generative grammar. But
nevertheless he argues, in the beginning of the chapter, as if such a
grammar is still a valid procedure, and as if Michel Colin had actually
transformed Metz's *grande syntagmatique* into a transformational
generative grammar.

Buckland does not discuss whether Metz's grand syntagmatics really is
similar to a grammar and does not discuss the status of the so-called
'syntagmas'. Metz's grand syntagmatics is full of inconsistencies and
problems, perhaps because it was made as a quick sketch to the seminal
number 8 of _Communications_ in 1966 and has really not been rethought
since. One of the basic problems is a confusion of a technical and a
cognitive definition of 'units' (e.g. 'segments'). Metz thinks that 'shots'
are some well-defined minimal units, so therefore if, say, a film has a cut
to a close up of an object, it has a special status of being an explanatory
insert, but he does not say that the same effect might be constructed
without any cut (e.g. by tracking and panning, or by zooming). Mitry has
pointed out that it is impossible to make a clear-cut distinction between
cutting and representations by other means, like camera movements and mise
en scene. And when does a scene with some action and some panning stop
being narrative and start to be descriptive? Metz describes 'scenes' and
'sequences' as alternatives (based on unclear ideas of how some cuts are
not really felt as cuts, but as long takes), but most 'sequences' will in
ordinary parlance be described as a series of scenes. His distinction
between episodic and ordinary sequences only makes sense if we take those
two types of sequences as two prototypes with all kinds of intermediary
forms. Thus grand syntagmatics is an interesting catalogue of different
types of representation, although with many unclear aspects (partly due to
developments in film narration). But it is not a grammar, and its
presentation of the sequences by means of a 'tree' of alternatives is
misleading, because if you go down through the tree to, for instance, the
ordinary sequence, you may of course sometimes find the different inserts
that in the 'tree' was placed in a different branch (the autonomous shot).

Fortunately for Buckland he does not use the grand syntagmatics for any
analytical purpose, and he is thus spared the task of solving the problem
of a typology that poses as being a kind of grammar. He only analyses a
deviating series of events in Godard's _Pierrot le fou_ (the scene in which
Belmondo and Karina leave a flat). The scene could perfectly well be
analysed by Bordwell's description of how to transform syuzhet information
to fabula information (influenced by Genette's discussion of 'order'). So
if we said that for expressive reasons Godard has scrambled the logical
order of the scene, but that spectators by using their standard schemata
and heuristics about processes and actions can reconstruct the logical
order we would have all the tools we need. And all the tools that Buckland
actually uses. Later Buckland amplifies his own analysis of the Godard
example by retelling Bordwell's fifteen years older analysis of Resnais's
_La Guerre est finie_. It would have been more honest to go the other way
around: to retell Bordwell's analysis and then explain whether Buckland's
own procedure could add something new to the analysis of scrambled
sequences or not. But Buckland's only 'contribution is to say (with a
metaphorical reference to Chomsky's trace-theory) that there are 'traces'
in the scrambled events and shots that makes it possible for the spectator
to reconstruct the unscrambled version. The bottom line is that he has
re-invented Bordwell's fabula-construction without saying so, but
Bordwell's description is much richer and more complex.

Colin's (and Buckland's) project of building a 'transformational generative
grammar' on top of Metz's loose typology on some modes of film
representation becomes further problematic when Buckland -- as mentioned --
at the end of the chapter admits that even within the linguistic community
the idea of a transformational grammar is nearly abandoned. Many linguistic
scholars further acknowledge that 'competence' is based on a series of
cognitive functions that are not linguistic in any specific sense.

I have much sympathy for Buckland's project: to build a bridge between
French film semiotics and cognitive film theory. I also have sympathy for
his theoretical ambition: film studies need theoretical reflections, and
maybe even grand theory. But the book does not deliver the promised
results: there are few, if any, contributions to cognitive film theory, and
no proofs of how semiotics may enrich cognitive film theory. The problems
in _The Cognitive Semiotics of Film_ are derived from the way in which he
leaves out major aspects of cognitive science and cognitive film theory.
Cognitive science has shown how natural languages are built on top of a
series of (often older) non-linguistic cognitive functions, for instance
visual perception, motor schemata, and emotional processes. Films access
language, but they also access a series of other cognitive competences.
Despite the fact that Buckland claims to be an adherent of a 'decentered'
approach to human cognition, the consequence of his linguistic approach to
the film experience works against this position. In contrast, cognitive
science is a pragmatic (decentered) approach to human cognition that points
out how our cognition is based on a series of different mental activities
that interact pragmatically, they are not part of a 'system' in any
linguistic sense. There are few traces in Buckland's book of the rich
discussions within the cognitive science community of how the human mind
works. Furthermore his description of cognitive film theory does not
reflect the diversity of theories and methods (Carroll's relations to
analytical philosophy; Branigan's language-orientation; the theories of
emotions in the works of Tan, Smith and myself; Anderson's ecological
approach; etc.). The failure to truly bridge-build is last, but not least,
partly caused by Buckland's inability to see how cognitive film studies has
been deeply influenced by the rich semiotic discussion in France in the
60s, and has avoided the influence from the problematic mix of Lacanianism,
hard core culturalism, and fragments of old-fashioned linguistics that
derailed film theory in the 70s.

University of Copenhagen, Denmark


Footnotes

1. Cf. Grodal, _Moving Pictures_, p. 75.

2. See Plantinga, _Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film_.


References

Anderson, Joseph, _The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to
Cognitive Film Theory_ (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1996).

Bordwell, David, _Narration in the Fiction Film_ (London: Routledge, 1985).
--- _Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of
Cinema_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).

Grodal, Torben, _Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings,
and Cognition_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

Metz, Christian, _L'Enonciation impersonnelle, ou le site du film_ (Paris:
Meridiens Klincksieck, 1991).

Plantinga, Carl, _Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film_
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Smith, Murray, _Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema_
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

Tan, Ed, _Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film_ (Mahwah, New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996).


Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 2001

Torben Grodal, 'Old Wine in Old Bottles', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 5 no. 12,
April 2001 <http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol5-2001/n12grodal>.

    ________....

Discuss, contest, and continue this text by sending your thoughts to:

    [log in to unmask]

    ______________....