Noël Carroll and Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture 1786735407, 9781786735409

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Mario Slugan is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellow at Ghent University, researching film philosophy and film history. He is the author of Montage as Perceptual Experience: Berlin Alexanderplatz from Döblin to Fassbinder (2017).

Series Editors: Lúcia Nagib Professor in Film at the University of Reading Tiago de Luca Associate Professor in Film & Television Studies at the University of Warwick

Advisory Board: Martine Beugnet, Université Diderot Paris Thomas Elsaesser, University of Amsterdam Catherine Grant, Birkbeck University D.N. Rodowick, The University of Chicago Ágnes Pethő, Sapientia University David Martin-Jones, University of Glasgow Philip Rosen, Brown University Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University Film Thinks is an original book series that asks: how has film influenced the way we think? The books in this series are concise, engaging editions written by experts in film history and theory, each focusing on a past or present philosopher, thinker or writer whose intellectual landscape has been shaped by cinema. Film Thinks aims to further understanding and appreciation, through sophisticated but accessible language, of the thought derived from great films. Whilst explaining and interpreting these thinkers’ ideas and the films at their origin, the series will celebrate cinema’s capacity to inspire and entertain – and ultimately to change the world. Aimed at film fans as well as specialists, Film Thinks is devoted to knowledge about cinema and philosophy as much as to the pleasure of watching films. Published and forthcoming in the Film Thinks series: Adorno and Film: Thinking in Images By James Hellings Georges Didi-Huberman and Film: Politics of the Image By Alison Smith Noël Carroll and Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture By Mario Slugan Roland Barthes and Film: Photography, Myth and Leaving the Cinema By Patrick Ffrench Slavoj Žižek and Film: A Cinematic Ontology By Christine Evans Stanley Cavell and Film: Scepticism and Self-Reliance at the Cinema By Catherine Wheatley Queries, ideas and submissions to: Series Editor: Professor Lúcia Nagib – [email protected] Series Editor: Dr Tiago de Luca – [email protected] Senior Commissioning Editor at Bloomsbury: Anna Coatman – [email protected]

Noe¨l Carroll and Film A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture

Mario Slugan Ghent University, Belgium

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright q Mario Slugan, 2019 Mario Slugan has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design: Charlotte Daniels All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

HB: 978-1-788-31229-5 ePDF: 978-1-7867-3540-9 eBook: 978-1-7867-2540-0 Series: Film Thinks

Typeset by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain

For Uuree

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements

ix xi

Introduction

1

1

Institutional Context The Relative Lack of Influence of Carroll’s Work on Film Studies The Institutional Reasons Behind Carroll’s Relative Lack of Influence Carroll’s Work on Ideology Carroll’s Rhetoric

14

2

Film Theory Contra Medium Specificity Against Monolithic Theories Cognitivism as Piecemeal Theorising

38 39 50 55

3

Assessment of Theory Irrelevance Straw Men Methodological Imperialism

63 63 68 79

4

Analytic and Cognitivist Debates Transparency Thesis The Moving Image Definition Implicit Fictional Film Narrators

90 90 101 105

5

Interpretation and Filmmaking Interpretation and Theoretical Commitments What Is Interpretation? From Interpretation to Theory Carroll’s Filmmaking

113 114 123 131 135

vii

15 20 28 33

Noël Carroll and Film 6

Philosophy of Art Anti-Essentialism The Philosophies of Arts Affective Responses to Art

143 143 155 161

Conclusion

168

Notes Bibliography Index

178 201 212

viii

Illustrations

Figure 1.1 Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) attacks Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) in Fatal Attraction. Directed by Adrian Lyne. Produced by Paramount Pictures.

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Figure 2.1 Long shot of Walter White’s (Bryan Cranston) pool raises a micro-question (Breaking Bad, Season 4, Episode 13). Directed by Vince Gilligan. Created by Vince Gilligan. Produced by High Bridge, Gran Via Productions, Sony Picture Television and AMC.

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Figure 2.2 Close-up of the plant answers both micro- and macroquestions, thereby providing closure (Breaking Bad, Season 4, Episode 13). Directed by Vince Gilligan. Created by Vince Gilligan. Produced by High Bridge, Gran Via Productions, Sony Picture Television and AMC.

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Figure 4.1 The house of mirrors hinders the protagonists’ ability to orientate themselves correctly in The Lady from Shanghai. Directed by Orson Welles. Produced by Columbia Pictures

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Figure 4.2 Robert Delaunay’s painting of Igor Stravinsky is an index of the famous composer because he sat for the portrait. Wikimedia Commons.

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Figure 4.3 George Grantham Bain’s photograph of Igor Stravinsky is an index of the composer, just like Delauney’s painting. Wikimedia Commons.

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Figure 5.1 Christ is only one of the gods revered by humans (the argument against the existence of God in October). Directed by Sergei Eisenstein. Produced by Sovkino.

115

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Noël Carroll and Film Figure 5.2 The existence of different deities undermines the idea of a benevolent God (the argument against the existence of God in October). Directed by Sergei Eisenstein. Produced by Sovkino

115

Figure 5.3 Don Jose (James Sutton) has murdered Carmen (Galina Zakrutkina) in The Last Conversation: Eisenstein’s Carmen Ballet. Directed by Sally Banes. Produced by Sally Banes.

136

Figure 6.1 Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) murders the informant Febby Petrulio (Tony Ray Rossi) (The Sopranos, Season 1, Episode 5). Directed by Allen Coulter. Created by David Chase. Produced by Chase Films, Brad Grey Television, Soprano Productions Inc. and HBO.

165

x

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the series editors Tiago de Luca and Lúcia Nagib for accepting the book proposal and Madeleine Hamey-Thomas for guiding me through the editorial process. Many thanks to Daniel Morgan, Zdenko Mandusi
c, Goran Pavli
c, Tijana Risti
c and David Tarandek for their comments upon reading various parts of the manuscript. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the participants of the 2017 British Society of Aesthetics Conference, especially James MacDowall and Enrico Terrone, for their feedback on the moving image definition proposal. I would like to thank the two anonymous peer reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions as well. Finally, I would like to acknowledge that the monograph was produced with the support of the Marie Curie Alumni Association.

xi

Introduction

Currently a distinguished professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, Noël Carroll is one of the most widely cited philosophers of art. Over more than 40 years, he has written widely on popular art, mass art, narration, art evaluation, humour, horror and, perhaps most notably, film. Yet even though the key focus of his work is film, and even though much of his philosophy of art directly follows from his engagement with film, in cinema studies Carroll has enjoyed considerably less attention than philosophers working in the continental tradition. Already in the 1980s, Carroll launched a series of critiques of both classical film theory and the then dominant paradigm in cinema studies organised around Lacanian psychoanalysis, Althusserian Marxism and Barthesian semiotics. By doing so Carroll opened cinema studies to the method of analytic philosophy – an amalgam of conceptual analysis, explicit use of formal logic and the insistence on language clarity – and provided a place for cinema in the larger project of the analytic philosophy of art.1 Carroll quickly found allies among cognitivists – researchers who argue that mental aspects of film spectatorship are best explained by appealing to rational processes of cognition rather than to irrational processes of the unconscious – heralded by David Bordwell.2 The majority of film academics, however, still have substantial reservations about Carroll’s theories and method to this very day, not the least because of his vehement criticism of film scholarship deriving from the continental philosophical tradition – the latter forming an outlook traditionally more sceptical of the natural sciences, more invested in bridging the gap between theory and practice and more attuned to the historical and ideological contextualisation of problems.3

1

Noël Carroll and Film This monograph presents and calls for greater engagement with Carroll’s work. It tackles the institutional reasons behind the relative neglect of Carroll’s approach, vindicates Carroll’s alleged blindness to research programmes focusing on the problem of ideology and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Carroll’s theories and method. Crucially, the monograph argues that there is nothing incommensurable about the analytic and the continental approach. First, both traditions can address perhaps the single most influential programme in film studies today – the film’s ideological function broadly conceived. Second, both philosophical schools hinge on the validity and factuality of the arguments for their rhetorical effectiveness. In other words, given that both camps regard logical reasoning as means of winning arguments and given that they both propose explanations of the film’s ideological operations, there cannot be any talk of incommensurability between the analytic and the continental approach. This, in turn, should motivate more interaction between the camps and a surge of interest in Carroll. Another handicap of Carroll’s from the perspective of film scholars is that, as a professor of philosophy, he is most often regarded as an analytic philosopher who happens to theorise film. The fact that Carroll’s first PhD was in Cinema Studies and that his first substantial pieces of writing were film interpretations is habitually and unfairly omitted. It is his philosophy of art that evolves from his work on film rather than vice versa. It is on the example of film that he developed what would become the staples of his philosophy of art in general – anti-essentialism and piecemeal theorising. Moreover, that the continental tradition informs both his interpretative work – the Romanticist idea of a unified work of art – and the dissertation on Buster Keaton’s The General (1926) – Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology – is also virtually never mentioned. As Carroll himself points out, however, it is through Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about embodiment that he would be drawn to analytic philosophy and cognitive science giving further credence to the idea that analytic and continental traditions might be closer than they appear. Next to his writings on film, Carroll has also written for film, demonstrating that his interest is not only theoretical and critical but practical as well. To my knowledge, nobody has paid any sustained attention to Carroll’s work as a filmmaker although his treatment of documentary material further elucidates his anti-sceptical commitment to

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Introduction the notions of objectivity and truth, crucial to his theoretical, interpretative and critical work alike. My overall argument is that Carroll’s highly influential philosophy of art – or, more specifically, the idea that a plurality of philosophies of arts should replace a singular philosophy of art – is greatly indebted to his work on cinema, which in turn is indebted to both analytic and continental philosophy. Once the analytic approach is no longer seen as imperialistic and incapable of addressing questions of ideology, cinema studies as well as the study of aesthetics and art in general only stand to gain from recognising Carroll’s multifaceted contributions, and from a more active engagement with the analytic method. As such this monograph is aimed at both the continental and the analytic camp.4 For those working within the continental paradigm, be it Marxism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, feminism, queer studies, race studies, postcolonial studies, critical theory, structuralism, poststructuralism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction, Deleuze-inspired approaches, and so on, the book can serve as a way of easing into Carroll’s writings, which, particularly in their earlier instances, often come across as too hostile and dismissive. The goal of the book from this perspective is to provide a balanced account of both Carroll’s critique of the Marxist – Psychoanalytic –Semiotic theories of film and the importance of this debate within the context of the present state of film studies. Primarily, the goal is to set epistemological research programmes such as Carroll’s on equal footing with those invested in societal/political progressivism, such as those inherited from the tradition of Marxist –Psychoanalytic – Semiotic ideology critique. This will allow for a fair assessment of the debates between Carroll and notable opponents such as Stephen Heath and Warren Buckland from an epistemological point of view. For instance, by the end of the book the reader will hopefully come to appreciate the perils of sweeping claims, equivocation and the lack of consideration of counterexamples in some Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotic contributions to film theory and interpretation, while at the same time recognising that Carroll by no means always approaches his opponents with a benefit of a doubt or that he is free of the charge of propping up straw men. In other words, despite arguing for the usefulness of Carroll’s method for answering a range of questions of film theory, interpretation, evaluation and their application to the more general problems of the

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Noël Carroll and Film philosophy of art, I hold no punches when it comes to Carroll’s own blind spots, wilful misjudgements, unsound arguments and mistakes. For those indebted to the combination of the analytic and the cognitivist approach, the book identifies theoretical questions and problems which have fallen on the sidelines within the novel paradigm, such as ideology critique and the problem of indexicality. It also tackles interpretation and criticism as sub-disciplines of film studies which have been somewhat neglected from this paradigm’s perspective. To this end, the book provides not only an overview of some of Carroll’s most relevant contributions to film theory (and notable omissions) but also argues for the relevance of the analytic method in interpretative and evaluative work. Moreover, it breaks new ground by contributing to numerous debates presently ongoing in analytic circles, including the definition of the moving image, the discussion of implicit fictional film narrators and the critique of intentionalism, to name a few. Perhaps most importantly, the book closes with an argument for the growing need for the paradigm to acknowledge the importance of film history, both as a source of ever-burgeoning empirical data in need of theoretical accommodation and as a challenge to the systems of categorisation – such as the fiction/non-fiction diction – which are nowadays taken for granted but prove to be historically specific on closer inspection. Recently there has also been a growing number of scholars who have been trying to bridge the analytic/continental divide by building on both traditions in their writings on film.5 A nuanced analysis of the key debates between the two camps will hopefully also prove of interest to them by highlighting how the relative strengths of the competing approaches can be combined in an even more productive study of film. The continental investment in cultural values could, for instance, be combined with Carroll’s objectivist account of film evaluation to yield a powerful yet nonprescriptive theory of evaluation. But there is another group of readers to whom the book recommends itself the most – those who are yet to decide on which approach to pursue in their study of film. To an undergraduate who has just started taking introductory film studies courses, to a postgraduate looking for a research topic or a method to approach a given research question, to an adjunct forced to ever expand his or her expertise in trying to prolong or secure a new contract, to a tenured professor who would like to try something new,

4

Introduction or to somebody who simply wants to think about film without a particular axe to grind, this monograph aims to demonstrate that the analytic method is as powerful a tool for launching an ideology critique as it is for understanding how films affect us emotionally, what the implicit meaning of a given film is or how we can evaluate films objectively. The book consists of six chapters. Whereas the first three investigate Carroll’s relationship with the Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotic approaches from institutional, theoretical and methodological perspectives alike, the last three home in on Carroll’s contributions the reader is less likely to be aware of, including specific film theories, practical and interpretative work and philosophy of art. The more analytically minded reader might, therefore, be more interested in the latter chapters, while the more continentally inclined might feel the same predisposition towards the former chapters. And although the book can certainly be read in such a way, readers stand to gain the most if they espouse the position of a student with no particular horse in the race and consider the book in its entirety. This is not to deny that the readers more sympathetic to the continental approach might need more convincing to continue reading this book than the analytically oriented ones for, after all, the book is about an analytic rather than a continental philosopher. This is a fair point and I intend to tackle it by way of arguing that, although more than 25 years have passed since the key debates between Carroll on the one hand, and Heath and Buckland on the other, returning to these exchanges is more than an exercise in writing a chapter in the history of the discipline, for the underlying stakes in the debate still loom large over film studies (and beyond). We can identify at least five issues which reverberate to this very day and remain far from settled. The first concerns whether the human subject – whose relation to film we are trying to understand – is rational or irrational. The second relates to whether we see the object of our study as privileged or not. The third pertains to what kind of work our theory is supposed to do – epistemology or ideology critique. The fourth asks what counts as a proper method for answering our theoretical questions. The fifth considers what mechanisms regulate which ideas are in currency and which are not. Drawing mostly on Lacan’s rereading of Freud, Marxist–Psychoanalytic–Semiotic theory of the 1970s and 1980s posited an irrational human subject governed by unconscious processes and desires. Carroll countered by

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Noël Carroll and Film tapping into a more traditional outlook extending at least to Descartes to argue that the human subject is essentially rational and best understood by the best available science of the mind, that is, cognitive science. This book cannot possibly hope to solve such a deep philosophical question. But it can and does point out that the analyses of the human subject – be it psychoanalysis in the case of the irrational subject or cognitivism in the case of the rational one – purport to be rational projects insofar as they follow the rules of logical reasoning. For instance, neither Freud nor Lacan resort to, say, suppressing conscious control of their own mind via Breton-like automatic writing to give an account of the unconscious mind. Instead they marshal their conscious cognitive faculties to produce arguments, hypothesise, theorise, publish scholarly works, hold academic lectures, and so on. Given that both irrational and rational processes are investigated by rational means, it follows that both traditions ascribe at least pragmatic value to the rational subject. In other words, even if the underlying truth of the human subject were to rest in the unconscious, it is the rational human subject who remains the arbiter of what that truth precisely amounts to. The second overarching stake in the assessment of the debate between the analytic and the continental outlook concerns what status film scholars confer to film. Whereas for the former, film is an object of study like any other, no more or no less special, for the latter film is a privileged cultural product which both exerts enormous influence on the formation of our subjectivity and provides a model for the understanding of crucial unconscious processes. Within the Marxist –Psychoanalytic–Semiotic paradigm, again, film is key in producing the ideological mirage of unified subjectivity while at the same time exemplifying fundamental psychoanalytic concepts such as the mirror stage, fetishism, voyeurism and others. Similarly, in the most recent tradition building on the work of Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze film is seen as capable of philosophising in its own right rather than being merely an object of philosophy. This book argues that although Carroll vehemently criticises models which profess mind-film analogy, he by no means claims that films cannot do philosophy or that they have no ideological effects. Put differently, Carroll’s work provides ample room for compromise when it comes to the film’s ascribed status. This point feeds directly into the question of what kind of work we as film scholars want to do. Are we interested only in epistemological considerations such as how do we understand film images, how does

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Introduction narrative work or how do we emotionally respond to film? Or do we aspire to loftier goals and want our work to have a broader societal impact? Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semioticians have undeniably been on the vanguard of progressivist thinking, focusing their work on disenfranchised groups such as women, LGBTQ, racial minorities, postcolonial societies, and so on, and on how cinema contributes to their continued marginalisation. And even though the Marxist –Psychoanalytic – Semiotic paradigm has run out of steam, the present-day continental approaches in film studies are still heavily invested in postcolonialism, queer studies, feminism, cultural studies, etc. and can still instil significant public interest  zek). Carroll and his fellow scholars, by contrast, (think only of Slavoj Zi have undeniably for the most part eschewed such projects while focusing predominantly on epistemological research questions. But to claim that it is possible only to do epistemological inquiry or ideology critique is to present a false choice. As I demonstrate in the book, Carroll’s method not only does not preclude inquiring into how films propagate stereotypical views of different marginalised groups, but also provides a clear outline of how to undertake such a research project. Ideology critique, however, is not only about advocating for subjugated groups; it is also about criticising traditional epistemology as one of the main mechanisms of control over the aforesaid groups. The continental tradition has a long history of criticising knowledge as an effect of hidden power relations starting with Marx and even boasts a thread which is sceptical of the very concept of truth going at least to Nietzsche. As such, it comes as no surprise that somebody closer to the continental school might be sceptical of the analytic framework, especially because of its perceived methodological imperialism. Conversely, those indebted to Carroll’s perspective might not stop short even of dismissing the continental approach as having no proper method to begin with, while arguing instead that continental work is as philosophical as sophistry. But here as well, the book argues, there is room for conciliation. Even under the worst-case scenario in which both the continental and the analytic methods are nothing but rhetorical strategies, both appeal to logical reasoning to persuade their audiences. This means that there is an underlying method which allows us to evaluate their respective persuasiveness – the rules of formal logic. In other words, so long as logical reasoning presents the dominant means of persuasion (though, admittedly, there are also other

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Noël Carroll and Film means which I address), propositional factuality and the deployment of formally valid arguments constitute the benchmark against which all statements, regardless of whether they derive from the analytic or the continental framework, can be checked for their rhetorical effect. All these factors – the conceptualisation of the human subject, the status of the object of study, the goal of scholarly work and the method employed – undeniably play a role in one’s choice of which approach, or combination of approaches, to pursue. But taking another clue from the continental outlook, this book argues that it is the institutional framework that in the end might prove decisive for what and whose set of ideas hold currency in the discipline. In other words, even logical arguments and other rhetorical strategies can only go so far. Often, choosing an approach may simply be about fitting in with the prevailing institutional agendas. As the first full-length monograph on an analytic philosopher of film, this book aims to offset the current institutional standings of respective schools of thought by appealing to institutional, pedagogical, epistemological and methodological analysis. In the first chapter, therefore, I turn to various institutional parameters – film theory syllabi and textbooks, learned societies’ award lists and conference programmes, publication trends, citation patterns, job listings, etc. – to argue that although far from unknown in film studies, Carroll’s work in particular and the approaches indebted to analytic philosophy in general command considerably less attention in the discipline than competing research programmes deriving from the continental tradition (structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, race theory, queer theory, and so on). Having identified the trend, I proceed to articulate the institutional reasons behind why Carroll’s work is read more widely in philosophy departments than in film – namely, the context of the formation of film studies as a university discipline in the 1960s and 1970s and its commitment to political/societal relevance. Whereas much of film studies is invested in questions of ideology, Carroll’s research programme appears not only disinterested in these questions but even inimical to them. First, I argue that epistemological considerations (which inform Carroll’s research agenda) present as valid a motive for deciding which research programme to pursue as the considerations stemming from the potential for positive political/ societal change. Second, I demonstrate that Carroll’s project is not only

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Introduction open to the study of ideology in film but that Carroll has done substantial work in that vein. I conclude the chapter with the claim that, although Carroll’s brand of film theory, unlike that of his main competitors, places greater emphasis on epistemological than political/societal questions, Carroll’s insistence on conceptual clarity and formal validity in reasoning, at the very least, makes his theoretical writings an excellent pedagogical vehicle for introducing (potential) students of film to film theory. In Chapter 2, I argue that Carroll’s film theory has far more to offer than pedagogical value. I outline three of Carroll’s main theoretical commitments – anti-essentialism, piecemeal theorising and cognitivism – while emphasising their importance in the development of film theory in general from the 1980s onwards. In the case of anti-essentialism, Carroll argues against the view, popularised by classical film theorists, that film’s features and capabilities are defined by its medium and that the excellence of a film hinges upon the use of devices which are inherently specific to the medium. From Carroll’s perspective, classical film theory is a formally invalid attempt at justifying critical preferences. Carroll’s commitment to piecemeal theorising is both a condemnation of an amalgam of approaches indebted to Marxism, psychoanalysis and semiotics and an argument for empirical study and conceptual analysis. Carroll construes contemporary film theory as a body of work which is closer to interpretation than theory proper. For Carroll, the work influenced by Althusser, Lacan and Barthes is too indebted to the use of rhetorical devices such as equivocations and metaphors to count as theory. Carroll’s alternative is to propose distinct theories for different aspects of cinema. For instance, Carroll reveals conceptual weaknesses behind accounts which argue for construing the nature of filmic representation as illusion and language, respectively, marshalling instead arguments in favour of the natural recognition thesis. Similarly, he claims that the empirically grounded cognitive psychology is better equipped to account for film spectatorship than psychoanalysis. The third chapter addresses three broad types of responses to Carroll’s theory: irrelevance, the straw-man view and methodological imperialism. Because scholars working on film in the analytic and cognitivist milieu generally share the same research programme as Carroll, despite disagreeing on precise solutions to specific questions, in this chapter I only discuss the criticism coming from the continental camp to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Carroll’s theory. According to the first type of

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Noël Carroll and Film response, Carroll’s logical critiques of a particular thinker’s theory often have little bearing on what film scholars find of interest in the thinker’s work. Taking Carroll’s discussion of André Bazin as an example, it matters little that Bazin’s argument in favour of the long take is formally invalid. What matters is Bazin’s appreciation of a novel style that Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) introduces. Indeed, I argue that on occasions Carroll even fails to address the main theoretical concept film scholars have articulated based on a thinker’s work – namely, the indexical nature of photography derived from Bazin’s ontology. Occasional failures of this sort, however, should not blind us to the range of topics Carroll has written on and their importance for film theory. Heath’s rejoinder to Carroll’s review of his Questions of Cinema exemplifies the second type of response. I discuss the Carroll – Heath debate from the early 1980s to argue that, although Carroll sometimes misrepresents Heath’s views, the mistake is more often than not a product of imprecise formulations on Heath’s part. In other words, I argue that the burden is on the theorist (rather than on the commentator) to articulate their own position as clearly as possible, that is to provide conceptual clarity. According to the last broad argument levelled against Carroll that I address, Carroll is pursuing methodological imperialism in his theoretical work by privileging the analytic and the empirical method over continental approaches. I argue that the only thing Carroll privileges is conceptual clarity and formal validity of argumentation. Given that the detractors of methodological imperialism working in the continental tradition make their points precisely by making arguments, that is, by employing rules of logical reasoning, they invariably both partake in Carroll’s method and open themselves to criticism based on conceptual clarity and formal validity. Chapter 4 provides a sample of some crucial debates on film theory taking place within the analytic and cognitivist framework. I assess the arguments pertaining to three topics Carroll has played a crucial role in: the discussion with Kendall Walton on the idea that photographs are transparent, the exchange with Robert Yanal and Alan Goldman on the definition of the moving image, and the debate with George Wilson about the (in)existence of implicit fictional narrators in film. In the first case, Walton has championed the idea that we can see objects through photographs much like we can see those very same objects through windows and mirrors. Carroll has denied this by arguing that only the

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Introduction latter allow for orientation towards their objects – photographs do not. Given that even Carroll admits that some complicated set-ups of mirrors make orientation impossible, building on the work of Berys Gaut I suggest a different way for distinguishing transparent images from opaque ones – whether they interrupt or reflect/refract light waves/particles coming from the source of the image. Regarding the definition of the moving image, I argue that two out of Carroll’s five necessary conditions for moving images do not hold. As an alternative, I offer my own definition of the moving image, which emphasises the stored and sequential nature of images. I conclude the chapter with a novel argument against the ubiquity of implicit fictional narrators, siding with Carroll in the debate against Wilson. Having argued that, for Carroll, both classical and contemporary film theory present a form of interpretation gone awry, in Chapter 5 I consider, on the one hand, the role of interpretation for him and, on the other, the relationship between his interpretative work and theory. For Carroll, the function of interpretation is distinct from both evaluation (for which he reserves the term criticism) and exegesis. To interpret, instead, is to explicate in thematic, functional or causal terms why a particular feature is present in the film and what its relationships to other features are. For instance, he finds that in Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925) contrastive editing, framing, foreground/background compositions, blocking, sight lines, close-ups, actors’ physiques, and so on, are all employed to emphasise the Tramp’s loneliness. Such an analysis, for Carroll, is crucial for appreciating works qua artworks rather than as illustrations of some theory. Concerning the relationship between his interpretative work and his theory, I argue that the method which informs his later forays into theory can already be found in his interpretative writings. In extolling the virtues of a range of features rather than simply celebrating the realist long take or the anti-realist montage, he denies that evaluations of aesthetic works hinge on medium-specific properties. In seeking to provide a different explanation for the organisation of each film rather than arguing that yet another film expresses the auteur’s personal vision or Marxist – Psychoanalytic –Semiotic theses on subject formation, Carroll evinces his commitment to piecemeal approaches. In seeking counterexamples to the analyses he makes at a time when interpretation concerns itself predominantly with instances which fit

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Noël Carroll and Film the preferred theoretical framework, Carroll already demonstrates his investment in the empirical method. As such, interpretation can even decide between competing theories. Crucially, I point out that Carroll already had a model of film interpretation in place before interpretative practices building on Marxism, psychoanalysis and semiotics became the norm in film studies in the mid-1970s. Once that happened, he tried to articulate in theoretical terms why this new model should be abandoned. From this perspective, Carroll’s brush with the then contemporary theory can be seen as an effort to reinstate a different type of interpretative practice as much as an attempt to make space for a new theory. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of Carroll’s screenwriting for film documentaries. I analyse the congruence between Carroll’s theoretical, interpretative and practical work to argue that his advocacy of the idea that a documentary can be both true and objective is neither misplaced nor reactionary. Such a defence does not preclude a critique of ideology but merely scales down the concept of ideology, which has in the wake of Althusser been equated with the notion of culture itself. In the final chapter, I explore Carroll’s key contributions to the philosophy of art and how they are derived from his engagement with film. Anti-essentialism, piecemeal theories and cognitivism again prove crucial. Much like with film, Carroll denies both that the medium defines an art form and that the medium determines what devices the art form should focus on for a work to be successful. Carroll, in fact, argues that instead of looking for a definition of art in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions we are better served by finding epistemic criteria for identifying instances of art. As an alternative to a medium-specific approach to evaluation, moreover, Carroll offers a model of evaluation that is still rationally decidable and objective but is not normative. Carroll’s piecemeal theorising is evident in his call for the philosophies of the arts to replace the philosophy of art based in part on his rebuttal of the idea that aesthetic experience underlies all art. One of his main contributions to this project is his work on mass art as distinct from both popular and traditional art. The elimination of aesthetic experience as an essential feature of art also allows Carroll to open the philosophies of the arts to questions of morality, religion, society, ideology, and so on. In other words, the charge against Carroll as a formalist loses ground not only in the light of his contributions

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Introduction to interpretative criticism but also in view of the larger body of his philosophical writings. Carroll’s investment in cognitivism, finally, comes across most clearly in his work on various affective responses to art (humour, horror, suspense, sympathy, empathy, etc.). Perhaps most importantly, Carroll provides an alternative to the oft-used but undertheorised notion of identification for our understanding of affective responses to fictional characters.

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1 Institutional Context

Noël Carroll is one of the main proponents of cognitivism in film studies and the most important scholar in the field applying analytic philosophy to his work. This chapter will argue that it is precisely these theoretical and methodological commitments, together with the history of the formation of the first film departments in the wake of the political events of 1968, which have fuelled the institutional reasons behind Carroll’s limited influence when compared to thinkers indebted to continental philosophy. More specifically, I argue that even before Carroll’s work is assessed on epistemological grounds he is often criticised for his lack of interest in ideological questions and is, therefore, perceived as morally suspect in advance. This chapter presents a threefold argument for the benefits of devoting more attention to Carroll, cognitivism and analytic philosophy in film studies. First, epistemological concerns are no less valid motives for pursuing specific research programmes than moral incentives. Second, contrary to the standard view, Carroll’s approach does offer insights into questions of ideology. Finally, his approach is a perfect tool for introducing film students to film theory because of its clarity of expression.

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Institutional Context

The Relative Lack of Influence of Carroll’s Work on Film Studies Noël Carroll is hardly unknown in film studies. Together with David Bordwell, he is the co-editor of Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, a volume that has firmly established cognitivism as an alternative to psychoanalysis in scholarly approaches to film.1 Since its fourth edition, Carroll’s work can also be found in the perhaps most-widely used film studies reader – Film Theory and Criticism.2 His monograph The Philosophy of Horror is a classic of genre studies.3 When it comes to philosophy of art he is regularly cited as one of the leading authorities in the field.4 And yet, both his work and the school of thought he is a prominent member of – analytic philosophy – continues to have a significantly lesser influence on film studies than continental approaches. This much is clear if we consider publication records, journal relevance, the structure of professional organisations, award patterns, conference programmes, the content of film theory guides, teaching practices and job openings. In the case of book-length studies focusing on particular film theorists, when the call for the series Film Thinks that this monograph is a part of first went out, for instance, the following was the list of names suggested by the editors: Antonin Artaud, Theodor W. Adorno, André Bazin, Alain Badiou, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Walter Benjamin, Jorge Luis Borges, Judith Butler, Guy Debord, Gilles Deleuze, Umberto Eco, Stuart Hall, Julia Kristeva, Fredric Jameson, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Franc
ois Lyotard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Vinicius de Moraes, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jacques Rancière, Susan Sontag, Paul Virilio, Raymond Williams and Slavoj Žižek. On this list of 26 names – which is primarily composed of philosophers, theorists and critics – there is not a single person who has actively practised analytic philosophy. It is understandable that not every list will be all-inclusive, but one which completely dismisses a whole school of thought along with crucial philosophers of art such as Arthur Danto or George Dickie is indicative of film studies’ (lack of) interest in the analytic school. The common denominator of the above list, instead, is the thinkers’ commitment to the continental tradition, irrespective of whether they subscribe to some form of Marxism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, phenomenology, cultural studies, poststructuralism or other school of thought. Moreover, virtually all these thinkers have

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Noël Carroll and Film already received monograph-length treatments by film scholars. A simple bibliographical search reveals that, for instance, there are more than 20 books focusing solely on Deleuze’s philosophy of cinema.5 The asymmetry is even more striking when we consider that, unlike the some of the authors listed here, such as Žižek or Williams, the focus of Carroll’s philosophical work is film. If we turn to volumes which provide an overview of the key figures in the field, in the most cited book on the subject – Felicity Colman’s Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers – the only scholar who comes close to the heritage of analytic philosophy among the 32 authors covered is Stanley Cavell. And even he does not practise the analytic brand of philosophy in his later work, especially in his books on cinema.6 Moreover, the following review of Colman’s volume suggests that film scholars see the focus on the continental tradition as perfectly representative of philosophical work on film: ‘In terms of theoretical scope, the book I currently hold in my hands could hardly be more comprehensive; in terms of ambition, it could hardly be more colossal.’7 In fact, to find a single edited volume chapter which provides an overview of Carroll’s (or Bordwell’s) work on film we need to turn to The Routledge Companion to Film and Philosophy.8 Importantly, even this volume, which was edited by scholars invested in analytic philosophy, predominantly covers thinkers of continental provenance. Journal rankings tell a similar story. The only high-ranking journal (according to Google Scholar metrics) with a non-negligible number of contributions written from the perspective of analytic philosophy or, at least, a cognitivist vantage point is the New Review of Film and Television Studies.9 But this is not to deny that the New Review of Film and Television Studies publishes essays on film theory of all varieties. The most influential journals, moreover, are those which have traditionally and predominantly explored continental approaches when it comes to film theory and interpretation – Cinema Journal, Screen, Film Quarterly, Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies and The Velvet Light Trap. The journal which is devoted primarily to the analysis of film in terms of analytic and cognitivist approaches – Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind – and which is less than a decade old, does not even make the top 20 list on Google Scholar. Projections is also the journal of the only learned film scholarly society which promotes analytic philosophy and cognitivism as one of its main

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Institutional Context tenets – the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image.10 When compared to the size and the representativeness of the most important society of film scholars – the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), bringing together more than 3,000 scholars in over 500 institutions and across 38 countries – the body of approximately 360 members of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image pales in comparison. Moreover, it is clear from the structure of SCMS, its awards record and its annual conferences that approaches indebted to analytic philosophy and cognitivism are poorly represented. For instance, among more than 15 scholars who have served as presidents of SCMS since the early 1970s, only one has been actively interested in the analytic and/or cognitivist brand of film theory – Stephen Prince. This is not to say that all presidents in that period have worked predominantly on film theory – Raymond Fielding, for instance, was primarily a film historian. But past presidents like Barbara Klinger, Vivian Sobchack, E. Ann Kaplan and Bill Nichols became renowned as film theorists precisely through work that operates within the continental framework. The very limited influence of both the analytic school of thought and cognitivism on film scholars can also be tracked if we consider the awards SCMS has given out over the years, especially two of its most revered prizes – the Distinguished Career Achievement Award and the Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award. Among the 12 recipients of the SCMS Distinguished Career Achievement Award, the majority of whom are primarily film theorists, there is not a single scholar from the noncontinental camp. Instead, it appears that the winners’ main theoretical commitments are to feminist and psychoanalytic approaches (Linda Williams, Teresa de Lauretis, Kaplan, etc.). Similarly, if we look at the Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Awards over the last two decades no monograph written from a cognitivist, let alone analytic philosophy, perspective, has been recognised. That these approaches are poorly represented in the film scholarly community is also attested by the SCMS conference programmes over the years. As Carl Plantinga has noted in his discussion of the 2015 SCMS conference, the interest in the relation between spectator psychology and film articulated in cognitivist terms is low and, I might add, the interest in exploring cinema from an analytic philosophy perspective lower still.11

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Noël Carroll and Film The focus, instead, according to Plantinga, appears to be on identity, ethnicity, race, gender and LQBT issues.12 And even when films are related to affect, the framework is usually one of phenomenological embodiment rather than embodied cognition. Similar patterns can be found at the 2016 and 2017 conference as well.13 For instance, a quick count of words appearing in the titles of the panels and papers shows that in the last two years there is not a single instance of some derivative of the term ‘cognitive’ and only four counts of the term ‘mind’ in the programme. Compare this to more than 140 counts of some form of ‘queer/ing’ or ‘gay/ness’, around 140 occurrences of the term ‘black’ or ‘African American’ and more than 150 hits for some derivative of the word ‘female’ (‘feminine’, ‘feminist’, ‘post-feminist’, ‘feminism’, etc.). It is true that each year there are different trends so, for example, ‘ecology’ appears to be a relatively popular topic at present, the occurrence of the concept jumping from six in 2015 to 24 in 2016 and then falling back to 14 in 2017. But irrespective of fluctuations in specific trends, the framework is still overwhelmingly continental rather than analytic. The same trend can be tracked in film theory guides and textbooks. It is undeniable that since the late 1990s film theory guides and textbooks for the most part include a chapter on cognitivism.14 But in those very guides and textbooks the space devoted to numerous approaches indebted to continental philosophy far exceeds the one afforded to analytically influenced cognitivism. For instance, next to a single chapter on ‘Cognitive and Analytic Theory’, the most cited monograph in this group – Robert Stam’s Film Theory – includes chapters on the Frankfurt school, auteur theory, structuralism, the Leftist Turn, Brechtianism, feminism, poststructuralism, cultural studies, Deleuze, queer theory, race, postcolonialism, etc. all deeply embedded within the continental framework. As will be shown in more detail below, moreover, Stam takes a highly negative view of cognitive and analytic theory. Given the situation within textbooks, it is no wonder that a far greater emphasis on continental approaches can also be identified in the way film theory is taught, especially to undergraduates. For instance, an analysis of the film theory curricula of the top film studies departments in the UK reveals that, at most, only one week is devoted to the study of cognitivism.15 Some of the highest-ranking departments do not have even that. The Department of Film and Television Studies at the University of

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Institutional Context Warwick, for instance, offers a two-quarter ‘Theories of the Moving Image’ module to first-year undergraduate students. But across the 20 weeks that the module is taught there is not a single reading on cognitivism, let alone a single day devoted to the framework. Instead, teaching is mostly devoted to psychoanalytic, feminist and post-modernist approaches. The situation in the US, where most of the members of the SCMS come from, does not seem to be much different. For example, in the highly revered Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago (one of its members is the recipient of the Distinguished Career Achievement Award and another of the Katherine Singer Kovacs Book Award), where a similar course, ‘Contemporary Film Theory’, also ran across two semesters, there was again not a single reading on cognitivism, let alone an essay by Carroll. There was, however, an undergraduate seminar devoted solely to Žižek – ‘Žižek on Film’. The matter with the limited exposure of undergraduate students to cognitivist and analytic approaches to film studies is further exacerbated by the fact that interpretive work is rarely written in the cognitivist and/or analytic vein.16 In other words, given that the canonical interpretations of the most widely taught filmmakers and films for the most part stem from the period when film studies were virtually exclusively devoted to the tenets of continental thought, there is even less chance for a novice to become introduced to cognitivism in non-theoretical coursework. The last institutional factor I will address is the structure of film department appointments. If we consider, for example, the current US academic job market and the advertised positions, we will find that approximately half of the 59 professorships open in 2016 – 17 require some emphasis on theory.17 Five out of these 27 positions imply the school of thought already in the job title: Assistant Professor of English – Women’s Studies and Film Studies, Assistant Professor of English – Media and Cultural Studies, Professor of Postcolonial Film, Professor of Cultural/ Social Theories and Media, and Open Rank Professor in African-American Cinema and Media. Thirteen of these positions (including the five listed) explicitly state race, ethnicity, gender, and/or sexuality as one of their fields of specialisation. The remaining 14 leave the field of theoretical specialisation unspecified. In other words, none of the ads which look for scholars working on film theory cite a cognitivist and/or analytic approach as one of the fields of specialisation. At the time of writing the

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Noël Carroll and Film situation is no different on the 2017 –18 job market.18 Out of 11 professorships currently advertised that explicitly mention theory as one of the candidate’s fields of specialisation, not a single one specifies focus either on cognitivist or analytic approach. From this perspective, it is hard to understand how anybody could have written that ‘the analytic-cognitivist turn in film theory has succeeded in establishing itself as arguably the dominant paradigm in film theory today’.19

The Institutional Reasons Behind Carroll’s Relative Lack of Influence Having argued that analytic philosophy as a school of thought and cognitivism as an approach to film in general – and Carroll’s work which combines the two in particular – enjoy only limited influence on the discipline, certainly lesser than that exercised by the continental tradition and its proponents, I will offer a brief analysis of the reasons for this situation. I will consider and evaluate the theoretical grounds in Chapter 3 (specifically the charges of irrelevance, misrepresentation of competitors’ positions and methodological imperialism usually levelled against Carroll), but here I would like to address broader institutional factors. The point, it is important to emphasise, is not to deny that Carroll is widely read and cited by film scholars but only that when compared to other figures from the continental tradition, whose engagement with cinema is often cursory, he commands less attention even though his philosophical writings are primarily on film. Carroll is usually seen as a philosopher theorising film rather than a film scholar in his own right. Although he earned a PhD in Cinema Studies, he also has a PhD in Philosophy and has been teaching and working in philosophy departments rather than film departments since the early 1980s. He has presented only once at a SCMS conference. He has not published a single article in any of the high-ranking film studies journals listed above. Most of his essay-length publications have appeared in philosophical journals such as The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Philosophy and Literature and the British Journal of Aesthetics, which are rarely consulted by film scholars. His textbooks – Philosophy of Art and The Philosophy of Motion Pictures – are written in the style of philosophy textbooks.20 One might be tempted to say, therefore, that Carroll himself 20

Institutional Context has geared his work more towards philosophers than film scholars. Even when addressing film scholars directly, Carroll has not shied away from insisting that they should become philosophers if they are truly interested in doing film theory.21 This is not to say that film scholars somehow a priori disbar philosophers from their field of study. Adorno, Butler, Deleuze, Lyotard, Merleau-Ponty, Rancière, Žižek, etc. were/are all philosophers without any appointment in film departments, yet they have been incorporated into film studies with zest. In fact, film scholars have always welcomed external influence – the importance of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes for the theory of the 1970s and 1980s during the time when the first film departments were being opened can hardly be overstated. And these scholars hardly aimed at Screen and Cinema Journal when publishing their work. The issue, instead, appears to be not so much that Carroll is a philosopher but that he is not a continental philosopher. On the one hand, I will argue that this is a matter of competing schools of thought where the reasons for not engaging the other school are more often institutional rather than theoretical. On the other, once engaged, I will demonstrate that the analytic approach that Carroll subscribes to comes across as morally suspect to the adherents of the continental camp. Regarding the first point, there are good institutional reasons for continuing to work within the paradigm in which one has been trained, as Carroll himself recognises.22 Given that the most senior film scholars were trained during the 1970s and 1980s at the heyday of what Carroll refers to as Marxist –Psychoanalytic – Semiotic approaches, these scholars’ influence on research programmes, promotions and the intake and training of graduate students, together with numerous other institutional parameters cited on the previous pages (publication patterns, journal importance, professional recognitions, conference emphases, treatment in film theory guides, teaching curricula and job opportunities), it is no wonder that continental approaches enjoy greater attention than analytic ones. As Carroll argues, the best way of gathering support for one’s own paradigm is by addressing those who are still doctrinally uncommitted, especially advanced undergraduate and graduate students. But even that can be made difficult if standard publication outlets are generally disinterested in publishing work from a different paradigm. Carroll has, for

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Noël Carroll and Film instance, reported the inability to publish his (now published) doctoral thesis in the late 1970s because it was written outside the Marxist – Psychoanalytic –Semiotic framework.23 Similarly, he has even claimed that he was not given a proper chance to respond to a review of a monograph of his in Screen.24 There are other difficulties in getting one’s voice heard. A good example of how a high-ranking member of the dominant paradigm can be dismissive of a novice by sheer exercise of institutional stature can be seen in Stephen Heath’s response to Carroll’s unflattering review of his book Questions of Cinema.25 In 1982, when the debate between the two erupted, Heath was already highly regarded in film studies while Carroll was virtually unknown. Making the most of this asymmetry, Heath does not fail to remind the reader how undeserving of his response Carroll’s piece is throughout the essay. Near the beginning of the response Heath muses: It is hard, too, to know if it is worth dealing with the onslaught of this kind. I said I would, originally, before seeing the piece (in a conversation with Anette Michelson [Carroll’s Cinema Studies PhD supervisor]), when I thought it would be productive. [. . .] not to reply might leave the piece with some credit, but, equally, to reply is to be placed in a stupid position of defense and attack.26

He concludes the essay similarly: Anette Michelson wrote me that Carroll’s ‘Address’ was to be a challenge. [. . .] For me, in the ways I have indicated, it is not a challenge (even supposing that I were to have any desire for a relation to this kind of invitation to some fight or competition), but a mass of confusion and misrepresentation coming from a quite specific and reactionary position.27

In other words, Heath makes it seem as though the whole affair is beneath him and as though the main reason he even responded is because he already promised he would.28 In fact, the very idea of having to participate in the debate with Carroll for Heath is ‘stupid’, because the exchange cannot be about whose ideas are more illuminating but about ‘pathetic male jockeying’. The strategy appears to have worked in contributing to Carroll remaining largely unknown in film studies, because he would have 22

Institutional Context to wait until the publication of his first book – The Problems of Classical Film Theory – to garner real attention in the field.29 Heath’s comments about Carroll’s ‘reactionary position’ also bring us to the second point – the perceived political conservatism of analytic philosophy. It needs to be remembered that film studies began to be institutionalised in the wake of 1968 and the rise of the New Left and that, as the discussion on the preceding pages attests, there is a significant commitment to questions of ideology in the discipline to this very day. In this context, it has been important that ideology is not the focus of Carroll’s film theory and that, when he does discuss ideology, it is mainly to proclaim that what his competitors say about ideology is conceptually untenable. This has not made Carroll’s work popular within film studies. From the perspective of the perceived conservatism of the competing paradigm, two distinct but interconnected reasons for the reserve with which film studies regard Carroll’s approach can be identified: first, the excessive faith in scientific and logical reasoning and, second, the disinterest in the relation between film and ideology. Speaking of cognitive and analytic theory in a widely-cited film theory guide (the first to outline the approach by a non-cognitivist), Stam summarises it best: Cognitivism shows a touching faith in reason (after Auschwitz) and science (after Hiroshima). It keeps its faith with science, even though ‘science’ had not so recently ‘proved’ black, Jewish, and Native American inferiority. The question, of course, is to what end is science being used, and who gets to decide. [. . .] Cognitive theory allows for little room for the politics of location, or for the socially shaped investments, ideologies, narcissism, and desires of the spectator, all of which seem too irrational or too messy for the theory to deal with. Why do some spectators love, and others hate, the same films? There is little room in cognitive theory for the potential homophobic reaction of the spectator of Cruising, or the potential anti-Arab/Muslim reaction of the spectator of The Siege, or the potential misogynistic reaction of the spectator of Fatal Attraction. In cognitive theory, a raceless, genderless, classless, understander/interpreter encounters abstract schemata.30

The argument appears to be as follows: both logical and scientific reasoning have not only allowed for but have actively engaged in horrendous atrocities. Any approach which subscribes to these forms of 23

Noël Carroll and Film reasoning is, therefore, open to ideological machinations. In film studies, specifically, this type of approach also causes damage because it shifts the attention away from the way in which various social groups are discriminated against. Let us leave the discussion of the logical worth of this and similar arguments for Chapter 3 and focus here on the underlying means of persuasion used instead. The dominant strategy in Stam’s exposé of Carroll’s approach appears to be guilt by association. First, both logical and scientific reasoning are, in a move reminiscent of reductio ad Hitlerum, related to Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Carroll, or anybody else who subscribes to these forms of reasoning for that matter, immediately becomes suspect. Of course, nobody is explicitly claiming that Carroll personally had anything to do with any of the crimes listed here but the spectre of Auschwitz, Hiroshima and racism still haunts those foolish enough to be deeply invested in logical and scientific inquiry. Second, although nobody is accusing Carroll of promoting racism and other forms of discrimination directly, his approach does not seem to be sufficiently opposed to it. In fact, by not explicitly and overtly crafting a theory to support marginalised social groups, the space is left for a conclusion that Carroll is in effect allowing for discrimination to continue. Appealing to essentially moral values is undeniably a powerful way of discrediting a research project or, at least, turning potential researchers away from it. This type of rhetoric in which Carroll’s approach is related to moral failure is by no means reserved for Stam. As we have already seen, Heath has called Carroll’s review of his book ‘reactionary’. In fact, according to Heath, the necessity to respond to Carroll has precluded him from doing far more important work on the relationship between ideology and film.31 Heath, moreover, devotes significant attention to one of the examples Carroll uses to make a larger theoretical point to insinuate anti-humanist and anti-feminist attitudes on Carroll’s part. In the discussion on how films can be said to be both complete and incomplete without that being paradoxical, Carroll attempts to disentangle a couple of different meanings of ‘completeness’.32 He makes the point that it is possible to speak of both numerical and functional completeness. For instance, a car is numerically complete once it gets off the assembly line but to be functionally complete somebody still must drive it. The same holds for film, which is numerically complete once it is sent off for distribution

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Institutional Context but, given that it is an object for use, still requires a spectator for functional completion. To further elucidate different types of ‘completeness’, Carroll adds in an ancillary remark that ‘[i]n a certain patriarchal way of speaking, it is said that a woman is not complete until she has born a child.’33 In other words, for Carroll the paradox of completeness as applied to film is ‘perfectly harmless’. Heath agrees that the paradox is ‘harmless’ but less because Carroll’s conceptual analysis disarmed it and more because it ‘doesn’t hurt or oppress anyone’. In doing so, Heath transfers the terms of engagement from logic into ideology and immediately homes in on Carroll’s minor example to argue that, unlike the paradox itself, Carroll’s illustration is harmful: ‘I don’t believe there is any politically progressive room for a discourse of completeness or completion in relation to human beings and I think this has to be said every time, and not left for some expedient analogy.’34 Not only that, but Heath also implies something more nefarious on Carroll’s part: ‘Carroll means what he says: it’s just an analogy. Yet even then we know it’s not just that. One of its points – neither innocent or arbitrary – is to signify “I am okay, correct, nonpatriarchal”.’35 In other words, one of Heath’s main strategies is to criticise Carroll from a moral position. Heath concludes his response by emphasising the real (ideological) purpose of Carroll’s theory: ‘In the new conservatism of the ‘80s, film theory, like so much else, is going to be brought to order, straightened out for academic discipline; what got into the academy is going to be got out; enough is enough.’36 Put differently, Carroll’s criticism of the application of Marxism and psychoanalysis to cinema is a conservative ploy to quell progressive voices. Warren Buckland makes a similar appeal to a negatively charged term in his review of Carroll’s monograph – Mystifying Movies – that grew out of the debate between Carroll and Heath.37 Throughout the review, Buckland accuses Carroll of ‘scientific imperialism’, thereby associating Carroll with the negative connotations the term ‘imperialism’ harbours. Undeniably, there is more to Buckland’s point about Carroll’s alleged imperialism than the implicit ad hominem attack (and I will assess the logical strength of Buckland’s argument in Chapter 3). But the fact remains that Carroll’s method is presented not only as logically flawed but as morally defective as well.

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Noël Carroll and Film What is here presented as a moral choice is, however, from an analytic perspective a matter of epistemological evaluation and pragmatism. Whereas for Buckland to pursue the analytic method in film studies is to err morally in the choice of methodology in the fashion of an imperialist, for Carroll it is the best way to assess theories, including film ones. From Carroll’s perspective, the choice of methodology is an epistemological issue and not a moral one. While Heath considers Carroll’s criticism of film theory based on progressive ideas of Althusser, Barthes, Brecht, Lacan, Marx and so on to be a reactionary political move whose goal is to exorcise such approaches from academia, for Carroll it is a matter of addressing conceptual issues in that theory and proposing an alternative. Irrespective of the moral and/or political ideals a theory may espouse, for Carroll a theory’s strength qua theory hinges on whether it can explain phenomena better than its competitor. Whereas for Stam choosing not to focus on the questions of race, ethnicity, gender, etc. is a sign of a moral failing, for Carroll it is a matter of logical precedence. It is not that Carroll’s approach precludes the discussion of how spectators react to the same film differently based on their identity, but rather that he is more interested in the commonalities that precede and allow for the above divergences to take place. To use Stam’s example, it is undeniable that there may be a misogynistic reaction to Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987), but for such a reaction even to take place the spectator first needs to visually process the images, make sense of editing, comprehend the narrative. Only then is there place for distinct affective responses to the film’s characters. And it is to these underlying processes that Carroll devotes most of his attention. To call this reductionism also seems unfair, because Carroll would hardly deny that affective divergences take place or that they deserve their own explanation. Admittedly, the question of morality is still hard to defuse. If somebody regards that the prime value of theoretical inquiry is not the production of knowledge in itself but to what purpose that knowledge is put, then there is good reason to want to focus on issues Carroll devotes comparatively little attention. In other words, if knowledge should be pursued with the fight of social evils in mind – a far from an unreasonable supposition – then research programmes which address social injustices should be preferred over those which do not. This is a fair

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Institutional Context point. Some form of this reasoning clearly informs the motivation behind the work of many film scholars working on questions of ethnicity, genre, race, sexuality, disability, and so on. But this still does not mean that those programmes which do not actively criticise various forms of oppression should be presented as immoral. There is such a thing as a morally neutral research programme. For instance, although it is completely unclear how trying to determine whether there are infinitely many prime numbers could be used to fight any social evils, it is also unfair to say that the programme is, therefore, immoral. Similarly, there is no good reason to cast the choice to focus predominantly on how all people regardless of their identity can recognise images as morally suspect. Moral considerations, furthermore, are not necessarily the best guide for deciding which research programme to pursue because what is considered as moral not only tends to shift over time but is not even stable within a given timeframe. If cognitivists’ faith in reason is touching, then the same can be said of those who have faith in the stability of what social evils stand for. The horrors of Auschwitz, Hiroshima and racism were not only a question of reason or science but also of morality. The Third Reich treated Jews as a social evil. Hiroshima is still defended in terms of moral utilitarianism – there would have been more fatalities had the war progressed more conventionally. Racism has a long tradition of moral justification via the Bible. In other words, much as science has gone terribly astray over the years, so have countless atrocities been committed from that time’s perfectly moral position. This does not mean that all science and reason is flawed any more than it means that all moral systems are flawed. Nor is this meant to demonise in any way the current criticism of various forms of oppression. It is simply to say that epistemological considerations are a legitimate factor in deciding between research programmes. Moral commitments, moreover, do not excuse a research programme from theoretical scrutiny. If there are competing theories with the same moral commitments, we still need to decide which one explains the phenomenon at hand better. Feminist theorists, for instance, have produced numerous accounts of how women are represented in cinema. Deciding between them cannot be a matter of who is more committed to the cause. Instead, it is epistemological evaluation that does the job.

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Noël Carroll and Film And even if there were only one theory about how women are represented in cinema it should still not be given a free pass simply because of its moral commitments. Unlike dogmatic religious systems such as Christianity, which can always appeal to authority to defend the articulation of a certain moral commitment, film theory is just that: a theory. This means that it uses arguments to persuade. And the best means for examining arguments is logical analysis. Analytic philosophy and cognitivism, finally, by no means preclude criticism of ideology and various forms of oppression. Though not his main interest, Carroll has written on the subject on several occasions. He has proposed an alternative both to Althusserian analysis of ideology in film and mass art, and the psychoanalytic approach to feminist film theory.38 In the former case, he has argued for a narrower but more useful conceptualisation of ideology. In the latter, he has proposed a cognitivist hypothesis of how the representation of women in film may reinforce patriarchal society.

Carroll’s Work on Ideology Likely the single most influential piece for film theory interested in how ideology operates in and through film – regularly taught to this very day to students of film studies – has been Louis Althusser’s ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’.39 Wedding Marxism and psychoanalysis, Althusser has argued that ideology – ‘the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group’ – permeates all social practices.40 Crucially, ideology also constructs the subject by making the individual mistakenly believe that his or her actions are free, whereas they are in fact determined by social practices. According to Carroll, in essentially equating the notion of ideology with that of culture (‘all social practices’) Althusser had made it impossible to distinguish between dominant and subversive social practices – for example, to distinguish subcultures or contra-cultures from the dominant culture. Moreover, if the key function of ideology is to reproduce the conditions of production and if ideology is inherent to all social practices, then it is difficult to understand how radical social change can take place (for example, agrarian societies replacing hunter-gatherers, capitalism displacing feudalism, etc.). 28

Institutional Context Carroll offers a narrower understanding of ideology where ‘x is an ideological belief if and only if (1) x is false (or otherwise epistemically defective) and (2) x is employed as a tenet in some system of social domination.’41 In other words, Carroll retains the understanding of ideology as reproducing the structures of domination while preserving the concept from over-inflation. For instance, Carroll can defend the view that feminism, unlike patriarchy, is not ideological insofar it is not geared towards exploiting men.42 And he also opens space for the explanations of historical change. When applied to film studies, Carroll argues that his understanding of ideology has the advantage over Althusser’s because the latter makes the ideological effect of film inevitable. Thus, under the Althusserian framework, film theorists have claimed that it is not only the content of film that is ideological but its very structure. The film industry as a whole, the equipment necessary for the recording and projection of film, and film’s formal features including perspective, editing and narration among others, are all seen as giving the spectator the mistaken impression that he or she is a unified subject.43 On this account, it is unclear how any spectator, including film theorists, can reject the film’s ideological effect. How can they even begin to fathom that they might not be unified subjects, if not only film but all social practices have the effect of constructing such unified subjects? Carroll’s proposal has no similar problems in that he offers an account of how films can have ideological effects without those effects being guaranteed. To Carroll’s mind, films propagate ideological beliefs not by default (i.e. by the very use of perspective, editing or narrative) but through specific rhetorical operations. These operations boil down to instilling in spectators what they already regard to be commonplace. In Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985), for instance, the underlying message appears to be that it is ultimately up to the individual to change his or her future. Crucially, Marty must instil this message in his future father, George, to muster up the strength to stand up to the bully and win the girl (Marty’s future mother), lest Marty never be born. The belief in the all-powerful strength of individual will, cast in the positive light seen in the film, can easily be used in a society such as ours to justify economic inequality. And, within an individualistic society such as ours, this belief in the power of the individual is routinely espoused.

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Noël Carroll and Film Whereas the above example explains how already held beliefs are further propagated in society, for Carroll it can also illustrate not only how some spectators will reject a given ideological message but also how they may change their mind about the message. In the former case, much as those who already accept the idea of individuality will simply accept the film’s message, those who already reject the idea of individualism will easily reject the message when confronted with it. In the latter, those who are undecided on the matter may be made more susceptible to the idea because, as psychological studies have demonstrated, information that is presented vividly is likelier to be mobilised than pallid information. Given that the presentation of information in film is highly vivid (certainly more vivid than the everyday information we gather from the outside world), the film’s specific ideological message is likely to be picked up by the spectator in his or her future social practice. All of this means that, contrary to what some film theory guides suggest, Carroll’s model does not deny that films have ideological effects over and beyond previously held beliefs.44 As noted, Carroll has also proposed an alternative to psychanalytically inflected study of the representation of women in film. In an extremely influential exercise in psychoanalytic feminist film study, Laura Mulvey argues that Hollywood film primarily addresses the male spectator by offering eroticised images of passive female form.45 This visual pleasure, however, has its underside because the sight of a woman reminds the male spectator of her lack of penis and, therefore, invites the fear of castration. According to psychoanalytic theory, two strategies alleviate the castration anxiety – fetishism and voyeurism. Film affords visual equivalents to both strategies – the focus on the spectacular images of the woman’s body which retard the narrative progress exemplified by Josef von Sternberg’s films, and the narrative exploration of the mystery posed by a female character typified by Alfred Hitchcock’s work, respectively – thereby protecting the structure of male scopophilia. In his piece on Mulvey, Carroll does not criticise psychoanalysis itself – he leaves that for other occasions – but he does argue that there are considerable problems with her account.46 First, the generalisations that it is the male spectator who is almost exclusively addressed by Hollywood film and that the images of women are virtually eroticised in it do not stand up under scrutiny. The topless male body, for instance, presented for female rather than male pleasure, has been a mainstay of Hollywood

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Institutional Context cinema since at least Rudolph Valentino and Errol Flynn (and continues to this very day with the likes of Channing Tatum). Similarly, some of the most famous female characters in film history have been primarily active agents of narrative change rather than passive objects of the eroticising camera – for example, the titular characters from early film serials Exploits of Elaine (1914) and Perils of Pauline (1914) or the female protagonists of comedies of remarriage such as Bringing up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938) and His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940). Second, the notions of fetishism and voyeurism as applied to film techniques do not seem to capture what is really going on. According to Mulvey, all spectacular images which pause narrative development, not only those of women, exemplify fetishism. But that means that the stunning images of nature in, say, The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998), where there are barely any female characters, should also somehow be connected to castration anxiety. In voyeurism, finally, it is assumed that the person observed does not know that she is being looked at. In Hollywood films, however, the actors actively offer themselves up for observation. As an alternative, Carroll offers a model for inquiry of female representation in film which not only better accommodates the data from film history but also does not restrict the study of scopophilia solely to its relationship to sexual difference. He draws on the work on emotions in philosophy of mind to hypothesise that ‘paradigm scenarios’ lead people in identifying their emotional states and, in doing so, shape people’s emotions.47 Paradigm scenarios include a situation type which outlines the standard objects of a specific emotion type, and a set of normal emotional reactions to the situation.48 Humans are exposed to paradigm scenarios from the earliest age and these are later reinforced through stories and art, including film. Given that paradigm scenarios play a significant part in shaping our emotional responses, one way to study the representation of women in film is to identify widely disseminated paradigm scenarios about women. Take the very example that Stam purports cognitivists and analytic philosophers are unable to deal with – Fatal Attraction. Carroll, interestingly, uses this very film to articulate how paradigm scenarios in film might allow for misogynistic reaction.49 As a paradigm scenario about a woman who refuses to accept that an affair is over, Fatal Attraction belongs to a lineage of stories, from art and male folklore alike, in which

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Noël Carroll and Film female ex-lovers are depicted as irrational and impossible to deal with. Having internalised such a scenario, a male spectator may be biased to treat real-life ex-lovers’ otherwise reasonable requests as crazy and threatening. In short, Fatal Attraction presents an already available paradigm scenario in a vivid fashion, explaining how potentially sexist behaviour can be proliferated through the dissemination of such a film. More generally, the study of paradigm scenarios allows us to discern both different types of negative scenarios – for example, the evil stepmother or the femme fatale – and whether the scenarios are varied enough – for instance, are there more scenarios beyond those depicting women as either whore or mother? This does not mean that, although many are, all paradigm scenarios involving women in film are necessarily negative – some are positive, as is the case with the Exploits of Elaine and Perils of Pauline. And this is why, Carroll argues, his model accommodates existing data better than Mulvey’s. Carroll’s appeal to paradigm scenarios, moreover, is not constrained to the analysis of the female image, as Mulvey’s recourse to the castration complex is. Paradigm scenarios are as applicable to the analysis of potentially negative reactions to the depiction of other oppressed groups – for example, gay in Cruising (William Friedkin, 1980) or Arab/Muslim in The Siege (Edward Zwick, 1998) – as they are to the analysis of responses

Figure 1.1 Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) attacks Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) in Fatal Attraction.

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Institutional Context to female representations. Regarding the specific question of visual pleasure, finally, because he does not assume that the castration complex underlies the experience, Carroll also claims that his account is better suited to explaining all forms of scopophilia in film. These include not only the images of handsome men, but also those of stunning landscapes, machinery, crowds, and so on. Next to writing on ideology as it operates specifically in film, Carroll, finally, has also written extensively on the relationship of ideology to mass art as well as on the importance for the place of politics, morality and value in our engagement with art in general.50 In short, then, although indebted to the analytic method and the cognitivist body of knowledge, Carroll not only has an interest in both questions of ideology in general and the oppression of women in particular but has also proposed theories addressing these phenomena. This is not to say that Carroll’s theories are necessarily right but it is to point out that the continental camp in film studies would be better served by addressing them, rather than by treating them as though they did not even exist.

Carroll’s Rhetoric It is undeniable that Carroll has not been the kindest of critics, sometimes interpolating logical arguments with outbursts of downright frustration with the other camp. His first extensive foray into film theory – the review of Heath’s Questions of Cinema – already has a title which is both polemical and grandstanding – ‘Address to the heathen’. Carroll’s selfproclaimed missionary role implied in the title could be hardly lost on anybody. Carroll’s irritation with the arguments competitors propose lead him to proclaim his opponents ‘obscure’, ‘muddled’, ‘unfocused’, ‘desperate’, ‘slipshod’, ‘lazy’, etc. The rhetoric continental camp uses especially affront him. In Heath’s case: The book [Questions of Cinema] is packed with neologisms, pleonasms, misuses, and strained uses of words and grammar – Heath, one surmises, enjoys calling things by the wrong name – and the book has strong tendencies toward formulaic repetition and belletristic rambling [. . .]

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Noël Carroll and Film A review of Questions of Cinema could certainly be written by composing a random selection of logically incoherent and tortuous quotations made all the more ludicrous by their self-celebratory gravity [. . .] [Heath frequently omits] a main verb and [uses] an inventory in which the relations between the items on the list are not conspicuously clear on the basis of the sentence. [. . .] [t]hese stylistic flourishes are antithetical to the task of theorizing. The theorist’s job is to clarify interrelations between his various theoretical terms. To lay such terms out without specifying exactly how they relate to each other [. . .] is to forsake theorizing entirely.51

In the 1988 book on the then contemporary film theory he concludes that this theory has been ‘nothing short of an intellectual disaster’.52 From the tone Carroll takes even after these first polemical years, it is not difficult to conclude that he continues to hold much of continental film theory in low esteem. This is, for instance, how in a much-cited piece on film theory he evaluates the Marxist –Psychoanalytic – Semiotic approaches dominant throughout the 1970s and 1980s and their role in the institutionalisation of film studies: a classy continental number, centrally composed of elements of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, and Roland Barthes, often with optional features derived, often incongruously, from Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Pierre Bourdieu, Gilles Deleuze, and (maybe sometimes) Jacques Derrida, along with contributions from French cinéphiles like Christian Metz, Raymond Bellour, and JeanLouis Baudry, although generally filtered, albeit with a difference, through exegetes like Stephen Heath, Kaja Silverman, and Teresa de Lauretis. Universities regarded film studies programs as an economic boon, likely to spur demand and, in this context, Theory, so called, played an economic role in legitimating the formation of film programs. For what went by the name of Theory was surely abstruse enough to convince an uninformed administrator or a hesitant trustee that film studies was at least as complex intellectually as string theory, DNA, or hypotheses about massive parallel processing.53

Carroll is particularly annoyed with the charges of political and moral nature levelled against him: 34

Institutional Context Anyone who opposes the Theory, for whatever reason, is politically suspect – probably a ruling class, neoconservative, homophobic misogynist. Criticisms of the dubious psychoanalytic premises of the Theory are denounced as reactionary – in a political sense! – as if a belief in the equality of the races requires assent to Lacan and the rest of the pet paraphernalia of the Theory. [. . .] [This] protects bad scholarship. Fear that one will be denounced as politically incorrect – as racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, etc. – intimidates generally liberal scholars in such a way that they refrain from speaking out honestly about the extremely poor quality of much of what passes for argument and research in the humanities today.54

Carroll is clearly exasperated that the type of work he criticises could have not only gained currency in scholarly circles, but dominated the field’s intellectual climate for so long. The animosity which goes beyond simple theoretical disagreement appears then to be present in both camps. In a sense, moreover, it might be said that moral judgments finally seep even into Carroll’s reckoning with the continental approach. Whereas the latter regards research programmes which lack clear moral and/or political commitments as morally suspect, Carroll sees the flaunting of the norms of theoretical reasoning as the greatest sin a scholar can commit. It is, therefore, no wonder that Carroll opens himself to criticism of selfrighteous anger and missionary zeal from the other camp. We appear to have come full circle. Carroll’s critics are morally outraged by the politically reactionary programme allegedly informing the dominant focus of his research. Carroll is equally shocked that something supposedly as shoddy as the Marxist– Psychoanalytic –Semiotic approach keeps exercising so much influence on the discipline. Whoever already subscribes to one of these views has, I am certain, not read anything on these pages which would sway their opinion on the matter. Much like the spectator of Back to the Future, they will accept or reject the claim that Carroll deserves more thoroughgoing engagement by film scholars depending on their previously held beliefs. But, as Carroll reminds us, there could be those who are still undecided on the matter. I have mentioned earlier that it is the doctrinally uncommitted undergraduate and graduate students who Carroll envisions as his main audience. This is because, as Carroll himself attests, it is likelier that factors

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Noël Carroll and Film other than the epistemological assessment of competing research programmes have more influence on the fortunes of those programmes. For instance, Carroll harbours no illusions about the importance of his work for the relative weakening of one brand of the continental approach – the Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotic approach that dominated film studies in the 1970s and 1980s: Certainly people like myself would like to imagine that this [waning] is a result of the recognition that the Theory has been soundly refuted, though even I would have to concede that more accurate explanations may be that Theory has outlived its academic utility or that it has merely run out of gas.55

The discussion that follows is also especially keen to reach those who are yet to decide about the future research programmes and the theorists whose framework they would like to build on. Unlike in Carroll’s writing, however, the goal of ensuing chapters is not to vindicate his view against his competitors, but to assess both the weak and strong points of his theories, as well as to point to hitherto neglected aspects of his work – interpretation, filmmaking, and the general philosophy of art. Having argued that epistemic considerations are as legitimate a guide for research programmes as moral ones, the remainder of the monograph will focus only on the epistemic value of the theories presented here. It will also bracket off the potentially infuriating rhetorical flourishes and borderline ad hominem attacks on both sides that have been analysed here. One point on which probably all who have read Carroll can agree is that he writes clearly. Even when he is accused of building straw men, as he is by Heath, there is no denying that Carroll’s theoretical arguments are always outlined with precision. Whatever we might think of the arguments’ worth, both their premises and steps are plainly marked (part of the reason there is so much work on thinkers such as Lacan or Deleuze is because it is often difficult to determine with certainty what exactly they are driving at.) This clarity of expression, I believe, is also the best starting point for building consensus on Carroll’s usefulness to film studies. At the very least, then, Carroll’s writings offer unequivocal accounts not only of his positions, but of those of his competitors as well. From a pedagogical perspective, this can be of significant value for introducing novices to film theory. Let us, therefore, articulate Carroll’s main theoretical commitments 36

Institutional Context as precisely and as clearly as possible, given what a monograph of this length allows for. If successful, the following chapters will serve as an introduction to the range of Carroll’s ideas and as a motivation for those doctrinally uncommitted to seek out the original sources where they can investigate the specific argument in more detail and gauge the strengths and weaknesses of competing approaches for themselves.

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2 Film Theory

Carroll distinguishes between film theory, on the one hand, and interpretation and evaluation, on the other. For him interpretation articulates the relationship between various thematic, formal or functional aspects of an artwork or a group of artworks which may but need not play a role in evaluation.1 Although interpretation and evaluation often come under the heading of ‘criticism’ in the humanities, Carroll prefers to reserve the term for evaluation alone – the reasoned judgement of artworks.2 Film theory, by contrast, Carroll understands as ‘the production of generalizations or general explanations or general taxonomies and concepts about film practice’.3 In other words, whereas interpretation and evaluation are about single films (or smaller groups thereof), theory tells us about large groups of films. Carroll’s understanding of theory, moreover, is neutral insofar as it allows for all types of generalisations. Definitional work – the specification of criteria according to which we group films or identify what film is in the first place – is as welcome as generalisations about the role of ideology in film. At the same time, it leaves open the choice of method for making generalisation – both continental and analytic approaches can clearly produce theory in Carroll’s view.4 In his work on film Carroll has theorised a range of phenomena including the status of film as art, film medium, ‘cinematic’ devices, the nature of visual representation, the point of view shot, cinematic sequencing, 38

Film Theory narration, style, moving-picture dance, horror film, fiction film, documentary film, avant-garde film, audience comprehension and affect and film evaluation. Given that it is impossible to address all these contributions in depth in a single chapter, the best way to approach the breadth of Carroll’s work on film is with recourse to his key theoretical and methodological commitments: anti-essentialism, the abandonment of monolithic approaches in favour of piecemeal theorising and cognitivism. Crucially, in this chapter I will only outline Carroll’s theoretical work and motivation for it while reserving the assessment of this work for ensuing chapters.

Contra Medium Specificity Carroll’s anti-essentialist views have come to fruition already in his first monograph-length study – Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory – and inform his broader project of philosophy of art to this very day.5 Carroll denies both the weak and the strong version of the ‘mediumspecificity thesis’ popularised in the eighteenth century by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in Laocoön.6 In its weaker version, the thesis holds that every art has its own specific medium and that the medium’s devices are constrained by the medium’s material and stylistic properties. In its stronger version, the thesis makes an additional demand for ‘purity’. In other words, the excellence of an artwork hinges upon the use of devices which are inherently specific to the medium. To cite Lessing’s classic example, poetry should only deal with temporal representations because it unfolds in time, whereas painting, existing in space, should only seek to represent spatial phenomena. The weaker version of the thesis allows for distinguishing art forms based on their media. The stronger version also supplies criteria for the evaluation of artworks. According to Carroll, both views are mistaken. The weaker because most, if not all, arts employ a variety of media.7 The stronger because there are masterworks which do not use medium-specific devices.8 The art medium is usually understood as the physical material of an artwork and/or the physical instrument which shapes this material. In the case of sculpture, the physical material may include wood, bronze, marble, metal, plastic, stone, etc. As an instrument, a sculptor may employ chisel, blowtorch, cast, fingers, etc. Clearly, there is no single medium which 39

Noël Carroll and Film defines sculpture. The same holds for painting. Oil paints, watercolours, tempera, acrylic and gold leaf, all count among its materials and brush, knife, sponge, airbrush, fingers, among its instruments. The examples of sculpture and painting demonstrate further that different art forms may employ the same instruments – fingers. All of this is not to claim that painting cannot be distinguished from sculpture or that art forms are generally indistinguishable from one another but it is to claim that no one single medium can afford this distinction. In film, the physical material has for a long time been the filmstrip covered with photosensitive emulsion. The camera and the cutting table have been its crucial instruments. It is no wonder that definitions of film by a range of film theorists over the years, starting at least as early as with Rudolf Arnheim in 1932, have regularly made recourse to photographic reproductions as the film’s material basis.9 But films can be made with filmstrip without any photosensitive emulsion and without any use of camera or physical cutting. From at least as early as the 1910s, filmmakers have drawn and painted directly onto blank film stock. Other options include stamping and gluing items on the said film stock. More recently, the classic filmstrip has been replaced by magnetised tapes (VHS, Betamax) and a plethora of digital carriers (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, etc.). Contemporary digital films are derived from images produced without any recourse to cameras or physical editing. Much like other arts, no single medium defines film. Therefore, Carroll prefers to speak of ‘moving images’ rather than film as his object of study. The point is to move away from the notion of one specific medium implied in the term ‘film’ and instead to focus on the various forms of moving image we find on video, TV, computers, the internet, and so on. This is not to deny that digital media have specific characteristics.10 But it is to argue that moving images are not defined either by these properties, traits of traditional filmstock or the characteristics of any other carrier, for that matter. Once the attempt to define what moving images are without any reference to their media is made, various problems surface. If we cannot invoke the material bases of the image to distinguish between different types of images, how do we differentiate between moving images on screen and reflections of people in the mirror or shadow plays? What about artworks which produce no impression of movement but which we still count as films? And what of potential future developments such as

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Film Theory holograms and other three-dimensional technologies? For these reasons, Carroll offers a list of five necessary conditions which jointly constitute a sufficient condition for moving images. For Carroll films are images (1) which do not allow for orientation towards their content, (2) make the impression of movement technically possible, (3) whose performances (screenings) are tokens generated by additional tokens (specific prints), (4) whose performances are not artworks, and (5) which are twodimensional.11 The first condition is supposed to deal with problems such as moving images in mirrors. It specifies that upon seeing an image the viewer cannot determine the position of her body relative to the object represented in the image from that image alone. If we look at a photograph of a house, we do not know where that house is in relation to us. And if we look at a photograph of Trafalgar Square, we again do not know where the Square is based on the photograph alone. (To place it in London, and potentially orientate ourselves towards it based on this knowledge, is a matter of external information.) Such images are ‘detached’.12 Generally speaking, the reason images need to be detached is because we want to distinguish moving images of objects from the objects themselves. On the one hand, moving images may appear in telescopes and mirrors but then they afford easy orientation. On the other, it is imaginable that as film technology develops it will be impossible to perceptually distinguish between a representation of an object and the object itself. According to the second condition, there need only be a technical possibility of the impression of movement, not its actual execution. The reason is the existence of films like Michael Snow’s 1969 One Second in Montreal (film of photographs) and Hollis Frampton’s 1972 Poetic Justice (film of a shooting script) which have no movement at all, yet we still count them as films. The third and the fourth condition allow us to distinguish special kinds of theatre plays – shadow plays – from films. Shadow plays are made with cut-out figures held between a source of light and the translucent screen on which the images appear and, as such, satisfy the first two criteria for film outlined above. The fictional story world they depict bears no physical relation to us and the movement is clearly an option. Moreover, performances of shadow plays are tokens that instantiate types as much as screenings of films are. And both shadow plays and films have template

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Noël Carroll and Film tokens – mass-produced instances of the artwork – in the form of printed texts and film prints, respectively. The shadow play performance of The Death of Kumbhakarna in the local theatre at 8pm next Tuesday is a specific instantiation of the type – the abstract descriptive concept – that is The Death of Kumbhakarna written by Kartika D. Saudarna. The screening of Dunkirk today at my home cinema is again a specific instantiation of the abstract entity that is the film directed by Christopher Nolan in 2017, the type which is in existence so long as a single copy of it survives. However, whereas the screening of Dunkirk is generated from a physical template token of Nolan’s film (a specific film print, a specific video tape, a specific DVD, etc.), the performance of The Death of Kumbhakarna is generated from an interpretation of a physical template token script (a specific printed text of the play). In film, there is no intermediary between a token performance and a mass-produced token. What is more, the screening of a film is not an artwork of its own, whereas a performance of a shadow play is. The last condition is two-dimensionality. Carroll recognises that there are objects such as moving figurines on antique clocks which satisfy all the conditions specified up until now: they are detached, they afford movement, they are mass produced tokens of a template and their performances (routines when the clock strikes a specific hour) do not constitute works of art. They are three-dimensional, however, which sets them apart from moving images. The aim to define film without recourse to the notion of medium now might appear obvious due to the rise of digital media in the production and distribution of films. But it was far from clear when Carroll was initially making his arguments in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, it might not be obvious even today because many have proclaimed the death of film and the ascendancy of a new digital medium because of the shift in the mode of moving image production and delivery.13 This argument also goes hand in hand with the idea that digital photography as a medium no longer secures the special relationship theorised by Bazin to obtain between the medium of analogue photography and its object.14 Carroll’s point, however, is that if we want to understand the ontology of the moving image we will not be able to divine it from the properties of the medium in which it is instantiated. And this is why his definition will be of importance even if/when digital storage of moving images is replaced with something else.

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Film Theory As Carroll himself points out, moreover, it is important to understand the historical and institutional reasons behind the view that film can be defined in terms of its medium. We have already mentioned Lessing’s legacy but no less relevant was the need to legitimise one’s own distinct object of inquiry. When film studies were being constituted as an academic discipline in the 1960s and 1970s one important way of legitimising the opening of separate film departments was precisely by arguing that film is characterised by its own medium and that it, therefore, demands its own specialists. In other words, the weak version of the medium-specificity thesis allowed film scholars to distinguish both themselves and their object of inquiry from those of fellow academics, including literary scholars, theatre experts and art historians. If the weak version of the medium-specificity thesis was motivated in part by the need to delimit one’s object of study, then the strong version proved seductive because it allowed for clear criteria for evaluating artworks. Lessing, for instance, was critical of the Laocoön and His Sons sculpture precisely because it attempted to represent a highly dynamic moment of the titular Greek hero being killed by the snakes in an essentially immobile medium. The emphasis on the dynamics of movement, the argument goes, is poorly suited for a medium of marble which has no internal temporal component. In the case of film, similarly, since the earliest days of film theory many have argued that it is the ‘cinematic’ devices – those which express the essence of the film medium – that are crucial for a film’s artistic excellence. In fact, in his first book-length study Carroll has argued that much of classical film theory rests on the strong version of the medium-specificity thesis.15 According to Carroll, classical film theorists as diverse as Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei Eisenstein and André Bazin have all been primarily interested in answering three key questions: (1) What are the dominant stylistic features of film? (2) What is the function of film? (3) How can (1) and (2) be articulated? Although disagreeing on the exact features, they have all argued that the function of film is to achieve the status of art and that this is to be accomplished by emphasising the dominant stylistic film features. The dominant film features, in turn, are for the most part defined as those which exemplify the specific traits of the medium, that is, as those which are ‘cinematic’.

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Noël Carroll and Film As a theorist, Eisenstein is best known for his theory of montage as the essence of film.16 From Carroll’s perspective, Eisenstein identifies the combination of separate filmstrips as the key instrument of filmmaking and argues that it is precisely those films that emphasise the use of montage as a stylistic feature that are the most artistically successful. Thus, Soviet classics like Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925), Strike (Eisenstein, 1925), The End of St. Petersburg (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1927), Mother (Pudovkin, 1926), Arsenal (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1929), Earth (Dovzhenko, 1928), etc. which capitalise on montage are, under this account, better than those such as The Dying Swan (Yevgeni Bauer, 1917), Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922) and Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1922), which use montage scarcely. The first problem with this theory for Carroll is, as we have seen in the discussion of the weak version of the medium-specificity thesis, that there is no single thing that defines film as a medium. Bazin, for instance, emphasises the role of the camera as a recording device instead of that of the cutting table in organising the shot material. This leads him to argue that it is the long take (with deep focus) rather than montage that is the dominant film feature.17 In other words, because they disagree on which aspect of the medium is essential to film, classical film theorists also disagree on the film’s dominant stylistic device, that is, on what counts as ‘cinematic’. This, in turn, leads them to disagree on which films are the best examples of film art. The very films that are lauded under the montage account are dismissed under the long take account and vice versa. It is films like The Dying Swan, Nanook of the North and Nosferatu – precisely those that montage theorists found to be retrograde – that Bazin highlights as the pinnacles of film art. The second problem with grounding evaluative judgments on medium specificity is that they are either empirically false or assume what needs to be explained.18 In the first case, both the films that montage theorists criticise for failing to extensively use editing and the ones that Bazin chastises for not using long takes are all enshrined in the film cannon. Nosferatu stands side by side with Strike, and Nanook of the North brushes shoulders with Mother. Moreover, according to this account any film that consistently uses the ‘cinematic’ feature would necessarily be better from the one that does not. Anybody subscribing to the montage view would have to claim that early chase comedies or contemporary music videos are

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Film Theory necessarily better than, for instance, Nosferatu. Similarly, those sharing Bazin’s stance that long takes are the dominant film feature would have to prefer all early cinema films and student videos where there is no editing as inherently more artistic than, say, Battleship Potemkin. Current evaluative practice demonstrates that this is not the case. There is, of course, the option that a proponent of the strong version of medium specificity could stick to their guns. If they subscribed to the montage theorists’ view they could simply insist that Edwin S. Porter’s 1904 Maniac Chase is artistically more successful than Nosferatu, no matter what others might say. And if they partook in Bazin’s view, they could just maintain that the Lumière brothers’ 1895 The Waterer Watered is a better work of art than Battleship Potemkin, regardless of the general agreement to the contrary. But then they would be begging the question by effectively arguing that the films in question are artistically excellent because artistic excellence hinges on the use of dominant film features – montage in the case of Maniac Chase and long take in the case of The Waterer Watered. In other words, the only way that the strong version of the medium-specificity thesis could work is if it were not a thesis at all but a normative judgement. Put in yet another way, there is no reason why, in evaluating a film as a work of art, the demand for medium purity would be more important than the effect of the work regardless of how it is achieved. From Carroll’s perspective, the majority of classical film theorists, then, were effectively trying to give theoretical credence to their own evaluative preferences. Because Eisenstein et al. found films employing montage to be artistically better than the ones which did not, they identified cutting on the editing table as the key aspect of the film medium and borrowed Lessing’s thesis to reach the desired outcome. Similarly, because Bazin preferred the films with long takes to those without, he emphasised the camera’s recording capabilities as the crucial facet of the medium and plugged in his own variable into the medium-specificity thesis to guarantee that films using long takes came out top. Carroll, in fact, bases this claim on the work of another notable film theorist – Victor Perkins – who already in the 1970s argued that film has no essence and that classical film theorists were, in fact, critics only masquerading as theorists.19 According to Perkins, much of the problems of classical film theory derive from the view that photographic

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Noël Carroll and Film reproduction is seen as the defining feature of the film medium. For instance, to encourage the use of long takes because it captures the spatiotemporal reality of the photographed object, as Bazin does, neglects the fact that film owes to the history of non-photographic instruments as much as it does to its photographic precursors. Nineteenth-century optical toys such as the zoetrope and praxinoscope already produced the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings in successive stages of motion, while Théâtre Optique projected those very images on screen. In other words, film has from its beginning been a hybrid medium whose essence could not have been the photographic reproduction of moving images alone. Or to put it in another way, it is impossible to deduce evaluative criteria from the nature of the medium. The fault that Carroll finds with Perkins is that, in the end, Perkins does the very thing he warns against – he attempts to derive such criteria from the medium itself.20 Perkins’s key goal is to rationally arrive at and outline non-prescriptive criteria for judging the artistic excellence of one particularly important subset of films – photographic fiction films. (He brackets off animated films, documentaries, educational films, etc. from his discussion.) Carroll summarises Perkins’s argument as follows: (1) Film is a hybrid medium of pure recording of reality and imaginary creation (2) In order to avoid conflict, photographic fiction film needs to either focus on one of the hybrid tendencies or reconcile the two (3) Photographic fiction film records what has been created and creates through recording (4) Therefore, photographic fiction film cannot focus on only one of the tendencies but needs to combine the two (5) Due to its creative aspect, the task of photographic fiction film is to create meaning (6) Because of its photographic aspect, the task of photographic fiction film is also to secure the realistic tendency which can be done by keeping the film credible (7) Reconciling the two hybrid tendencies of film in photographic fiction film is accomplished by keeping the film credible and by creating meaning within the parameters of this credibility.21 The key step in which Perkins’s theory unravels for Carroll is (6). Perkins understands credibility as the internal cohesion of the world depicted on screen. For instance, credibility is undermined in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Red Desert (1964) when in the lovemaking scene near the end of the movie the bedpost becomes increasingly red. Although red clearly depicts the heroine’s ever deteriorating mental state,

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Film Theory the glowing colour cannot be accommodated within the fictional world in which objects do not turn red just because people are under extreme psychological stress. By comparison, credibility is retained when in Nicholas Ray’s Bigger than Life (1956) yellow is used to signify the protagonist’s shame for having to work as a part-time taxi driver. Crucially, it is because the general view of a huge cab-park is used to convey this colour, an object which is clearly a part of the story world. Carroll asks, why would credibility so construed have anything to do with the capability of film to reproduce reality? In the case of photographic reproduction of reality, it is reasonable to have demands on the verisimilitude of the reproduction. If in a film we cannot identify any of the objects in the photographic reproduction because of poor image quality, then we should say that the film qua photographic reproduction is poor. If, alternatively, we can identify all the objects in question and understand what the event is about with ease, then we should say that the film qua photographic reproduction is good. Building on the notion of verisimilitude we might go further and say that a film is credible insofar as it accurately depicts the objects and events photographed. It is not credible if it fails to do so. In that sense, we can speak of credible documentary films and those documentaries which lack credibility. But even here we have started using the term ‘accurate’ – the notion connecting verisimilitude and credibility – in a different sense. In the case of photographic verisimilitude, accuracy is a matter of shared (audio)visual properties. In the case of documentaries, it is a question of truth. In other words, documentaries can use photographically verisimilar material and at the same time completely falsify what they purportedly represent. For instance, a 1944 Nazi propaganda film Terezin: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area is photographically verisimilar in depicting what was in front of the camera in the Theresienstadt ghetto but blatantly falsifies the realities of the inmates.22 To say that a fictional film is credible or lacks credibility is, as Perkins’s examples above show, something different yet again. There we are talking about internal consistency of the fictional world rather than whether some actual event has been accurately represented. Representations of fictional worlds are neither accurate nor inaccurate. They are what constitute fictional worlds in the first place. It is true that fictional worlds can be internally coherent or incoherent and it is precisely in this way that Perkins

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Noël Carroll and Film envisions them as having or lacking credibility. But this again has nothing to do with accuracy or verisimilitude. Finally, credibility cannot be derived from the idea of recording a fictional world either because fiction cannot be recorded to begin with. Only the actual world can be recorded (and the images of that world can then be used as props in games of make-believe, that is, as representations of fictional worlds). To derive credibility as an evaluative criterion for photographic fiction film from verisimilitude as the criterion for photographic reproduction is, in short, to equivocate the meaning of the notion of credibility in different contexts. Carroll agrees with Perkins that at least some evaluative judgements can be made objectively but disagrees with the idea that these criteria derive from the nature of the medium in any way. He retains perhaps the most enticing aspect of the strong version of the medium-specificity thesis – clear and intersubjective criteria for evaluation – while avoiding its pitfalls – the normative nature of such evaluation. Building on Kendall Walton’s work, Carroll argues that at least some evaluative disagreements can be resolved with recourse to objective standards.23 Often, we justify our evaluations of films by singling out other films on which we believe ourselves to be in evaluative agreement with our interlocutors. If, for instance, our interlocutor does not agree with us that Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000 –) is a good show, we might want to point out that, because they like Seinfeld (1989 –98), and the two share many common features, they should also like the former. The interlocutor has a few options: they may concede, deny that they like Seinfeld in the first place or say that although they like Seinfeld, it is for features other than those in Curb Your Enthusiasm. In all cases, however, it seems that evaluative judgements boil down to identifying common features among works – in other words, categorisation. For classical film theory, as Carroll has argued, the key common feature to be identified in evaluating film was the ‘cinematic’. Different classical theories have identified contradictory devices as cinematic, however. The lesson, according to Carroll, is that no single category can be used for evaluating all films. This, however, does not mean multiple categories cannot be helpful. Films can be legitimately categorised as melodramas, horrors, comedies, romances, crime films, westerns, war films, etc. If a film is categorised as a horror yet it barely produces a scare, or if a film is labelled as a comedy yet

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Film Theory every gag falls flat, then it is perfectly reasonable to say that such a film is a bad horror or a bad comedy, respectively. It may appear that Carroll’s evaluation through categorisation makes it impossible for evaluation across categories – one of the upshots of the classical appeal to the category of ‘cinematic’ was that all films could be evaluated on a single dimension. How can we compare, say, the science fiction film Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016) and a comedy like Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007), both strong instances of their respective genres? First, that we have found separate categories for these films does not necessarily mean that there are no additional categories which they jointly inhabit – the genre of drama comes to mind. And even if we could not do that there are still cross-categorical criteria for comparison, such as narrative coherence. Sometimes, admittedly, all points of comparison do break down. It is unclear how one could objectively decide which one of the following two masterpieces is better – Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) or Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961). But on these occasions, as Carroll puts it, we are simply dealing with apples and oranges. We might as well try to decide whether Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a better artwork than Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. In evaluation, finally, we may also legitimately appeal to the value to which each of the dominant categories is committed. When, for instance, comparing films at the top of their respective categories like the neorealist drama Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948) and the horror-comedy Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988), we do seem to want to say that the former is better than the latter. It is so because we deem the humanist effects of Bicycle Thieves to be more valuable than the bizarre laughs that Beetlejuice affords. This is nothing surprising because value questions do play a role in our general evaluative procedures – we cherish a vaccine for polio more than we do an excellent artwork. In summary, Carroll identifies multiple problems with essentialist views of cinema. First, film cannot be defined with recourse to a singular medium. Film is not only found on a number of physical materials (filmstrip, magnetised tape, digital carriers) but is made with a variety of instruments (camera, cutting table, computer programs). Second, there is no (single) ‘cinematic’ feature. Depending on what aspect of the medium we choose to focus on we can cite devices as varied as montage, long take, close-up, etc. as ‘cinematic’.24 Third, there is no reason why using

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Noël Carroll and Film ‘cinematic’ features over ‘non-cinematic’ ones secures artistic excellence. There are numerous highly acclaimed films which do not use any of the ‘cinematic’ devices listed and even more unremarkable ones which use all of them. And last, the essential properties of the medium do not entail any criteria of excellence on their own. That a number of films have been produced through photographic reproduction does not mean that the same criterion for those films qua photographic reproductions is applicable for those films qua films. Instead, evaluations oftentimes boil down to determining whether a film is a ‘good’ member of its generic category.

Against Monolithic Theories Carroll’s other crucial commitment is methodological – instead of trying to give a unified theory of film from a limited number of core propositions, Carroll favours a piecemeal approach which need not necessarily lead to a unified account.25 Classical film theorists, for instance, sought to explain not only all of film style but also how to valorise a film depending on the stylistic features used based on certain claims about the nature of the medium. Depending on what they saw as the nature of the medium they divided the formal features into ‘cinematic’ and ‘non-cinematic’ and evaluated them accordingly. Carroll, by contrast, proposes that we need separate theories of point of view shot, camera movement, editing, long take, deep focus, narrative comprehension, suspense, and so on. But it is not the classical film theorists’ monolithic approaches that Carroll was most concerned about when he initially proposed the piecemeal approach. Rather, it was the amalgam of Althusserian ideology critique, Lacanian psychoanalysis and Barthesian semiotics which dominated film studies in the 1970s and 1980s that Carroll was primarily responding to.26 Under this theoretical paradigm, aspects of film as diverse as style, production, audience response and value were all explained in a top-down fashion with recourse to the idea that film mirrors unconscious mental states, the notion of ideology and subject positioning, and a set of concepts such as suture and the imaginary borrowed from psychoanalysis. For instance, not only the whole film industry and the stories that films tell were declared to be ideological, but the same was argued for the very nature of the photographic image and the structure of storytelling.27 Similarly, the 50

Film Theory function of the critic was identified as revealing the ideological functions of film and evaluating it according to how successful it is in criticising the dominant ideology.28 Given that these theorists focus on photographic film, Carroll also reserves his rebuttals for this type of film. Regarding the nature of the photographic image, the theorists in question regularly regarded the ability of film to reproduce reality with suspicion. If there were occasions on which spectators confused the screened image with the reality – as the second-hand reports about early film audiences vacating the premises in terror at the sight of the approaching locomotive during the first screening of Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (Auguste and Louis Lumière) in Paris in 1895 allege – then moving pictures are essentially illusions. And illusions are basically ideological because, like ideology, they instil false beliefs. Carroll points out a number of problems with this view. Even if the early audiences did run out of the auditorium in panic because they falsely believed that the train was going to run them over, nobody does so any more.29 Nobody falsely believes that when watching, say, James Marsh’s 2008 documentary Man on Wire, they are present at the World Trade Center as Philippe Petit performs a high-wire routine between the Twin Towers. Similarly, when Werner Herzog documents close encounters with bears in his 2005 Grizzly Man, nobody believes that the grizzlies could do them any harm while they are watching the film. Illusions, moreover, need not engender false beliefs at all. There are perceptual illusions, like the apparent bending of a stick in water, which do not instil the false belief in the observer that the stick actually bends when it makes contact with the water. The impression of movement, even if it were a perceptual illusion, which Carroll denies,30 would only be an illusion of the type which entails no false beliefs. There is also the fact that, in general, moving images do not even constitute perceptual illusions. The images of objects cannot be touched or smelled. And even in the visual domain they leave much to be desired. Film images are monocular, whereas human vision is binocular. Additionally, if we move sideways we do not see around the edge of the object represented. If we were faced with a real object, such movement on our part would secure additional perceptual information (one part of the object would be occluded and another revealed). Finally, photographic representations are a part of the institution of film which from the outset informs the filmgoers that they will be faced with

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Noël Carroll and Film representations of something rather than the real thing and, in doing so, deny entertaining any false beliefs about the referent of the image. At most, what can be said is that photographic films often represent fictions, so we can talk of film as illusions in the sense that we talk of fiction as illusion. Fictions have been generally connected to the questions of belief and illusion at least since Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’.31 But the suspension of disbelief, as Carroll argues, applies to the viewers’ willingness not to criticise some narrative or representational implausibility rather than to illusions in the sense of false beliefs. In other words, it is a matter of not criticising some poorly-made special effect – say, the visible wires in the depiction of flying saucers in Plan 9 from Outer Space (Edward D. Wood Jr, 1959) – rather than being fooled into thinking that we are actually witnessing an alien invasion. Another crucial argument of the 1970s and 1980s theorists has been the idea that the representational technique of perspective and any art form that uses it is inherently ideological.32 According to Carroll’s reading of this argument, renaissance perspective posits a singular viewpoint and, as such, whoever is confronted with this technique is positioned as a subject.33 Given that ideology also operates through subject positioning, the perspective as an optical phenomenon is essentially ideological. Film, crucially, is ideological because the optics of the camera automatically reproduce the renaissance perspective. Carroll again criticises the argument. First, many photographic film shots do not use renaissance perspective at all. Whereas renaissance perspective has a single vanishing point, in film it is possible to have multiple vanishing points as much as it is possible to have no focal point at all (as in the case of soft focus). Second, the fact that the renaissance perspective posits a singular viewpoint does not mean that the spectator is actually positioned in the place which is in perfect line with the vanishing point. She can look at the picture from a variety of positions in the space in which the picture is exhibited and still fully comprehend and appreciate the perspective and object relations in the picture. The same holds for cinema when we are dealing with shots with single vanishing points. There are many seats in the auditorium and, again, maximally one will fit perfectly with the ideal spot from which to observe. In that sense, it can only be metaphorically said that the renaissance perspective positions the subject. It only provides an ideal point in space – central if you will – from where to look. Third, the ideological subject

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Film Theory positioning is not a matter of being put to stand in some central physical place but concerns the constitution of an individual person as a unified subject. Under the Althusserian –Lacanian framework, subject positioning gives the individual an illusion of being a unified centre of experience.34 Originally, this is accomplished by misapprehending the image of oneself in the mirror for a sign of a unified subject.35 Although the scholars working under this paradigm use the same keywords, such as ‘centre’, ‘position’ and ‘unity’, being positioned as the unified centre of experience is a significantly different metaphor from the metaphor of being positioned around the centre of the painting. The argument which draws inferences about the ideological nature of perspective from the premise that individuals are constructed as unified subjects through subject positioning is, therefore, formally invalid.36 The dominant theories of the 1970s and 1980s also regarded both the very structure of narrative and its instantiation in film as inherently ideological. In Carroll’s reading of these theories, again, narratives can be generally described as a traversal from one equilibrium to another, that is, as a process of (re)centring.37 By being economical and by investing in diegetic consistency they also come across as unified. Because the function of the narrative is to centre and unify, much like subject positioning centres and unifies the subject, narrative is deemed to be fundamentally ideological. In the case of film, more specifically, narrative is developed through editing techniques such as the establishment of point of view shots and shot-counter shot procedures. The shots on their own would appear out of joint if it were not for ‘suture’ – the psychoanalytical phenomenon which unifies and (re)centres the two shots.38 Insofar as suture performs the same function of subject positioning – unification and centring – it is revealed as ideological. In Carroll’s view, there are again numerous issues. First, narratives need not begin and end in an equilibrium. The ending of the TV show The Sopranos (1999 – 2007), for instance, affords no narrative closure and raises the key question of whether Tony is assassinated or not. Second, even if a narrative re-establishes equilibrium and does so in an economical and consistent fashion, to describe this process as centring and unification is too unspecific to have sufficient explanatory strength. Such description does not distinguish between, say, formal closure (where the last scene repeats the first one) and moral

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Noël Carroll and Film closure (where the social order has been restored). Third, according to statistical analyses, point of view and shot-counter shot structures account for no more than 30 – 40 per cent of all editing patterns in classical Hollywood films.39 Fourth, even if suture is to be applied to all editing structures and other techniques such as camera movement, the metaphorical use of centring and unification as it pertains to both suture and narrative structure in general has little in common with centring and unification in subject positioning. In other words, just because the object regarded by the subject is centred and unified, this does not entail that the subject becomes centred and unified by regarding the object. The general problem that Carroll finds with these psychoanalytically inflected theories of ideology are the pervasive fallacies of informal reasoning based on equivocation. When the nature of photographic film is discussed, the varying meanings of the notion of illusion are used to connect ideology to photographic representation. Both perceptual illusion and illusion as fiction serve to link the photographic film to ideology, even though the former types of illusion have nothing to do with false beliefs. In other cases, the metaphorical use of centring and unity serves to bridge the divide between perspective, narrative and suture, on the one hand, and subject positioning, on the other. These middle terms, however, have a different metaphorical meaning in each case. The centring and unifying that perspective might be said to perform relates to an ideal point of observation. Narrative centring and unifying is a matter of economy, narrative coherence and the reestablishment of the initial equilibrium. In the case of suture, we are again dealing with something different – centring and unifying is meant as smoothing out the transitions between the shots. The centring and unifying in subject positioning, finally, describes a procedure through which an individual is constituted as a subject. To say that narrative is inherently ideological because it centres and unifies and because centring and unifying in subject constitution is inherently ideological is to commit a logical fallacy. It is akin to claiming that ‘Mata Hari is an insectivore’ based on the premises that ‘all moles (animals) are insectivores’ and that ‘Mata Hari is a mole (spy)’. In other words, the middle terms in these premises – ‘mole’, on the one hand, and ‘illusion’, ‘centring’ and ‘unifying’, on the other – are homonyms and as such fail to secure valid arguments.

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Film Theory

Cognitivism as Piecemeal Theorising The other crucial problem that Carroll finds with the theorists tackled in the previous section is that they do not provide any reason why psychoanalytic explanations should be invoked before alternatives are assessed. It is rarely that Marxist –Psychoanalytic – Semioticians treat competing theories dialectically – as rivals whose statements need to be criticised in order to demonstrate one’s own superiority in solving existing problems. Cognitivists, by contrast, start off by pointing out the shortcomings of existing proposals and then proceed to argue that their theories explain more data than their competitors. They offer explanations to many questions about film, particularly those concerning the comprehension and reception of film, by drawing on theories and experiments from various fields of cognitive science, including neuroscience, psychology, linguistics and philosophy. They purport not only to provide accounts of a variety of film phenomena in terms of rational processes but also to provide a better explanation of these phenomena than competing approaches which resort to irrational processes (psychoanalysis). In other words, in contrast to peaceful coexistence of different approaches, cognitivists subscribe to a dialectical form of theorising in which one theoretical framework always attempts to demonstrate its superiority over the other (by explaining a wider range of phenomena, making better predictions, etc.). Crucially, this is a piecemeal approach because it does not presuppose that the accounts of various aspects of film can be unified into a single theory. Some of the most important contributions that Carroll offers to this project include the theories of visual representation, editing (and other forms of cinematic sequencing), narrative and emotional engagement with fictional characters. In the case of visual representations, we have already seen how Carroll dismisses one of the competing accounts – illusion theory – by demonstrating that photographs and photographic moving images generally neither invoke false beliefs nor constitute perceptual illusions. Carroll also exposes the weakness of another theory of visual representation – code theory – before advancing his own account of images as recognitional prompts.40 Classical film theorists, for instance, have often spoken of film as language by likening shots to words and sentences to combinations of

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Noël Carroll and Film shots.41 But the content of most shots can hardly be captured by a single word. Moreover, the relation between a word and its referent is arbitrary, that is to say, conventional – ‘dog’ denotes a dog as much as ‘Hund’ does – whereas photographic images refer in a non-arbitrary fashion – an image of a dog represents that dog by virtue of being an image of that dog. And even if we try to think of shots as sentences – a shot of a dog as saying ‘here is a dog’ – there is nothing in the images which corresponds to discrete units (corresponding to words in a sentence). There is no equivalent to a plethora of grammatical features such as noun, verb, adjective, subject, predicate, object, mood, tense, declarative, interrogative, etc. either. The weaker version of the code thesis does not advocate a strict correspondence between shots and words/sentences, but construes shots as language-like insofar as they depend on the learning of conventional codes. In other words, in the way that learning to understand what the words of a language stand for in the world is a matter of acquiring cultural codes, we also learn to comprehend (photographic) images as denoting the objects they are of by training in visual cultural codes. Put in yet another way, it is argued that image recognition comes no more naturally than understanding that ‘Hund’ refers to a dog.42 This thesis is, however, disproven by three crucial facts. First, experiments have shown that children are capable of recognising drawings without any training. Two psychologists have raised their child in an image-free environment, yet when presented with drawings at the age of two the child readily recognised the referent of those drawings. 43 Second, images are easily diffused across cultures. An overwhelming number of anthropological studies demonstrates that tribal peoples unfamiliar with Western imagery and representational techniques regularly recognise the object depicted in the image.44 Third, even some animals appear to recognise referents of images. Most recently, it has been shown that frogs gather and attempt to eat worms when presented with a mobile phone recording of worms.45 All of this strongly suggests that it is very unlikely that humans need any training on a par with language learning to understand either non-photographic or photographic images. This is also the key reason for Carroll to propose the recognitional prompt thesis.46 Under this account, humans come to understand images with little or no tutelage as soon as they naturally acquire object recognition skills. In contrast to the illusion thesis, moreover, the visual

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Film Theory representation is not mistaken for the object represented (as appears to be the case with frogs). Instead, both photographic and non-photographic images naturally prompt human capacities of object recognition (and the exact nature of the perceptual process behind this prompting is left to scientists to discover). Because this natural capacity affords immediate comprehensibility of images/shots, it also begins to explain the success and ubiquity of moving images around the world. Other components in explaining this popularity of moving images are Carroll’s accounts of cinematic sequencing and narrative as forms of attention management and his explanation of the emotional power of films.47 As Carroll admits, these other components are not as ubiquitous as natural image recognition simply because not all moving images are narrative. But they do go a long way in explaining the popularity of what he refers to as ‘movies’, a subcategory of narrative moving images made for untutored audiences (e.g. Hollywood and other popular films, the vast majority of television programming – even some independent and art cinema offerings are not strangers to these principles).48 Cinematic sequencing does not include only the arrangement of shots through editing but also the developments within the shot, like camera and lens movement, which present discernible camera views. For instance, it is the camera moving away from the pool and focusing on the flower in the last shot of the season four of Breaking Bad (2008–13) that signifies the importance of the latter for the series’ narrative arc. The same two discernible views (and virtually the same information) could have been conveyed by cutting from the pool to the flower plant, by racking focus between the two or by a number of other techniques. Although we are clearly dealing with communication here, any recourse to understanding sequencing in terms of sentence- or phrase-building should again be dismissed at the outset, according to Carroll. To the point that films have no vocabulary (because there are no discrete word-like equivalents in film), Carroll adds the argument that films have no grammar either. Whereas in language wellformed, in other words, grammatical sentences can be distinguished from those which are intelligible, in film only intelligibility is applicable to sequencing. The sentence ‘I give she apple’ is ungrammatical but is intelligible as ‘I give her an apple’. But there is no equivalent to the former types of sentences in film. Rules such as match on action, the 180-degree rule, the 30-degree rule, etc. do help our understanding but they do not constitute

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Noël Carroll and Film grammatical rules. As an alternative to language-like communication, Carroll proposes that cinematic sequencing communicates through attention management. The key to attention management is the director’s exploitation of our pre-existing cognitive and perceptual capabilities in determining ‘what will be shown, in what order, at what pace, and at what screen scale’ to elicit a wanted effect.49 If, for instance, the point is to emphasise the importance of the flower as in the example above, then it is no surprise that the director opted to move into a close-up. First, by moving in on the flower the director performs an action analogue to everyday drawing of attention – pointing. Carroll refers to this as indexing. Then, at the end of the shot the flower is the only thing on the screen. In other words, by eliminating other content from the shot the director has bracketed what we see. Last, the magnified scale bestows further significance on the object represented. This is no coincidence either, for cross-cultural studies have demonstrated that size and importance are correlated.50 This procedure of attention management, in other words, chimes well with our natural perceptual dispositions, in other words, with how we attend to objects in our vicinity and how we ascribe importance to them. In a number of films, the cinematic sequencing is a part of the cinematic narrative. The example above functions so effectively not only because it focuses our attention on the plant but because, within the narrative of Breaking Bad, the close-up of the flower reveals both Walter White’s superior intelligence and his unparalleled moral depravity. In other words, this shot perfectly demonstrates what Carroll understands to be at the core of movie narration – erotetic narration. According to Carroll, the vast majority of narrative films – ‘movies’ – progress by posing, sustaining, reframing, and answering micro- and macro-questions. Micro-questions pertain to smaller chunks of the narrative and are generally subordinated to macro-questions, which organise the overall narrative. And this again builds on our natural cognitive processes, because humans standardly form questions based on the information they are presented with. In season four of Breaking Bad, perhaps the three crucial macroquestions are: Who is Jesse going to side with in the rivalry between Gus and Walter? Who is going to win between the two? And how is this going to play out? Near the end of the last episode it appears that all three

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Film Theory questions have been resolved – Jesse has sided with Walter, helping Walter to beat Gus. By the time of the last shot in the season, it appears that nothing of narrative substance is going to happen. That is why it is unclear why we are presented with the shot of Walter’s pool and nobody around (Figure 2.1) – a micro-question is raised. Given that the first shot of the season’s last episode was also a shot of Walter’s pool, maybe formal closure is sought next to a narrative one? The camera quickly moves, however, and it becomes obvious that there is more to this shot than formal closure – but what? (A micro-question is reframed.) As the camera moves in on the flower it becomes clear that the flower holds the key to something – a microquestion is answered and immediately another is raised (what is going to be revealed?). And once the close-up reveals the name of the flower – Lily of the Valley (Figure 2.2) – it turns out that we did not know the half of the story about how Walter won over Jesse in his fight against Gus. In fact, not only did Walter trick Jesse into believing that Gus poisoned the son of Jesse’s girlfriend, it was Walter who poisoned the child. So, the effectiveness of this shot rests on a number of functions it performs within the parameters of erotetic narration. It answers some important micro-questions – for example, who poisoned the child, if anybody? (Walter.) It reminds us of some micro-questions that we disregarded – such as what was Walter cooking when Jesse visited him? (The poison from the plant.) And it rearticulates the answer to one macro-question – how did Walter beat Gus? (By deceiving Jesse.) Having answered all the macro-questions and all the micro-questions relevant to the macro-ones, this final shot also serves as an excellent example of how narrative closure can be afforded. One last important aspect of film that Carroll theorises and that we will tackle in this chapter is affect. Carroll construes affect broadly to include all felt bodily states, including innate reflex reactions (e.g. startle response), bodily sensations (e.g. pain, pleasure, warmth, cold, sexual arousal), basic emotions (e.g. fear, happiness, anger, sadness), and other mental states involving feelings (e.g. phobias, desires, moods). Film, and art more generally, as Carroll points out in his philosophy of art, can elicit all these affects. For instance, if an object rapidly expands on the screen, as when objects hurl at the viewer in the latest 3D films, the audiences tend to jolt in response. A whole genre – pornography – revolves around stirring sexual stimulation. Horrors, similarly, evoke fear often by playing on specific human phobias (e.g. claustrophobia, fear of the dark) and hard-wired

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Noël Carroll and Film

Figure 2.1 Long shot of Walter White's (Bryan Cranston) pool raises a microquestion (Breaking Bad, Season 4, Episode 13).

human reactions to particularly unappealing creatures (e.g. snakes, spiders). Although under the natural recognition prompt thesis it is no mystery how a documentary about spiders could evoke affects such as disgust and fear, or how watching a war reportage elicits anger and sadness, it is far less

Figure 2.2 Close-up of the plant answers both micro- and macro-questions, thereby providing closure (Breaking Bad, Season 4, Episode 13).

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Film Theory clear why fictional moving images can provoke emotional responses of the same rank. The crucial aspect of this problem is the so-called ‘paradox of fiction’: why are we emotionally invested in fiction if what is represented is not real? Why do we cry when the hunter kills Bambi’s mother if we know that neither Bambi nor his mother exist? Why does the creature in Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) disgust and scare us if nothing of the sort inhabits our world? Carroll resolves this paradox with recourse to ‘thought theory’.51 On this account, there is nothing strange about fictions causing affects because imaginings can elicit affects as much as beliefs can. It is well known, for instance, that sexual fantasies can lead to actual arousal. Similarly, while flying we can imagine that the plane is going to unexpectedly crash and start feeling unnerved because of it. In other words, believing that x and imagining that x can both evoke genuine affects. And given that fictions are essentially a subclass of imaginings, there is nothing paradoxical about having affective responses to fiction.52 What is particularly fascinating about the greatest majority of fictional moving images – and what further explains their planetary success – is their ability to elicit generally the same emotional responses in the widest array of audiences. Practically everybody (at least on first viewing) feels suspense and horror when a menacing shadow appears behind Marion while she is taking a shower in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). Virtually all are happy to see the titular heroine and Nino get together at the end of Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001). According to Carroll, this is accomplished through ‘criterial prefocusing’.53 Whereas in everyday life we are faced with an abundance of stimuli we need to make sense of, in fictional moving images the stimuli come preselected and prefocused with a clear intention to arouse specific mental states. In our everyday lives, there are rarely such dramatic occurrences as encounters with murderers in the shower. In Psycho, by contrast, it is not only that such an emotionally highly charged event takes place, but that the attack itself is criterially prefocused to come across as menacingly as possible. The murderer is backlit so we cannot discern his or her true identity, the presence of a knife instils further terror, the sharp discordant music conspires to evoke the sound of hacking, etc. As we can see from the previous examples, an audience’s strongest emotional investment is in the relationship with the characters,

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Noël Carroll and Film particularly protagonists and antagonists. Traditionally, this relationship (at least towards the protagonists) has been described in terms of ‘identification’. For Carroll, to identify with a character essentially means that the viewer feels what the character feels.54 On many occasions, however, this is patently false. In the aforementioned shower sequence in Psycho we are not frightened for ourselves, as Marion is. We are frightened for her. This is also not a question of having the same type of emotion. We hardly fall in love (with somebody) because Amélie has fallen in love with Nino. Therefore, instead of explaining the bond between the viewers and the character in terms of identification, Carroll proposes sympathy in its place.55 Sympathy involves feelings of fulfilment, pleasure and delight when the object of our sympathy is doing well and discomfort and distress otherwise. Because we sympathise with both Amélie and Marion, we react to their respective situations with jubilation and anxiety. Sympathy, moreover, is superior to identification because its obverse – antipathy – also explains our reactions to antagonists. When the Joker from Batman is forced to retreat, we are pleased, but when he is gaining the upper hand we become distressed. The inability to identify with the antagonist does not appear to have the same explanatory power as antipathy.56 According to Carroll, then, both essentialism and monolithic theorising pervaded classical film theory and Marxist–Psychoanalytic–Semiotic approaches alike. The former saw film in terms of its medium and applied certain theories from philosophical aesthetics to explain all forms of film style and define what counts as artistic success. The latter also started from the idea of film as the reproduction of reality but drew a different conclusion – that film is ideologically suspect. It also explained production, style, reception, evaluation, the goal of the critic, and various other aspects of film with recourse to a limited set of concepts borrowed from philosophical Marxism, psychoanalysis and semiotics. Carroll, by contrast, approaches film in a non-essentialist and piecemeal fashion, while devoting special attention to viewer comprehension and affect. For this he draws on a cognitivist framework and analytic philosophy. None of his theoretical proposals, finally, prejudice any evaluative stances. There is nothing akin to cinematic/non-cinematic or ideologically suspect/progressive that defines a film as good or bad. Importantly, all of Carroll’s main theoretical commitments will also be informative of his more general philosophy of art. Let us now consider the general objections to his approach.

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3 Assessment of Theory

Carroll’s theories command considerable attention within the cognitivist paradigm and have influenced numerous scholars working under it. But those who subscribe to other approaches have been far less enthusiastic about his work as a theorist. The responses of these scholars can be grouped into three broad categories. First, that Carroll’s work is irrelevant, second, that his theories construct straw men and, third, that he is a methodological imperialist. To assess Carroll’s theory, let us address these objections in order.

Irrelevance For some scholars, Carroll’s logical skills and the validity of his arguments as a film theorist are unquestionable but, in the end, this matters little for film studies. As Tom Gunning writes regarding Carroll’s take on one of classical film theory’s most prominent voices, ‘[Carroll’s] critique of the film theory of André Bazin [. . .] is both penetrating in its logic and devastating to Bazin’s theoretical argument and yet seems somehow nearly irrelevant to what most of us would agree is the importance of Bazin to film studies.’1 In other words, although Carroll’s argument that Bazin cannot theoretically justify advocating for realism in general, and the long take and

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Noël Carroll and Film deep-focus cinematography in particular is sound, Bazin’s key contributions to film studies lie elsewhere. For instance, Bazin has provided invaluable insights into stylistic shifts in the history of film precisely by attuning us to the work of directors such as F. W. Murnau, Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim and Robert Flaherty. His writings on post-war Italian cinema have, similarly, paved the way for the critical appreciation of neorealism. Carroll is not unaware of this and, in fact, he does regard Bazin first and foremost as an historian and a critic, and only then as a theorist.2 The charge of irrelevance is a particularly vexing issue because, as is made explicit in the articulation above, it does not hinge on the strength of the argument but on what a group of scholars deems to be important about a thinker’s work and whether or not the argument in question addresses this aspect of the thinker’s oeuvre. And the consensus on what is important, it is safe to assume, is not something that all members of the academic community have an equal say in. In other words, questions of importance and relevance rest on factors such as academic seniority, the status of research programmes, the availability of funding for specific programmes, the potential to generate more work and the fit with the general cultural climate, among others. All of this is subject to change. Some will garner academic fame by opening up the discipline to a new research question, while the greatest majority will never break free from academic anonymity despite offering new avenues for research. For instance, questions of gender were practically of no importance for film theory until the 1970s. Since the work of scholars such as Laura Mulvey, however, it has become one of the mainstays of the discipline.3 Already in 1916 Hugo Münsterberg, by contrast, wrote one of the earliest theoretical works on film, yet he was barely mentioned in film theory until cognitivist approaches started to exert some influence on the discipline.4 By analogy, although most film scholars regard Bazin’s historical and critical writings to be the most important aspect of his work, there is no reason why his theoretical work could not rise to that stature. And, even if it does not, there are still insights to be gained from reading Bazin theoretically. At the very least, it is undeniable that Bazin did produce theoretical writings. With this in mind, I would suggest that the charge of irrelevance carries more weight if we consider what aspect of Bazin’s theoretical work Carroll chooses to focus on. Arguably, Bazin’s crucial contribution to film theory has been the articulation of a special bond between the photographic image

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Assessment of Theory and the object photographed to be found in his 1945 essay ‘Ontology of the photographic image’, rather than his defence of realism, long take and deep-focus cinematography that Carroll devotes most of his attention to.5 In film studies, since Peter Wollen’s 1969 highly influential Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, this bond has been construed in terms of what C.S. Peirce had dubbed the index.6 According to Peirce, one way to categorise signs is to distinguish between icons, symbols and indices.7 While icons represent by virtue of similarity and symbols do so according to some current convention, indices represent by virtue of an existential link. In the case of icons, a picture of a dog is an icon because it refers to a dog through visual likeness. Most words present examples of symbols because the link between the word and its referent are arbitrary – both ‘dog’ and ‘chien’ refer to the concept of the dog depending on the language. The footprint of a dog’s paw, finally, is an index of the dog who made the footprint because the footprint’s existence attests to the existence of the dog who made it. From this perspective, Bazin is seen to claim that the photograph is essentially an index of the object photographed. At the same time, its status as an icon – whether it is similar to the object or not – is beside the point. Carroll, however, never addresses this reading of Bazin, which has come to constitute the dominant understanding in film studies of the relationship analogue photography has to reality in the years to follow. In fact, it was precisely the alleged non-indexical nature of the digital images that prompted numerous film scholars to claim that the digital turn has brought about the death of film as a medium whose essence was indexical representation. In other words, if Carroll’s account of Bazin’s theoretical commitments is irrelevant, it is less so because Bazin is primarily a critic and a historian and more so because his theoretical commitments have been construed differently than what Carroll takes them to be. One way to ward off this criticism is to claim that it is more important to address what a theorist has actually said rather than to focus on what later commentators claim that the theorist has said. By doing so, the work of later commentators can be at least indirectly engaged with if it is shown that the commentators either build on a theorist’s claims and arguments which are faulty or misunderstand these very claims and arguments. Carroll, for instance, undercuts a lot of work on fictional moving images by demonstrating that Bazin’s understanding of the relationship between the

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Noël Carroll and Film analogue photographic image and the object photographed can only be of significance for non-fictional representations. Put differently, that some special bond obtains between the photograph and its object does not entail that the same bond holds between the photograph and what the object of the photograph represents fictionally. This is so because only non-fictional objects can be recorded. When watching Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) there might be a special relation between the moving image and Humphrey Bogart, but this relation certainly does not obtain between the moving image and Rick. Moreover, Bazin’s ontological commitments, according to Carroll, would also suggest that when watching fiction films we are primarily interested in what the photographs are of in the real world rather than for what they stand for in the fictional one.8 This, however, is regularly belied by our greater investment in the fictional rather than the profilmic world. The same type of criticism, Carroll reminds us, is also applicable to another highly influential work that builds on Bazin’s ontology – Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed.9 From the perspective of Wollen’s understanding of Bazin, finally, the result is that just because the photographic film is an index of Welles, it does not follow that it is also an index of Kane. This, according to Carroll, also has repercussions for Bazin’s evaluative preferences. In Chapter 2 we have already seen how Victor Perkins’s evaluative criterion of credibility cannot be derived from the photographic medium’s potential for verisimilar reproduction. In other words, the ontological facts about photography entail no evaluative criteria for photographically based fiction films. In Bazin, similarly, there is no formally valid reason to prefer one film style over another based on the ontological properties of the photograph. If every photograph has a special bond with the object photographed, then, so long as the film is photographically derived, it does not matter whether the filmmaking style capitalises on the long take and deep-focus cinematography, the expressionist use of shadows and mise-en-scène, montage or some other device. Carroll’s more general point, then, is that the photographic nature of film cannot be used to say much of importance, either ontologically or evaluatively, once film is used for fictional representation. All of this suggests that Carroll’s points about Bazin can hardly be irrelevant for film scholars who build their theories of fiction film on Bazin’s ontological commitments about photography. Two problems remain, however.

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Assessment of Theory First, Carroll’s account does not appear to capture what Bazin says about the special bond between the photograph and its object to begin with. Second, Carroll addresses an understanding of Bazin which has gained currency in philosophical aesthetics – ‘the transparency thesis’ – but not the one in film studies – photographs as indices. Regarding the former, Carroll presents Bazin’s claims about photographic representation like this: a photographic image x represents an object y if and only if: (1) x is identical to y, and (2) y is the causal factor in the production of x. Crucially, Carroll construes the identity between x and y as perceptual identity, where ‘patterns of light from the image are identical with pertinent patterns of light in from the model.’10 Bazin, however, is perfectly clear that no form of perceptual likeness plays a role for his understanding of the photographic image: ‘No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or discolored, no matter how lacking in documentary value the [photographic] image may be, it shares, by virtue of the very process of its becoming, the being of the model of which it is the reproduction; it is the model.’11 Concerning the latter, Carroll devotes significant attention to the ‘transparency thesis’ – the view that photographic images do not represent the objects photographed but rather put us in the direct presence of these objects, much like mirrors, microscopes and telescopes do. The account has been developed by Kendall Walton and Carroll goes to great lengths to disprove the thesis.12 Crucially, Carroll claims that it is in the ‘Ontology of the photographic image’ article that Bazin comes closest to this thesis.13 If Carroll affords such lengthy treatment to the understanding of Bazin which informs philosophical aesthetics of the analytic provenance, then one might legitimately wonder why ‘index theories’ which have played a crucial role in film studies merit not a shred of his attention? At the very least, film scholars not sharing in Carroll’s passion for analytic aesthetics have a perfectly good reason not to include him on their Bazin reading list. And such a choice of focus on Carroll’s part also gives further reason to film scholars to dismiss him as irrelevant. Although there are good reasons why Carroll’s treatment of Bazin does not instil much confidence in film scholars not invested in analytic philosophy and cognitivism, Bazin’s film theory is certainly not the only thing that Carroll has written about. Already in his first monograph, Carroll criticised the theories of Rudolf Arnheim and Victor Perkins,

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Noël Carroll and Film both of whom are important for film studies precisely because of their work as film theorists. Carroll was also one of the first to directly engage what he calls the Marxist –Psychoanalytic – Semiotic paradigm during what was undeniably its heyday in the 1980s.14 Together with David Bordwell he has been crucial in opening up the discipline to cognitivism as  zek well.15 And with the continued influence of scholars such as Slavoj Zi 16 on the discipline, one can hardly agree with Gunning ‘that Carroll’s ongoing forays against what he calls “The Theory” begin to take on something of the obsessive and possibly necrophilic pleasure of beating a dead horse’.17 Generally speaking, then, the charges of irrelevance are better construed as the legitimisation of the reasons for the relatively minor influence of Carroll’s work within film studies, explored in more detail in Chapter 1, rather than the cause of this standing. This matter cannot be resolved with recourse to the quality of Carroll’s arguments alone. The charge of straw-men construction, however, can.

Straw Men Perhaps the most extensive direct debate between the cognitivist and the Marxist– Psychoanalytic –Semiotic camp is the one between Carroll and Stephen Heath from the early 1980s during the latter paradigm’s heyday. It unfolded on the pages of the journal October and revolved around Carroll’s uncompromising attack on Heath’s monograph Questions of Cinema.18 While Carroll accused Heath of deliberate obfuscation and equivocation, Heath found Carroll to be guilty of ‘amalgamation, falsification, construction of straw positions against which to argue, skilful deployment of ignorance, and so on.’19 At the end of the decade, as the dominance of Marxist –Psychoanalytic –Semiotic approaches had somewhat begun to wane, another debate erupted, this time between Carroll and Warren Buckland, who offered no less a vehement criticism of Carroll’s Mystifying Movies, which grew out of Carroll’s review of Heath and the dispute between the two.20 Although not a proponent of the Marxist – Psychoanalytic –Semiotic framework himself, Buckland still argued in line with the paradigm that Carroll does not respect the principle of charity, which asks that when engaging somebody else’s position the strongest possible interpretation of that position is tackled. Let us address the crux of these objections – the misrepresentation of the opponent’s stances. 68

Assessment of Theory In the essay ‘Le Père Noël’ Heath finds Carroll’s criticism of his book to be so confused that he professes his anger for even having to deal with a piece that hardly warrants a response. Heath singles out a number of what he purports to be mistakes on Carroll’s part and then proceeds to tackle some of the major sections in Carroll’s piece – the discussions of illusion, perspective and interminability, respectively. It is worth addressing these three points together with Carroll’s response. However, before proceeding it must be said that in discussing these points, Heath barely addresses the main thrust of Carroll’s criticism from ‘Address to the heathen’ – the problems with Heath’s suture theory and his use of equivocation in arguments about subject positioning.21 A psychoanalytic concept originally developed to explain subject positioning, suture denotes a process of ‘binding’ or ‘stitching’ of the subject into various forms of discourse.22 The main idea is that although seemingly coherent, unified and homogenous, all discursive forms are characterised by an absence and require completion by the receiver. In perspectival painting, for instance, it is the ideal viewer who is absent and beckoned to position themselves centrally to complete the painting. In film, suture was initially applied to point of view editing by Jean-Pierre Oudart.23 According to him, the initial shot in the structure reveals an absence – the reverse field of the shot where the viewer or, as it is called, ‘the absent one’ should be present. In the ensuing reverse shot typical of narrative cinema, a diegetic character is put in the place of ‘the absent one’ thereby suturing or filling in the absence and completing the structure. By identifying with the diegetic character, the spectator also participates in the process of filling in the gaps and is sutured into the film. Through suturing it is not only the structure in question that becomes coherent, unified, homogenous, centred, etc. but the subject themselves. And this is crucial for the Marxist –Psychoanalytic – Semiotic framework for, as elaborated in the introduction, this means not only that film is inherently ideological but that it is a privileged vehicle for understanding human subjectivity. Under Heath’s account, suture is operational not only in point of view editing but in virtually all forms of filmic expression. This is so because absence can be identified on various levels of film form – the referents are absent from the filmic representation, elements outside of the frame are absent, narrative ellipses produce absences, all shots in a shot sequence but the current one are absent by definition, etc. Carroll’s key objections

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Noël Carroll and Film are twofold. First, when suture is applied to all forms of filmic expression, as Heath attempts, it becomes apparent that the notions of ‘absence’, ‘unity’, ‘coherence’, ‘wholeness’, ‘homogeneity’, etc. are equivocated across different contexts. Second, if suture explains all forms of film expression then we have a theory which is too general to have any proper explanatory power. In the former case and focusing on the term `absence', the absence of reference is different from the absence of elements from the frame or the absence of the reverse field of action. In all forms of representation, the referents are necessarily absent – to have stand-ins for something else is the whole point of representation. However, the representations themselves – images in film – are clearly present. In the case of framing, there will again necessarily be parts of the world which are not in the frame, but not all absences are the same – sometimes off-screen will have an important function for the shot, on most occasions it will not. Similarly with narrative absences – it is one thing to have a narrative ellipsis where what is elided is irrelevant or easily inferred and where what is elided is what drives the narrative and the spectator’s curiosity. In other words, the way in which Heath brings together a range of disparate phenomena is to use a garden variety term like ‘absence’ which is left without a technical definition. Once this is accomplished, the general formula ‘absence leads to posed coherence leads to suture’ is invoked.24 In the case of the explanatory power of suture theory, given that suture is applicable to all forms of film expression it turns out that all films are coherent and/or comprehensible. First, this appears to be an overkill, for experimental films often do not come across as coherent and/or comprehensible. Second, because according to Heath suture is applicable not only to all forms of filmic discourse but to discourse overall (linguistic and non-linguistic forms alike), as a theory it provides too general an answer for a specific question. Saying that suture is the reason why we comprehend sentences, pictures, and experimental editing is akin to saying that the reason the sun rises, snow falls, and cells divide is because God wills it. In purporting to explain everything it is too unspecific to satisfactorily explain anything. Much like we would be better served to turn to physics, meteorology and biology to explain the rising sun, snowfall and cell division, we would be better off developing specific answers to questions of sentence, picture and editing comprehension. Given that

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Assessment of Theory Heath does not address any of these objections, it is important to say that the burden of proof when it comes to vindicating a key point in his theory – suture – rests with him. What Heath does respond to is, as mentioned already, Carroll’s treatment of illusion, perspective and interminability. Given that Buckland also tackles Carroll’s discussion of the strong version of the illusion thesis – that moving images fool spectators into believing that what is represented is actually in front of them – I will address it in the section on the Carroll –Buckland debate below. At this point, it suffices to say that Heath denies that he holds any such view and claims, instead, that he simply investigates why films are so engrossing and lifelike – the weak version of the illusion thesis. Although when, say, watching Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 1982) nobody really believes themselves to be in India in Gandhi’s presence, this does not mean that there is no ‘suspension of disbelief’ which allows the spectator to say: ‘I am in India with Gandhi, living his story; I feel like I’m really there, really witnessing the events.’25 In other words, illusion for Heath is about ‘look-alikeness, story, emotional involvement [and] impressions of living the events’.26 Carroll’s main objection revolves around Heath’s recourse to the notion of illusion when describing the experience of film, for all the attributes of that Heath cites as constitutive of illusion – suspension of disbelief, look-alikeness, story, emotional involvement and the impression of living the events – can be described in terms which do not come with the baggage of false beliefs. The point of the re-description of these terms is twofold. Firstly, to foreclose equivocation when speaking of illusion which can lead to the strong version of the illusion thesis and secondly, to provide a more precise conceptual analysis of ordinary language statements such as ‘it was so good it seemed real’ which spectators make when evaluating films and plays. First, suspension of disbelief is a peculiar mental state which is regularly invoked in the discussion of fiction. But fiction is not a matter of belief or disbelief. Rather it is a question of make-believe or imagining.27 In other words, make-believe is simply entertaining a certain state of affairs without committing oneself to believe anything about the matter. As such, it also has nothing to do with illusion. In the case of look-alikeness we are dealing with visual similarity between the moving images and what they represent, so treating images as prompts for recognition will do. Even if some images

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Noël Carroll and Film are perfect trompe-l’œils it is not the case that all are and it is recognition, rather than illusion, that operates in all cases. Similarly, although some stories may fool us into believing something that is not true or ask us to believe something that is true, most of them simply prompt us to makebelieve something. In other words, given that the ‘it was so good it seemed real’ evaluation is applicable to both fictional and non-fictional stories, it is the features of the plotting, rather than whether we end up (falsely) believing something, that are constitutive of ‘realistic’ storytelling. In the case of heightened emotional engagement, there is again no need to invoke any notion of illusion, for thought theory – the idea that make-believes can cause emotional reactions explained in Chapter 2 – suffices. When trying to explain the impression of living the events, there is also no reason to appeal to the illusion of the ‘I feel like I’m really there’ kind because, according to Carroll, this simply means that the film is particularly engaging – all of which can be accounted for with recourse to some combination of thought theory, storytelling practices and representational qualities of film. Carroll is right that there is no need to appeal to the notion of illusion, for all its alleged attributes can be explained away in alternative terms – most notably with recourse to make-believe and the capacity of images to prompt recognition. But at the same time, he does not seem to capture fully what spectators mean when they say ‘I feel like I’m really there’ – and for this Heath rightfully takes him to task. Of course, we need not invoke the feeling of presence to explain why we are emotionally invested in a specific character but that is because the two are not the same and not because this feeling never happens. Even when we explain emotional engagement in terms of thought theory we still need to elaborate what is meant under ‘I feel like I’m really there’ when similar descriptions are put forward by spectators. Heath proposes that it comes down to ‘having a feel of what it “might have been like” to have been [there]’.28 This does not mean that ‘illusion of reality’ is a good term to describe the feeling in question, as Heath still insists, but it does mean that Carroll has left this specific proposal unchallenged.29 In other words, it is unlikely that Carroll is constructing straw men here, for Heath does not let go of the notion of illusion. But the rephrasing of the above feeling in terms of emotional engagement does still come across as too hasty an attempt at putting a slippery ordinary language expression to rest.

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Assessment of Theory The second larger piece in Carroll’s review tackled by Heath is perspective. What Heath chooses to focus on, however, is not Carroll’s charge that using phrases such as ‘subject positioning’ and ‘subject centring’ rests on equivocation of different senses of the notions of positioning and centring to bring together an Althusserian –Lacanian sense of subject formation and the feature of perspectival paintings to posit ideal viewing vantage points. In that sense, much like in the case with suture and internal narrative, Heath misses the opportunity to return the ball to Carroll’s court. Instead, Heath defends the idea that perspective as a representational system is a matter of convention rather than a natural representation of space. More precisely, Heath challenges Carroll’s formulation that perspective is the best representational system for reproducing spatial relations between the objects in the image. This again feeds into the larger framework of continental scepticism of categories purported to be natural. For if phenomena as varied as racism, slavery and the subjugation of women were over the course of history legitimised because they allegedly represented the natural order of things, it is legitimate to ask what other phenomena which we nowadays regard as natural are in fact cultural conventions and what injustices do they propagate? Heath cites a number of instances where, purportedly, Carroll speaks of the appearance of spatial relations rather than spatial relations themselves. For instance, Carroll says that ‘[perspective] is the most accurate means of rendering information about spatial appearance’.30 But the retinal image that is based on geometrical optics is different from the visual experience subjects have and it is precisely in the gap between the two that there is space for conventions. In other words, Carroll either fails to understand the difference between visual experiences of spatial relations and spatial relations themselves or he inadvertently admits that convention does play a role in perspective by appealing to the notion of appearance. Moreover, according to Heath, there are mimetic systems of representation which are as accurate as perspective when it comes to spatial relations – topographic maps. In the final piece of the debate – ‘A reply to Heath’ – Carroll denies that he conflates spatial relations with their appearances or that he reintroduces the notion of convention in his account of perspective. Regarding the former, Carroll admits that the talk of appearance often refers to visual experience but points out that this need not be always the

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Noël Carroll and Film case. In his use, ‘appearance’ was simply meant to denote that the information about spatial relations is visual rather than to describe the phenomenology of seeing. Put differently, in the ordinary sense of the word appearance may also denote the outward visual properties of an object (regardless of how the object is eventually phenomenologically perceived) and it was in this sense that Carroll meant it. Regarding the alleged conventionality of perspective, it remains the case that perspective is based on geometrical optics as much as retinal images are. Although the propagation of light according to geometrical optics is not the only input in the system of visual perception, it is an important part of how information about spatial information is conveyed to the subject. Finally, although topographic maps are spatially very accurate, perhaps even more so than perspective, Carroll points out that the former are not transcultural like the latter because, unlike perspectival painting, one needs to learn how to read topographic maps. For instance, there is nothing natural about colour coding to denote areas with different heights on the map. By contrast, spatial relations in perspectival pictures are based on the laws of geometrical optics, which are transcultural. We might say, then, that in the section on perspective, much like in the discussion on illusion, Heath challenges Carroll to define and/or articulate his terms more precisely and that here, more so than in the previous discussion, Carroll rises to the occasion. The last substantial point that animates the exchange between Carroll and Heath is the split in the subject, theorised to be forced on him or her through all forms of representation. According to Heath, this split is best exemplified by the distinction between enunciation and the enounced in linguistic forms of expression. For instance, in the case of statements like ‘I am lying now’, it is impossible to square whether the ‘I’ is lying or telling the truth, suggesting we should postulate two distinct ‘I’s. For Carroll, however, the distinction is at most a grammatical phenomenon and hardly demonstrates anything about a metaphysical split in the subject, which is what Heath is driving at, again in the tradition of continental scepticism of a unified subject. In standard linguistic accounts, the subject of enunciation denotes the subject who is uttering a given statement, whereas the subject of the enounced is the subject of the content of the utterance. So, in every utterance there is not only the grammatical subject (the subject of the enounced) but also the subject who utters (the subject of the enunciation).

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Assessment of Theory Under this account, the above liar’s paradox ought to be understood as follows: ‘I utter: I am lying now’ where the ‘I’ in the ‘I utter’ part of the utterance is the subject of enunciation and the ‘I’ in the ‘I am lying now’ is the subject of the enounced. More generally, the ‘I utter’ part should be added as a prefix to all utterances, be they spoken, written, thought, etc. Carroll admits that the liar’s paradox does lend itself to talk about the split in subjectivity in some sense. But the more general distinction between the enunciation and the enounced hardly invokes any such thing. First, not all utterances are in the first person. An utterance like ‘He went to the store’ translates to ‘I utter: He went to the store’. The ‘I’ and ‘he’ do not denote the same person to begin with, so there can hardly be any split. Even if the recipient to whom the enunciation is addressed always considers the intention behind the utterance and thereby makes inferences about the ‘I’ – perhaps the recipient takes the subject of the enunciation to be lying – this can at most be said to ‘split’ the subject in the recipient’s eyes, that is, to influence how the recipient perceives the subject. Similarly, if the subject of the enunciation has an ulterior motive in uttering what they utter, the most that can be said about this is that there is a ‘split’ between the subject and how they would like to be perceived, that is, how they perform their subjectivity in front of the others. Second, it is rarely that first person utterances are conceptually problematic, as in the liar’s paradox. The two subjects in ‘I utter: I am writing now’ denote the same grammatical person which is, unlike the ‘I’ in the liar’s paradox, completely coherent. Third, first person utterances which introduce a temporal gap between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the enounced – for example, ‘I utter: I was a healthy child’ – can hardly be said to split the subject in any sense but temporal and/or grammatical. Although the ‘I’ of the enunciation might now be sickly, he or she is still the same person as the ‘I’ that was the child. Carroll acknowledges that in the ‘Address to the heathen’ he has assumed temporal endurance of individual identity over time and thus opened himself to criticism that the metaphysical split has not been successfully dismissed. In ‘A reply to Heath’, however, he rectifies his position by producing a condition for individual identity over time: ‘An adult, A, is the same person as the child, B, if and only if the mental states that A possesses and the actions that A performs are the same actions (numerically) that B will perform and the same mental states (numerically) that B will have.’31 In other words, although the distinction between the

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Noël Carroll and Film enunciation and the enounced can be described as the splitting of the subject in virtually all utterances, it is only through equivocation that these performative, perceived, grammatical, temporal, etc. splits can be connected to the metaphysical idea of the splitting of the subject. Carroll concludes his point by arguing that even if linguistic utterances produced anything like the split Heath has in mind, it is unclear how the distinction is applicable to filmic forms of expression which also, according to Heath, force the splitting of the subject. It is true that it is possible to describe both linguistic and filmic forms as intentional expressions and, therefore, speak of filmic enunciation. But film shares little with language and it certainly does not possess grammatical person in any strict sense, as language does.32 We again see how Heath recurrently fails to meet Carroll’s key charge – equivocation. Either fully or in part, Heath does not address the structures of equivocation Carroll identifies in his arguments about suture, internal structure of the narrative, subject positioning, and enunciation. It is true that more than once Carroll also has problems with precisely articulating either his (‘appearance’, ‘personal identity’) or Heath’s (‘impressions of living the events’) concepts. However, when pushed to do so, he does make a substantial effort. In other words, Carroll hardly falsifies what Heath says, but on some occasions he is less than charitable when trying to outline the opponent’s position. One of the key examples that Buckland singles out as instances of Carroll’s failure to abide by the principle of charity is Carroll’s criticism of Jean-Louis Baudry’s argument about where the impression of reality in cinema derives from. According to Baudry, there are numerous similarities between the cinematic apparatus and dreams. By inductive analogy it follows that the impression of reality in cinema has the same cause as the impression of reality in dreams – the regression to the state of primitive narcissism.33 Carroll criticises the argument by trying to demonstrate that Baudry’s eight similarities – ‘inhibition of movement; lack of reality testing; an imagistic medium; a dark room; projection; a screen; a more than real impression of reality; a tendency to efface the distinction between perception and representation’34 – do not obtain. To Buckland’s mind, Carroll’s attempt is unsuccessful because Carroll does not pay sufficient attention to the articulation of the key similarity – the claim that both cinema and a dream have screens. For Baudry, the existence of dream

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Assessment of Theory screens is vindicated by an observation made by the psychoanalyst Bertram Lewin, according to whom the dream is projected on the surface of the mother’s breasts. Whereas Carroll dismisses the analogy in his monograph by stating that screens, unlike breasts, are flat and do not have nipples, Buckland points out that Carroll misrepresents the analogy for in Lewin’s full account the representation of the breasts flattens out just prior to the commencement of the dream. According to Buckland, therefore, Baudry’s analogy remains unscathed. Carroll views the matter differently and, I would add, correctly. First, Buckland addresses only one of eight alleged analogies. Even if he were right in this case, he still needs to demonstrate that Carroll’s criticism of the remaining analogies is also flawed to show that Baudry’s reasoning by inductive analogy is valid. For instance, Buckland says nothing about Carroll’s claim that, contrary to dreaming while asleep, there is no proper inhibition of movement in the cinema – we have full control over our bodies to, say, nip out to the toilets.35 Second, Carroll’s criticism of Baudry’s argument is not only a matter of disproving analogies. Just as importantly, it is also a reflection on why we would take Lewin’s claim that all dreams have screens for granted. Carroll points out that Lewin’s statement is an extrapolation based on an interpretation of a single dream dreamt by a single patient. Given that there is no general proof that people’s dreams are projected on flattened out breast-screens, there is no reason to accept the claim that there are such things as dream screens in the first place. As Carroll puts it, demanding justification of claims made is by no means misrepresenting these claims: I do not believe that a film theorist can stipulate that movies engage people’s psyches on an unconscious level [. . .] any more than I believe that an astrologist can be allowed to stipulate that our fates are controlled by the stars. One cannot presuppose whatever one wants; one’s presuppositions should be open to discussion and criticism.36

A more pertinent point that Buckland (along with Heath) identifies is that Carroll generally imputes the illusion thesis to the Marxist– Psychoanalytic – Semioticians. As Carroll himself claims: ‘We shall see that there is a general tendency in contemporary film theory to maintain that film spectators are rapt in the illusion that what is represented – the cinematic 77

Noël Carroll and Film referents – are really present.’37 Although Carroll denies that he attributes the thesis specifically to either Metz, Baudry or Heath, he does not distance himself from the general charge. In fact, the claim reappears in his later work: ‘the mantra that a moving picture is an illusion of reality is often repeated; it was the prevailing article of faith of film theorists in the 1970s and 1980s’.38 And yet, he never demonstrates that a single Marxist – Psychoanalytic –Semiotician advocates such a crude stance (i.e. the strong version of the illusion thesis as opposed to the weak one). In that sense, charges about constructing straw-men positions cannot be completely dismissed, for Carroll recurrently presents the illusion thesis as one of the key competing accounts to his view of images as prompts for natural recognition. Perhaps the most illustrative part of the debate between Buckland and Carroll – insofar as it demonstrates imprecision on the part of the former and a lack of willingness to accommodate this imprecision on the part of the latter – is Carroll’s discussion of Buckland’s understanding of the principle of charity. The principle of charity, as both Buckland and Carroll point out, derives from the philosophical treatment of translation between foreign languages as developed by Donald Davidson.39 For Buckland, Davidson’s advice to ‘make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement’40 is readily applicable to making sense of competing theories. The point is simply for Carroll to try to make the claims of Marxist– Psychoanalytic –Semioticians as sensible as possible. For Carroll, by contrast, it is unclear whether the principle itself is conceptually coherent and, if it is, whether it is applicable to articulating other theorists’ positions. His point is that, if one is trying to optimise agreement between theorists according to the charity principle, then ‘the best interpretation of two rival theories [is] the one that has them both committed to the same assertions about the relevant phenomena’.41 In other words, if the charity principle is carried out completely, then the theory that is being ‘translated’ is necessarily transformed into the theory held by the ‘translator’. What this exchange demonstrates is both how Buckland unnecessarily appeals to a complex theoretical principle and in doing so obfuscates a relatively simple request for Carroll to produce the strongest possible account of the Marxist –Psychoanalytic – Semiotic theory, and how Carroll prefers to engage the logical coherence of the principle of charity appealed

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Assessment of Theory to instead of explicitly addressing Buckland’s relatively clear underlying point. Buckland ought to have simply demanded that Carroll formulate the best possible version of a given Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotic argument and criticise this instance of it.42 The appeal to the charity principle is superfluous and can only produce unnecessary theoretical scrutiny. Carroll, conversely, should have treated the appeal to the charity principle as a rhetorical device intended to both add weight to Buckland’s argument and signify his familiarity with analytic philosophy rather than as the argument’s logical crux. Doing otherwise opens him to the charge that he is unable to do precisely what Buckland implicitly implores him to do – give as large a benefit of a doubt as possible when reconstructing the opponent’s underlying point. Put shortly, whereas Buckland should have been more precise, Carroll should have been more generous. Having said this, it still must be admitted that there is good reason why Carroll decided to pursue the logical status of Buckland’s invocation of the charity principle, for Buckland is not concerned only with the quality of Carroll’s argument. Buckland’s larger and more important critique, and the one that his discussion of the charity principle introduces, is that Carroll exercises methodological imperialism when tackling Marxist – Psychoanalytic –Semiotic theories.

Methodological Imperialism The charge of ‘methodological imperialism’ can be taken to mean a couple of related but distinguishable things. First, Carroll is criticised for the ubiquitous application of analytic philosophy to humanities in general and film studies in particular. Critics argue that Carroll mistakenly assumes that this brand of philosophy presents an objective method for undertaking and evaluating all types of theory. Second, Carroll is accused of envisioning film theory as a science of film. Carroll’s detractors point out that the methods of natural sciences are not applicable to all issues pertaining to film. Third, he is chastised for insisting on cognitivist explanations over psychoanalytic ones. The objection here is that there is no reason the two could not peacefully coexist. Finally, it is sometimes claimed that Carroll’s approach is incommensurable with competing paradigms. In other words, there is no overarching method which would allow us to decide which paradigm to use in the first place. 79

Noël Carroll and Film The first two charges are often conflated. Consider, for instance, Buckland’s review of Carroll’s Mystifying Movies: Because Analytic philosophy presents itself as objective, rather than acknowledging itself to be relatively autonomous, it is open to the charge of scientific imperialism, for its own norms and values are presented as the absolute standard against which to interpret the norms and values of other paradigms. [. . .] The radical opposition between Carroll and the contemporary film theorists is largely the result of this extreme interpretation of their arguments totally in terms of the norms of scientific reasoning.43

D.N. Rodowick holds, similarly, that ‘analytic philosophy has been responsible for projecting an epistemological ideal of theory derived from natural scientific methods’.44 Robert Sinnerbrink echoes the view of analytic philosophy as ‘primarily an explanatory enterprise, producing testable theories in the manner of a rigorous science or contributing to a naturalistic explanation of, in this case, artistic and cultural phenomena’.45 However, as Malcolm Turvey reminds us, the method of analytic philosophy and the method of natural sciences are easily distinguishable.46 Although both emphasise the importance of testing hypotheses against actual data, only the latter makes extensive use of mathematical equations, laboratory experiments and predictive models. Conversely, only the former is interested in conceptual analysis understood as the articulation of the meaning of an ordinary language use of a given notion in terms of definitions and/or identifying criteria. From this perspective, although Carroll does not shy away from citing scientific research in his theorising, he is primarily an analytic philosopher. This, of course, does not mean that the method of analytic philosophy, the method of natural sciences, or both cannot be imperialistic when used in inappropriate domains. For instance, the scientific method can hardly be used to resolve the radical sceptic’s claim that the external world does not exist. The argument that we can never be sure about the existence of the outside world because we can only access it through our sensations is simply impervious to all scientific experimentation. The charge of methodological imperialism claims that something of the sort is true of analytic philosophy when applied to humanities and film theory. 80

Assessment of Theory The key way analytic philosophy tests hypotheses is by virtue of logical reasoning and the search for counterexamples. Put differently, analytic philosophy primarily appeals to propositional factuality and the observation of the rules of formally valid reasoning based on these propositions. Given that all forms of film theory proceed by making arguments based on statements they assume to be true, regardless of whether they are of classical, Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotics, cognitivist or some other type, the observance of propositional factuality and formal validity of arguments presents itself as an obvious method for both theorising and evaluating existing theories. For instance, if, as we have seen in Chapter 2, one of the key claims of Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotics is that cinema is inherently ideological, then there is nothing imperialistic about trying to demonstrate that the arguments in favour of this view are based on equivocations of terms such as ‘centre’, ‘position’ and ‘unity’. Similarly, it is undeniable that, as we have seen, Baudry compares the cinematographic apparatus to dreams and uses this analogy to claim that a particular psychoanalytic process informing dreams (regression to primitive narcissism) also informs the cinematographic apparatus.47 So there cannot be anything imperialistic about Carroll’s attempt to show that reasoning by way of inductive analogy is formally invalid, because the analogy does not hold in the first place.48 In the end, even Buckland defends Baudry by claiming that Baudry’s formal reasoning is formally valid. In other words, if theories proceed by way of logical reasoning, then logical reasoning is also perfectly suitable for their critique. Analytic philosophy is just a method of logical reasoning which aims for the maximum clarity of expression and rigor in argumentation.49 On a deeper level, the charge has been that Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotics assume an irrational and unconscious subject whereas analytic philosophy presupposes a rational one.50 But this cannot have any repercussions on the potentially imperialistic nature of analytic philosophy either. The reason is that even the explanations of the irrational subject among Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semioticians are based on rational arguments. Christian Metz, for instance, discusses at length the similarity between the filmic signifier and various physiological phenomena and proposes explanations of film in terms of psychoanalytic concepts used to account for the psychological phenomena in question.51 His discussion, crucially, is rational insofar as it exhibits the structure of an argument by

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Noël Carroll and Film analogy. Whether the argument itself is valid or not is a different question – it is the attempt to produce one that constitutes an argument as a rational one. Therefore, a rational method such as analytic philosophy can hardly be described as imperialistic when used to evaluate theories which presuppose the irrational subject, if those very theories explain the irrational subject with recourse to rational arguments. If there is nothing imperialistic about logical reasoning understood as the construction of formally valid arguments based on true premises, perhaps the problem is that it is a more specific form of rational inquiry – the method of natural sciences – that dominates Carroll’s view of film theory. Carroll, however, never claims that film theory is or should be a scientific discipline. In fact, Carroll proposes that we should ‘let anything count as film theorizing, so long as it involves the production of generalizations or general explanations or general taxonomies and concepts about film practice’.52 And this is not just an empty gesture, for a number of his theories about film do not make any appeal to science. For instance, his argument that film can be art, his dismissal of medium specificity and his definition of the moving image are all based exclusively on logical reasoning and conceptual analysis in the fashion of analytic philosophy.53 And even in the cases when he cites natural cognitive processes as the lynchpin of film understanding and affect, he leaves the details of articulating these processes to scientists. When he proposes that images are natural prompts for recognition, for example, he does not arrive at this proposal by consulting scientific experiments alone but primarily by criticising the logical reasoning behind the competing theories (language code thesis, illusion thesis and transparency thesis). It is true that Carroll often claims that psychoanalytic explanations in film theory should be regarded as scientific hypotheses to be checked against evidence. And as we shall quickly see in the discussion of the third type of imperialism, it is possible that they are not. For the time being, however, it should be noted that the father of psychoanalysis himself – Sigmund Freud – regarded psychoanalysis to be a science and insisted that its claims are testable.54 So if, for instance, the regression to primitive narcissism is said to play a role in film viewing and if the understanding of this regression is Freudian, then it is fair to test this claim experimentally. Another variant of this argument has been that film theory as a part of humanities has no need for falsifiable empirical theory-building, rather

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Assessment of Theory ‘authoritative self-examination and self-justification’ will do.55 The putative reason is that, from a cultural and psychoanalytic perspective, cinema is a cultural activity embedded in a network of human practices about which we may lack conscious knowledge but which we in practice navigate in a consistent fashion. Claims about such structures, then, demand only authoritative self-examination and self-justification. Claims about natural phenomena, by contrast, require empirical research because ‘we can have no prior knowledge’ of such phenomena.56 From a cognitivist perspective, then, film theory does need empirical statements because it appeals to neurological processes as underlying explanations. But the cognitivist view of film theory, the argument goes, is inapplicable to the psychoanalytic one. There are several problems with this account. First, many cultural phenomena require empirical investigation no less than natural ones. It is unclear how we could ascertain, say, belief structures of Pygmy peoples or the timeline of Norse colonisation of North America without engaging the tribes in question or by looking for archaeological proofs of Norse settlements – both empirical investigations. The same holds for film. It is unclear how we can theorise, say, Hollywood cinema if we have not seen a sufficient number of Hollywood films. We surely cannot have prior knowledge of Hollywood films if we have never heard of them or have never seen one. Second, film theory appeals to natural phenomena regardless of the brand. Psychoanalysts regularly appeal to psychological processes such as dreams to describe the effects of the film. In the discussion above we have seen how Lewin interpreted a patient’s dream to claim that dreams have screens. But the very thing he interpreted – the dream – he could have not had any prior knowledge of. Put differently, he engaged his patient to get an empirical piece of information about psychological processes. On a more fundamental level, it is often claimed that the methods of analytic philosophy and natural science are imperialistic because they hide their status as tools in the social power struggles where power rests in the hands of those who possess legitimate knowledge.57 But by the same token,  zek, expose these struggles must also be those who, like Buckland or Zi engaged in the same power struggle to possess legitimate knowledge. Exposing that the name of the game is power struggle does not mean one  zek’s does not engage in it. In other words, why would Buckland’s and Zi method be a legitimate tool for criticising Carroll’s but not the obverse?

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Noël Carroll and Film Why would epistemological analysis be imperialistic but not the analysis of power relations if the goal of both is to gain the upper hand? Moreover, the camp that exposes the methods of analytic philosophy and natural science also employs methods of its own and these methods, at the very least, appeal to (the semblance of) logical reasoning at their very core. Put  zek publish academic books and articles in bluntly, both Buckland and Zi which they argue against Carroll’s method. Therefore, we again fall back on the method of logical reasoning as the best tool to decide who has done a better job in legitimising their knowledge. It is, of course, possible to persuade by other means. In Chapter 1 I have already discussed one such approach – the thrust of negative emotions that ‘imperialism’ connotes.58 And it is imaginable that a critic of Carroll’s could list a string of claims without any supporting premises. But so long as Carroll’s critics dominantly produce logical arguments, the analysis of their propositions and validity remains our best bet to evaluate their effectiveness. The third version of the methodological imperialism charge is that Carroll does not allow the coexistence of psychoanalytic and cognitivist explanations. Those objecting to Carroll claim that there is no reason psychoanalysis cannot peacefully coexist with cognitivism, each offering their own solutions to problems of film theory. Carroll’s retort is that in order to legitimise the appeal to a psychoanalytic notion in explaining some aspect of film, the theorist first needs to demonstrate that the phenomenon cannot be explained with recourse to factors which do not invoke the unconscious.59 For instance, if we are trying to determine why a patient cannot see, we should first check that her eyes are in order and that she has suffered no neurological damage. Only in the absence of such causes should we proceed to a psychoanalytic explanation. Similarly, to explain how spectators understand shot relations in terms of suture, it should first be demonstrated that cognitive and perceptual accounts cannot give an adequate explanation of the phenomenon at hand. Theorists invested in psychoanalysis, however, do not proceed in this fashion but immediately offer a psychoanalytic account. This again is a perfectly legitimate demand on Carroll’s part so long as psychoanalysis is considered the ‘science of the unconscious’ or, at the very least, as a therapeutic clinical practice. In Carroll’s vocabulary, the burden of proof is on those invested in the psychoanalytic explanation to demonstrate that accounts which do not invoke the unconscious have been

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Assessment of Theory exhausted. If there is damage to the patient’s visual cortex, then there is no reason even to ask for a psychoanalytic account of the patient’s blindness. The only way for psychoanalysis to re-enter the dialectical competition is not only to demonstrate that the cognitivists explanation does not give the full picture, but to show that no other medical account is capable of it (e.g. mechanical eye damage, diabetes, etc.). Only then is there a point in appealing to psychoanalytic processes to explain the patient’s condition. At this point we need to remind ourselves that a given effect can have multiple causes, in other words, that the phenomenon can be overdetermined. The patient can be blind for a number of concurrent reasons. She can have problems with her visual cortex, physical damage to her eyes and issues relating to diabetes all at the same time. And any of these alone can cause blindness. From this perspective, one might want to add a psychoanalytic cause to the list to argue that there is still place for the peaceful coexistence of psychoanalysis and cognitivism. Carroll allows this possibility in general but expresses doubt that it is applicable to film-related issues. For instance, he points out that the psychoanalytic account of image recognition – the regression to the mirror phase – cannot operate independently from the cognitivist explanation – the natural prompt recognition thesis – because the mirror phase itself cannot take place without the child recognising her own image in the mirror in the first place. In other words, image recognition is a precondition for the mirror phase and not the other way around. The problem, however, is that claiming that a ‘similar pattern of argument can be applied to the rest of the current debates between cognitivists and psychoanalysts’ is different from demonstrating the ubiquitous applicability of this argument. Carroll would have to argue this not only for image recognition but for other psychoanalytically inflected accounts, including those of perspective, editing and narrative among others. To use Carroll’s phrase, the burden of proof is this time on the cognitivist rather than on the psychoanalyst. This, we should emphasise, is not to say that the competing psychoanalytic accounts are correct. As Chapter 2 summarises, Carroll has argued at length about the fallacies of reasoning based on equivocation plaguing these theories. But it is to point out that Carroll has failed to demonstrate that in general film phenomena are not overdetermined by cognitivist and psychoanalytic causes alike. The larger problem appears to be that Carroll never seriously addresses the possibility that film theorists who use psychoanalysis in their work do

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Noël Carroll and Film not consider the discipline to be a scientific or a clinical practice at all.60 Instead, for them psychoanalysis may simply be a theory – understood in Carroll’s terms as ‘the production of generalizations or general explanations or general taxonomies and concepts’ – which postulates the unconscious subject but without making any claims that any scientific or clinical work can (dis)prove this starting premise.61 Under this account we may liken psychoanalytic theories to theories of natural law. Although it can be hardly said that any experimentation could yield their respective objects of study – the unconscious in the former case and natural law in the latter – the theories’ proponents consider these concepts to be crucial for the understanding of the human condition. From this perspective, film theorists working under the psychoanalytic framework can legitimately pursue peaceful coexistence with cognitivism because they do not assume, as their clinical and scientific counterparts should, that explanations based on the rational subject need to be exhausted before proceeding to the ones capitalising on the notion of the unconscious. Film theorists invested in psychoanalysis, for example, often state that Lacan’s account of the mirror stage should not be taken literally as a scientific hypothesis about a child’s confrontation with its own image in the mirror at one point in its life, as Carroll does, but as a sort of a metaphor for how a subject misapprehends him or herself for a unified subject. This type of formulation does excuse the psychoanalysts from having to seriously engage the cognitivist. Whereas the latter starts off from the assumption that the agent’s key psychological processes can be scientifically analysed, the former presupposes that these processes are essentially unconscious and opaque to the scientific method. In this regard, we should concede that it is difficult to defend Carroll’s insistence that psychoanalysts have a special burden of proof when entering the competing field of film theory methodologies. This, however, does not mean that Carroll is left with no means to argue for the superiority of his approach over the psychanalytic one. The above recourse to the mirror stage still performs some function in the psychoanalyst’s argument and this function is worth exploring. Carroll shows that the appeal to the mirror stage cannot do the work in film theory it purports to because it is used in an argument whose structure suffers from false analogy (e.g. Metz and Baudry) or equivocation (e.g. Heath). In other words, even if film theorists who use psychoanalytic models do

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Assessment of Theory not treat these models as a set of scientific hypotheses, there is still good reason to check these claims in one way or another. And, as the discussion above has shown, a perfectly legitimate way to do so is from the perspective of analytic philosophy. Next to the appeal to propositional factuality and formal validity of reasoning, we can even engage the psychoanalysts’ key assumption itself – that core psychoanalytic notions have significant explanatory strength. It is incontestable that psychoanalysts have articulated a range of psychological phenomena from the child’s psychosexual development to the pleasures of  zek, for instance, has described film viewing in psychoanalytic terms. Zi phenomena as varied as montage, the distinction between voice-over/ flashback and subjective camera, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s oeuvre, Alfred Hitchcock’s films from The 39 Steps (1935) to The Birds (1963), and the film noir universe in terms of the Lacanian concept of ‘the Real’.62 The question is, however, what does this add to our comprehension of these phenomena if the key term in the explanation – the Real in this case – is  zek puts it, the Real is defined as ‘that inaccessible by definition. For, as Zi 63 [which] resists all symbolization’. But if the Real resists all symbolisation then there is nothing that can be said about the Real in the first place and we are dealing with a term that has no content. In other words, articulating all the above phenomena in terms of the Real has as much explanatory power as explaining all these phenomena in terms of x where x has no content. Consider, for instance, the strength of the following claim once ‘the Real’ is replaced with x: ‘The discontinuity between the voice-over/ flashback and the subjective camera is ultimately the discontinuity between the Symbolic and x.’64 The statement says practically nothing. A similar argument can be launched against those who make recourse to the notion of the unconscious to explain different phenomena for, as John Searle has argued, the concept of the unconscious is also internally incoherent.65 The last type of methodological imperialism Carroll is accused of concerns the notion of incommensurability as appropriated from the work of the historian of science Thomas Kuhn.66 According to this view, because the existing paradigms – cognitivism and psychoanalysis – are locked in their own arguments, they cannot properly address each other, let alone argue for superiority of one over another as Carroll does for cognitivism. As one commentator puts it, ‘[e]ach paradigm wields a self-contained logic

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Noël Carroll and Film that the other cannot penetrate and each is therefore, ostensibly, as persuasive as the other.’67 Under the strongest version of the incommensurability thesis, the two paradigms cannot even understand each other’s claims. This certainly cannot be the case for, as the debates between Heath and Carroll and Buckland and Carroll demonstrate, there is ample exchange of fire across camps. Cognitivists and psychoanalysts disagree about many things, but they clearly recognise each other as speaking about the same things, such as film, point of view, narrative, etc. They also clearly understand each other’s premises – the agent driven by rational factors in the case of cognitivists and the agent driven by the unconscious in the case of psychoanalysts. In the weaker variant of the thesis, the objection appears to be that the very logic of argumentation is incomprehensible to the other. If we take the ‘logic’ from the above quote literally, then the claim does not hold because we have shown above that logical reasoning informs all types of film theory. At the very least, both cognitivists and psychoanalysts try to persuade with (semblances of) arguments. Although they differ substantially in style – where cognitivists may come across as pedestrian and rigid, the psychoanalyst may appear imaginative and playful – logical arguments organise both approaches. Alternatively, we can construe ‘logic’ in the preceding citation metaphorically to mean that the paradigms in question rest on premises which the other unequivocally rejects without argument. In other words, given that they start from significantly different premises, cognitivists and psychanalysts talk across each other rather than to each other. Although it is true that cognitivists and psychoanalysts often simply reject each other’s premises – call this the weak incommensurability of premises if you will – this does not mean that ‘each is as persuasive as the other’. There is a way to argue for the superiority of one approach over the other. One way is to, as Carroll regularly does, assume that the psychoanalytic premise is correct and then check the argument for formal validity. The other is to analyse whether the premise contains a concept which is internally inconsistent and potentially dismiss it on those grounds. In conclusion, it remains to repeat some of the key points of the chapter. Given his prolific output, Carroll can hardly be said to be irrelevant to film studies. But it is undeniable that he has sometimes remained completely silent about concepts that film studies consider to be

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Assessment of Theory crucial. The best example is his failure to address indexicality as it is inferred from Bazin’s ontology of photography. The straw-men charge seems to hold more truth. Crucially, Carroll has never identified a single Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotician who subscribes to the strong version of the illusion thesis, yet this version remains his favourite bogey man. Somewhat less damning but still non-negligible has been Carroll’s occasional uncharitable reductionism. The blame for this, however, needs to be offset by the often wilful equivocation and lack of precision on the part of Carroll’s opponents. Finally, it is fair to say that Carroll has not fully entertained the possibility of treating psychoanalysis as non-scientific theory given his own definition of what theory is. But the overall charge of methodological imperialism does not stand up to scrutiny. The appeal to the formal validity of arguments, factual propositions, and the justification of premises cannot be imperialistic given that all participants in the debate (at least implicitly) subscribe to it.

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4 Analytic and Cognitivist Debates

As well as debating researchers working in the continental tradition, Carroll has also engaged in exchanges with film scholars indebted to cognitivism and philosophers subscribing to the analytic school. Given that the participants in these discussions share a common set of assumptions when it comes to the study of film, the debates have focused on specific claims about film rather than on the broader questions of relevance, premises and methodology explored in the previous chapter. These have included symposia on Carroll’s collections of essays,1 as well as debates on the nature of horror,2 medium-specificity thesis,3 communication,4 evaluation5 and identification,6 among others. Some of the most important and lively debates revolve around transparency, defining the moving image and fictional narrators. Albeit technical, these debates allow us to better grasp the difference between photographic and handmade images, to gauge whether the definition of our object of inquiry is possible, and to comprehend how literary narratives differ from filmic ones.

Transparency Thesis In Chapter 3 we have seen that Carroll discusses André Bazin’s ontology of the photographic image in terms of the transparency thesis rather than

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Analytic and Cognitivist Debates within the framework of indexicality as is usually the case in film studies. Though some forms of it appear already in Stanley Cavell’s work, transparency thesis is the idea developed in most detail by philosopher of art Kendall Walton.7 Building on Bazin’s remarks that film images are like mirrors,8 Walton has made two crucial claims. First, he proposes that photographs which have not been tampered with (analogue and digital alike) should be categorised together with visual tools like eyeglasses and telescopes rather than those like handmade paintings and drawings. Moreover, he argues that there is not a significant category of visual tools which includes objects like mirrors, microscopes and telescopes but excludes photographs. The first point rests on a slippery slope argument. Nobody denies that we see grandma when looking at her through the window, our eyeglasses or in the mirror. Similarly, nobody complains when we say that we see the stars through the telescope or bacteria through the microscope. Sliding down the slope, we can also say that we see our friend on the interphone when she buzzes us to let her in the building. Going even further, Walton finally claims that in family albums we see people and objects photographed no differently than in previous examples. Because all these visual tools allow us to see objects through them, they are transparent. This, however, stops when we come to handmade visual representations, which are opaque. Photographs and other visual tools, unlike handmade visual representations, are naturally counterfactually dependent on the object in question. If I take a photograph of an apple or put a mirror next to it, the image’s visual properties will depend on the apple’s visual features. If the apple is green the resulting image will have corresponding green patches; if the apple is yellow the image will have matching yellow areas. Most importantly, regardless of what I believe about the apple, the image will reflect the apple’s visual properties as they are. Not so with handmade visual representations. If I believe that the apple is yellow, whereas it is in fact green, my painting of it will still be yellow. In other words, although handmade visual representations are counterfactually dependent on their objects, this dependence is of the belief type and not of the natural type. From the perspective of Bazin’s ontology, then, Walton’s account gives a precise articulation of Bazin’s idea of automatism. But not all automatic reproductions secure transparency. We can imagine, for instance, a contraption which is sensitive to light but which,

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Noël Carroll and Film instead of images, produces verbal descriptions of the images. If we look at the output of such a device – the letters making up words and sentences – we do not see the scene that the graphemes relate, only the letters. Walton concludes, therefore, that transparency only obtains when there is some level of perceptual similarity between two objects. And in the perceptual sense, similarity is often best explained in terms of the potential for confusion. The word ‘barn’, for example, is not perceptually similar to a barn, because it is very difficult to confuse the two. ‘Barn’ is perceptually more easily confused with other words such as ‘bar’ or ‘bark’, whereas it is more difficult to tell a barn apart from a house or a garage (or a photograph of a barn). Put differently, for a representation to be transparent it must be possible at least in principle to confuse it for the object of representation. Following Walton’s argument, Carroll construes natural counterfactual dependence and the preservation of similarity relations as the two necessary and conjointly sufficient conditions for transparency. He attacks the thesis on two fronts. On the one hand, he argues that there are objects which satisfy both conditions yet hardly count as transparent. On the other, he proposes that there is a natural point on the slippery slope which delimits photographs from other visual tools like telescopes and microscopes. Carroll invites us to consider a self-enclosed, fully automated railway yard.9 A 3D printer is used to automatically build a perfect replica of the yard centimetre by centimetre and a super computer connects the two in such a way that even the smallest change in the original yard is reproduced in the replica. If a train moves half a metre in the first yard, an identical train moves half a metre in the second; if a conveyer belt breaks down in the first one, the same happens in its facsimile, and so on. The second yard, then, is both naturally counterfactually dependent on the first one and retains perceptual similarity with it, but is, in Carroll’s view, hardly transparent. If the first yard is in London and the second one in Berlin, it does not seem right to say that we see the London yard by looking at or through the Berlin one. Walton does not address this counterexample so it remains unclear whether he concedes the point or not. It should, however, be noted that if he were to concede here, he would also be forced to admit that photographs derived by photographic printing and then shipped to opposite parts of the globe are not transparent either. Two such identical family photos, the

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Analytic and Cognitivist Debates original in New York and the copy in Tokyo, are precisely like the yards in London and Berlin, respectively. (That the facsimile yard also changes over time precisely like the original matters only as far as the definition of transparency is concerned – the original automatic replication is what is necessary to establish natural counterfactual dependence and similarity relations.) But Walton is clear that looking at the photograph in Tokyo should allow us to see its original in New York (as well as the family members represented in both photos). Whatever the solution to this specific problem, Walton has emphasised that his project is less about defining the necessary conditions of transparency and more about demonstrating that there is a natural category which, on the one hand, comprises both photographs and visual aids like mirrors and lenses while excluding handmade visual representation and, on the other, denies a substantial difference between visual prosthetics and photographs. The real challenge is to find a point on the slippery slope which delimits photographs from mirrors, binoculars and the like. Carroll takes up the challenge in the second part of his critique. Carroll argues that the key to distinguishing seeing in photographs from seeing in visual tools is what we have in Chapter 2 discussed under the heading of ‘detached displays’. Photographs on their own do not provide any egocentric information – information allowing the viewer to orientate herself in the real world towards the object photographed. Just by looking at the photograph of the Eiffel Tower (so long as we do not know where precisely in Paris it is and where Paris is) it is impossible to know where we are in relation to it. If we were to look at the Eiffel Tower through binoculars, however, we would know that it is in front of us. Similarly, a photograph of Donald Trump on its own does not tell us anything about where he is in relation to us, but if we saw him in the mirror we would know where to turn to face him directly. Carroll also tackles Walton’s two counterarguments. The first problem, to Walton’s mind, is illustrated with an array of mirrors which is set up in such a way that it is impossible to determine where precisely the perceived object is. This is much like the finale of Orson Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai (1947) during which a shoot-out takes place in a house of mirrors, so the protagonists do not know if they are aiming correctly or not (Figure 4.1). According to Walton, although the relevant party is unable to

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Noël Carroll and Film orientate themselves towards the reflected object, if there is nothing controversial about saying that mirrors allow us to literally see the objects they reflect, Carroll must admit that the person sees the object in question. The second problem is a variation on the first. Consider a rose which is directly in front of a viewer, but because they have been told that they are surrounded by mirrors, they are not certain that the rose really is in front of them. This uncertainty impairs their ability to orientate themselves, but it can hardly be denied that they see the rose, for it is literally in front of them in their visual field. Carroll disarms the first counterexample by arguing that the inability to orientate oneself accurately towards the image should remain the cut-off point on the slippery slope. Put differently, he claims that the only thing he needs to argue against Walton is to posit a consistent criterion for the cutoff. And, indeed, there is one – mirrors which allow for egocentric information as opposed to those which do not. The second counterexample, according to Carroll, does not present a problem either. The viewer might not believe that they can find their way to the rose but when

Figure 4.1 The house of mirrors hinders the protagonists’ ability to orientate themselves correctly in The Lady from Shanghai.

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Analytic and Cognitivist Debates forced to do so they may well succeed. This is no different than not believing that one can run for 10 km but when pushed to do so actually managing to. In other words, so long as the viewer is capable of making their way towards the object, regardless of what they believe about their ability to do so, we can say that they genuinely see the object. Put in yet another way, the criterion for the cut-off is not the belief about egocentric information but behavioural demonstration of the possession of egocentric information. Walton remains unconvinced for he claims that his analysis, unlike Carroll’s, is theoretical rather than linguistic.10 Walton insists that he is not interested in analysing the ordinary language meaning of the term ‘see’ but in outlining the category which, in terms of the relation between the object on display and the object of display, sets visual aids and photographs apart from handmade visual representation, while arguing that no relevant subcategory discriminates between, on the one hand, photographs and, on the other, mirrors, telescopes, binoculars, etc. In this sense, he is happy to replace ‘see’ with something like ‘in contact with’. Walton’s general objection, in other words, is that Carroll’s proposal about where to draw the line on the slippery slope comes down to a form of linguistic legislation where the claim is that egocentric information is essential to the ordinary sense of ‘seeing’. Carroll’s analysis is certainly invested in explicating the ordinary meaning of the word ‘see/ing’. When discussing the railway yard examples, for instance, he writes that ‘it is not clear that everything that meets the two conditions [for transparency] stated above is something that we would be prepared to say we see through to its object’ and ‘we would not say we saw through it [the facsimile], but rather that it blocked our vision’.11 But despite his protests, Walton falls back onto linguistic analysis as well. It is true that he points out that the recourse to ‘see/ing’ when speaking of the transparency thesis is not the most fortuitous because people say that they see objects in handmade drawings as much as they say the same for mirrors and photographs. That is why he introduces natural counterfactual dependence to distinguish between handmade visual representations and automatic visual tools. But his slippery slope argument for categorising mirrors and photographs remains articulated exclusively in terms of ‘see/ ing’. In other words, the fact that we say that we see objects in both mirrors and photographs is still the main motivation behind Walton’s proposed

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Noël Carroll and Film categorisation. Put in yet another way, it is true that he has found two features of the relationship between the object displayed and the visual aid displaying it that determine the membership in the category of transparent tools – natural counterfactual dependence and preservation of similarity relations. But when he criticises the introduction of egocentric information to distinguish between mirrors and photographs, it is because he does not believe that ‘Carroll and Currie have provided [any] reason for preferring their construal of the word to one [Walton’s own] on which (most) photographs are transparent.’12 Regardless of both Carroll’s and Walton’s (not withstanding his claims to the contrary) appeal to linguistic analysis, what is crucial is that Carroll’s appeal to egocentric information still enables us to distinguish between photographs, on the one hand, and visual aids like mirrors and telescopes, on the other, by speaking only of the contact that these devices afford to the object they display without any recourse to the term ‘see’ or its derivatives. Without invoking any notion of seeing, we can simply argue that in photographs egocentric information about the object almost never accompanies visual information about the object, while in mirrors, lenses, microscopes, etc. it almost always does. And this is the difference in the type of contact provided – visual information alone vs. visual information together with egocentric information. Put differently, here it is not about preferring to construe ‘see/ing’ in one way or another but about providing a consistent criterion for distinguishing between photographs and other visual aids. The problem with Carroll’s solution is that it is not as neat as one would wish for because, as he admits, there are set-ups of mirrors which do not afford egocentric information and as such should be grouped with photographs.13 And, in fact, contrary to Carroll’s claims there are even some photographs which do provide egocentric information. Consider a selfie in which the photographer discovers an object in the photo she was previously unaware of. For instance, I take a selfie of the White House only to discover immediately after taking it that there is a dog in the photo. Just by virtue of looking at the photograph I can determine where the dog is in relation to me – I need not actually look around to place the dog. If, for instance, I am partially occluding the dog, then he must be somewhere behind me. Or consider real-time video monitors like those in shopping malls and underground stations, which display moving images of the very

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Analytic and Cognitivist Debates space where the monitors are placed. So long as I am in the video I can easily determine where the camera is just by looking at the monitor. Similarly, I can determine where various shopping mall patrons or underground travellers are in relation to me without actually turning to face and look them directly. In all these cases, the only information I am using to orientate myself towards the objects whose position I was previously unaware of is the image itself. It seems then that Carroll is not fully successful in carving out a relevant subcategory among tools which are both naturally counterfactually dependent on and preserve similarity relations with the objects they display, because there are photographs which accompany visual information with egocentric information. Given the example of videos based on such photographs above, this also means that Carroll’s definition of the ‘moving image’ elaborated in Chapter 2 fails to accommodate some instances which it should. Put differently, being a detached image cannot be a necessary condition for being a moving image. The better solution for distinguishing between photographs and visual aids has been proposed by Berys Gaut as a part of his argument against Walton’s claim that the two afford the same access to their objects.14 For Gaut, one ‘necessary condition for genuine seeing [is] the uninterrupted transmission of light from the object to the viewer’s eyes’.15 Although Gaut is clearly invested in analysing the ordinary meaning of ‘see/ing’, we can bracket off any reference to the term. Instead, we can formulate the distinction between photographs and other visual aids in terms of the contact with the object displayed as follows: whereas mirrors, telescopes, lenses, etc. afford uninterrupted transmission of light from the object to the perceiver, photographs do not. In the former case, the light waves/particles travel from the object in question all the way to the viewer – they are refracted and/or reflected on the way, but the very same ones that are emitted or that bounce off the viewed object reach the viewer. In the case of photographs, not a single light wave/particle that was causally involved in producing the photograph is what reaches the viewer when she looks at the photograph – it is another batch of light waves/particles that affords the sight of the photograph. Under this account, no matter how complex the mirror set-up is, all such set-ups remain transparent. Regardless of how many times the light wave/particle is reflected/refracted on its way to the viewer’s eyes, it remains uninterrupted. At the same time, all photographs

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Noël Carroll and Film by definition interrupt the light wave/particle to fix the image of the object. In other words, all photographs are opaque under this condition. In the conclusion to this section it remains to return briefly to Bazin. It is Bazin’s ideas of automatism and his comparison of the cinema screen to a mirror that motivate Walton to articulate how belief independence distinguishes photographs from handmade visual representations, and to claim that photographs put us in contact with objects on display no differently than mirrors do. Most film scholars, by contrast, have tried to articulate the difference between photographs and handmade visual representations in terms of Bazin’s likening of photography to moulding by light – a comparison that was in Peter Wollen’s wake construed as articulating the relation of indexicality. Although in a unique position to bridge the two as both a film scholar and a philosopher, Carroll, finally, focuses most of his energies on arguing against Walton’s understanding of transparency. This is a missed opportunity because neither transparency nor indexicality accurately describe Bazin’s ontological commitments. First, indexicality cannot do the job that Bazin sets out to do by appealing to automatism – namely, to distinguish photographs from handmade visual representations. Film scholars usually understand indexicality as existential guarantee – index is ‘a sign by virtue of an existential bond between itself and its object’.16 A photograph of an object which has not been tampered with, for instance, guarantees that the object existed. The problem, however, is that indexicality so construed is applicable to numerous handmade visual representations as well. Consider Robert Delaunay’s painted portrait of Igor Stravinsky (Figure 4.2). The portrait is an index of the famous composer, much like George Grantham Bain’s photograph of him (Figure 4.3), because Stravinsky modelled for both and is, therefore, at the beginning of the causal chain which gave rise to both portraits. It is true that just by looking at Delaunay’s painting we cannot tell with certainty that Stravinsky sat for it, but the same is true of Bain’s photograph. Without knowing the history of the photograph, it is possible that Bain exposed the photographic print millimetre by millimetre in such a way that the resulting image resembled Stravinsky without Stravinsky ever standing in front of Bain’s camera. The same inability to discern the causal factors behind the alleged index based on the index itself obtains for film scholars’ typical examples of indices which follow the

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Figure 4.2 Robert Delaunay’s painting of Igor Stravinsky is an index of the famous composer because he sat for the portrait.

mould analogy – footprints.17 The footprint is an index of Fido, if and only if Fido was at the beginning of the causal chain that gave rise to the index. However, it is possible that the footprint was made with a device corresponding to the shape of Fido’s paw; this would mean that the footprint is not an index of Fido after all, although it is perceptually indistinguishable from a footprint that is. Put shortly, so long as

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Noël Carroll and Film

Figure 4.3 George Grantham Bain’s photograph of Igor Stravinsky is an index of the composer, just like Delaunay’s painting.

indexicality is construed as existential guarantee, something is an index of an object so long as that object was at the beginning of the causal chain that resulted in the index. Numerous handmade visual representations are still counterfactually dependent on that object – that they are belief counterfactually dependent does not change the fact that they are counterfactually dependent.18 100

Analytic and Cognitivist Debates Second, although Walton succeeds in delimiting handmade visual representations from automatic ones by appealing to the distinction between natural and belief counterfactual dependence, his other condition for transparency runs afoul of Bazin’s ontology in one important respect. For both Walton and Carroll, the preservation of similarity relations is crucial for transparency.19 Bazin, by contrast, is clear that the special relationship between the photograph and its object obtains regardless of the visual qualities of the photograph.20

The Moving Image Definition In Chapter 2 I have outlined Carroll’s definition of moving images as typeartworks whose token-templates afford non-artwork token-performances made up of two-dimensional detached images allowing for the technical possibility of movement. Whereas some have proposed simpler definitions,21 others have criticised Carroll’s set of five necessary conditions.22 Robert Yanal is the most astute critic of Carroll’s definition of the moving image. First, Yanal argues that the notion of the detached display is applicable only to representational works. It is true that it is impossible to orient oneself towards the Roman Colosseum by using the photograph of it alone, but the same is not true of non-representational images. If we are watching a film made up of abstract images, such as Walter Ruttmann’s Lichtspiel: Opus 1 (1921), then the only thing we need to do to orientate ourselves towards these images is to face the screen. Second, in films in which there is no movement there is no technical possibility of movement either. Consider a five-minute film consisting only of a single static image. There is a logical possibility that the film could produce an impression of movement but this specific film, as it really is, is technically incapable of producing that. Crucially, Carroll has failed to realise that some films are not moving images as much as some moving images are not films. Third, Carroll’s definitions of types and tokens are circular. Carroll claims that film templates are tokens of a film type, but also says that a film type is that whose tokens generate films. Fourth, there are film screenings which are artworks, such as the exhibition at the Deutsche Kinemathek Museum für Film und Fernsehen of Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933) across 15 screens with different emphases on each of them. Finally, 101

Noël Carroll and Film Carroll’s two-dimensionality condition excludes holograms which ought to be counted as films. In his answer to the challenge Carroll addresses all five points.23 When it comes to detached displays, he thinks that films like Lichtspiel: Opus 1 still represent a distinct space where various shapes move about and that this space is detached from us. There are even more abstract films like flicker films – essentially rapid fluctuations of brightness – which, although not representing space, nevertheless project a virtual space. So as long as the idea of detached display is modified to include the inability of orientating oneself towards what the image represents and/or within the virtual space it projects, the condition holds. Carroll dismisses Yanal’s criticism of technical possibility in full. The five-minute static film still belongs to the category of objects – filmstrips, magnetic tapes, video files, etc. – which technically allow for movement. In response to the alleged type-token circularity, Carroll offers a clarification: film types are artworks whose template tokens are patterns that generate token performances materially rather than mentally (as in the theatre). The exhibition of Fritz Lang does not constitute a counterexample for two reasons: on the one hand, the relevant type here is not The Testament of Dr Mabuse but the combination of 15 sequences from the film and, on the other, it is a mixed media event which involves the use of film and video. Finally, regarding two-dimensionality Carroll argues that holograms are better understood as moving sculptures, especially because there are sculptures like Dan Flavin’s Alternating Pink and Gold, which are composed mainly of light. Yanal never responded, but even as the debate stands now it does not seem that all of Carroll’s retorts are sufficiently convincing. Conditions two, three and five do appear to have weathered the onslaught well. Given that ‘moving images’ in Carroll’s use, unlike ‘film’, is a technical rather than an ordinary term, Carroll should be free to construe the category as superordinate to film despite there being films whose sequence of images do not produce the impression of movement. It is legitimate for Carroll, then, to demand that in moving images a sequence of discrete images has a frequency necessary for inducing the perception of motion.24 Carroll’s clarification of type – template(token) – performance(token) relations is no longer circular. The discussion about holograms seems to depend more on the consensus on whether to use the term ‘film’ when speaking of

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Analytic and Cognitivist Debates holograms than on any logical factors. Given that holograms are yet to enjoy wide circulation, the verdict is still out. The standing of the remaining two conditions, however, is not as strong. First, according to Carroll all images represent and/or project space. It seems strange to say that all abstract films, if not representing space, at least project space. Consider a film of nothing but a static image of a white array. Can we really say that a space is projected here? What kind of space would that be if there are no cues of spatial relations? Perhaps Carroll can say that there is a three-dimensional empty space projected here. But why not two- rather than three-dimensional? In fact, it seems to me that there are films which specify the space as two-dimensional rather than threedimensional – the aforementioned Lichtspiel: Opus 1. If that is the case, then there is no possibility of movement within the represented/projected space as it is just a flat surface. The only question that remains from the perspective of detached displays is whether we can orientate ourselves towards this two-dimensional surface. Again, it seems to me, that we need only face the screen to accomplish this. When we pair this criticism with the analysis of selfies and simultaneous video recordings from the first section of this chapter, it seems that Carroll’s first condition is untenable. The non-artwork status of film screenings is also problematic. Even if we agree with Carroll’s handling of the exhibition of various aspects of The Testament of Dr Mabuse, there are other examples where film screenings do constitute artworks. Consider Gordon Douglas’s 1993 24 Hour Psycho, which is essentially a screening of Hitchcock’s film at a speed of about two frames per second (still enough to produce motion) lasting for 24 hours. There are no mixed media here at play, the screening is wholly automated and the only thing that was changed is the projection speed. Yet, we would be hard pressed to deny that this is an artwork. As we have seen, then, there are counterexamples to three of Carroll’s five necessary conditions that he needs to address. Perhaps a different definition can be offered? According to Alan Goldman there is indeed a more elegant definition of moving images than the one Carroll proposes: ‘images that are capable of movement being mechanically projected on screens’ where screens include projections in the cinema, TV, and other types of electronic displays.25 Goldman retains Carroll’s second condition – the technical possibility of movement – and introduces another condition as a

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Noël Carroll and Film replacement for Carroll’s four remaining ones – the quality of being screened. Carroll finds the solution inadequate.26 Carroll’s first objection to Goldman is that, strictly speaking, TVs which use cathode ray tubes and which were the dominant display device for moving images from the 1950s well into the 2000s do not have screens. The part of the TV that we clean with Windex and that many people refer to as the screen is not a necessary part of the TV – if we remove it the image still appears. There is, admittedly, a phosphor screen behind this glass where the image appears once the light beams from the cathode ray tube hit the phosphor. But the phosphor screen is a part of the projector mechanism, not a screen distinct from the projection mechanism as in the cinema theatre. This, according to Carroll, means that the very same film would be a moving image in the cinema theatre but not on TV. The move to deny that TV has a screen is somewhat strange because Carroll clearly admits that even in TV sets there is a surface on which the image appears. Why simply not take screen to mean any surface where images are screened? Carroll’s response would undoubtedly be that the earliest films were not screened – be it on a wall, TV, LED, LCD, or any other type of screen even in this ‘broad’ sense – but seen through kinetoscope. This was a single-user device where the viewer looked through the peephole at a moving strip of film with sequential images, affording the impression of movement. In other words, there is no screen here, only photographic images moving in rapid succession. Goldman’s rejoinder is that he is interested in defining film rather than a broader category of moving images that film is a part of. In that sense, he is happy to leave out pre-screen moving images including kinetoscope, flipbooks and other optical toys Carroll wishes to include. This, however, is hardly a satisfactory answer because moving images Edison made for kinetoscope like Fred Ott’s Sneeze (1894) and Annabelle Butterfly Dance (1894) are films. But what if we bracketed off the references to screens and spoke of surfaces where images appear in temporal sequence instead? Then we could define moving images as temporal sequences of discrete images of certain frequency on surfaces. This definition includes optical toys, flipbooks, kinetoscopes, projected films, and films played on various types of screens, while excluding shadow plays, holograms and other automated three-dimensional objects like clock figurines. In the case of optical toys,

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Analytic and Cognitivist Debates the relevant images are drawings on paper cylinders (zoetrope, phenakistoscope, praxinoscope, etc.). In flipbooks, the images in question are either drawings or photographs on sheets of paper. In the case of the kinetoscope, the images are photographs on a physical medium (paper, celluloid, etc.). In standard projections, the pertinent images are those that appear on the projection surface (wall, sheet, screen, etc.). In the case of screens like TV and other monitors, the images are those that appear on the display surface in one way or another (phosphor screen, LED, LCD, etc.). The condition of temporal change of discrete images of certain frequency allows for both still and moving films. What the condition of discrete temporal seriality also does is to exclude shadow plays from the class of moving images. In shadow plays the images of shadows we see on the screen are continuous rather than separated into discrete chunks. Moreover, my definition can accommodate artworks which Carroll is unable to deal with but should – those like 24 Hour Psycho. The final thing to add to the definition is that images need to be stored. The reason is that a shadow play with the light source going rapidly on and off, a high-frequency intermittent reflection of an object in the mirror, or a view of the camera obscura with an added shutter which closes and opens fast enough would all count as moving images under my account. To avoid this, we need to specify that the images must be accessible to multiple viewings. All photographs, drawings and computer-generated imagery are stored, while shadow plays, reflections, camera obscura views, etc., intermittent or otherwise, are not. The proposed definition of the moving image here, then, is as follows: x is a moving image if and only if (1) it is a sequence of discrete images, (2) whose frequency is at least as high as that which allows for the perception of motion, (3) the images are stored and (4) surface-bound.27

Implicit Fictional Film Narrators The last debate which has garnered a lot of attention in analytic circles and that I will address here has revolved around the question of the existence of fictional film narrators. In literary fiction, there are clearly fictional narrators distinct from the real-life author who are responsible for conveying the whole of the story, such as Nick Carraway in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. But what about films? In Baz Luhrmann’s 105

Noël Carroll and Film 2013 adaptation of the novel, Nick Carraway reprises his role as the narrator but in a sense different from the book. On both occasions, he tells Gatsby’s story but only in the novel do his utterances coincide with the whole of the text that makes up the novel. In the film, there is an array of audio-visual information next to his words which can, at most, be said to translate what he is saying into sounds and images. And even then, there are parts of the film which represent Nick telling Gatsby’s story to the doctor – Nick certainly does not tell these parts of the film. The question then is: are there film narrators who are fictionally responsible for all the information that makes up the film (sounds, images, words, etc.)? Film scholars working in the continental tradition virtually unanimously answer in the affirmative. The standard articulation of this position can be found in Christian Metz: Every narrative is [. . .] a discourse [. . .]. In Jakobsonian terms, one would say that a discourse, being a statement or sequence of statements, refers necessarily to a subject of the statement. [. . .] Albert Laffay [. . .] has shown this to be true of film narrative. The spectator perceives images which have obviously been selected (they could have been other images) and arranged (their order could have been different). In a sense, he is leafing through an album of predetermined pictures, and it is not he who is turning the pages but some ‘master of ceremonies,’ some ‘grand image-maker’ (grand imagier) [. . .] That is the filmic form of the narrative instance, which is necessarily present, and is necessarily perceived, in any narrative.28

The argument is twofold. On the one hand, if something is a narrative there must be a narrator responsible for it. On the other, film enunciations are like linguistic enunciations insofar as they necessarily mark for the presence of the enunciator – in this case the narrator. Neither, however, withstands scrutiny. In the first case the question is not whether a narrative has a narrator, but whether a fictional narrative has a fictional narrator. If the claim ‘every narrative has a narrator’ is true, it still does not follow that ‘every fictional narrative has a fictional narrator’ is true, any more than it follows that ‘every blue narrative has a blue narrator’. Speaking more broadly, it is true

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Analytic and Cognitivist Debates that every communication has a sender. But if the content of what is communicated is fictional, it does not mean that there is somebody fictionally communicating it. In the second case, Metz’s argument is that the phrase ‘t/here is’ accompanies all film images.29 For instance, if a film shows an image of a tree then what the film enunciates is ‘t/here is a tree’. Because ‘here’ and ‘there’ are what linguists call deictics – terms that reveal the subjectivity of the speaker in the language – Metz believes that they also reveal the subjectivity of the enunciator in film. In other words, they demonstrate that somebody is behind the film images and this somebody is none other than the grand image-maker or the narrator. The problem with this claim is that, as Carroll has demonstrated, film can hardly be said to literally possess linguistic categories of this type. Moreover, already by the 1980s, cognitive psychology has seriously cast into doubt the idea that images are processed in linguistic terms.30 Finally, even if images of x were processed linguistically as ‘t/here is an image of x’, ‘t/here’ would only mark for the subjectivity of whoever is actually responsible for the image and not of whoever is fictionally responsible for it.31 Those working within the analytic paradigm, then, are generally far more sceptical about the existence of fictional film narrators than their continental peers. In fact, Carroll is among those who even deny the existence of fictional narrators in many literary works.32 Carroll does not call into doubt fictional narrators like Nick Carraway who are explicitly apparent, but he calls into question the idea that novels which are told in an anonymous ‘third person’ voice, like Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment or those which are made up exclusively of dialogue lines, have fictional narrators. In both cases, Carroll argues, there is no reason to assume that there is always an implicit fictional narrator. In the case of novels consisting of dialogue alone, there are undoubtedly fictional characters speaking the lines in question. But it is not fictional that a singular implicit narrator has collated these lines and reported them. If we saw a play based on those very dialogues, we could hardly say that some implicit fictional narrator is responsible for characters uttering those lines. The same is true of epistolary novels like Bram Stoker’s Dracula where there are numerous local narrators – Jonathan Harker, Minna, Dr Seward, etc. – whose entries taken together undoubtedly make up the whole of the text of the novel. But there is no sign that any implicit fictional

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Noël Carroll and Film narrator collected all these different letters and diaries and presented them as a single text.33 In anonymous ‘third person’ sentences like ‘John took a sip’, according to Carroll, there are no implicit fictional narrators either. If this were a fictional assertion as, most notably, George Wilson has argued, then admittedly there would also be somebody fictionally asserting it – the implicit fictional narrator.34 But Carroll argues that here we are dealing with a container for propositional content ‘that John took a sip’ rather than an assertion. Wilson has conceded that whether we engage such sentences as containers of propositional content or as assertions in the end comes down to the readers’ idiosyncratic preferences.35 It would seem, then, that there is no a priori valid argument for the ubiquity of fictional narrators in literature.36 Carroll argues that there is no such argument for fictional narrators in film either.37 Jerrold Levinson and Wilson have argued to the contrary. Levinson has proposed an ontological gap argument according to which implicit fictional narrators are necessary because only fictional entities can convey fictional information.38 Wilson has argued that, because when watching films we imagine seeing the fictional events, we also imagine that these events are fictionally shown to us.39 Carroll dismisses both proposals. Regarding Levinson’s argument, Carroll is the first to admit that it is impossible to record fiction. The most that filmmakers can do is to record images which can then be taken as props in games of make-believe that constitute fiction. Images of Humphrey Bogart in a studio made during the shooting of Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), for instance, serve as props for make-believing Rick in his bar in the Moroccan town. Michael Curtiz certainly did not record Rick and his fictional bar directly. Levinson takes this to mean that filmmakers cannot have direct access to fictional events. Moreover, because these fictional events constitute a fictional story and because this story is told, there must be a storyteller. Finally, given that the flesh-and-blood agents cannot directly present fictional events, the storyteller must be fictional. Therefore, Levinson concludes, every fiction film has an implicit fictional narrator. Carroll’s response is to point out that if there needs to be an intermediary between flesh-and-blood agents and fictional entities/events, then, by the same logic, there would need to be an intermediary between flesh-and-blood agents and the hypothesised fictional narrator who

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Analytic and Cognitivist Debates conveys the fictional events. But this intermediary would again need to be fictional, which would lead to postulating another intermediary, and so on ad infinitum. The gap could never be bridged. But the readers and viewers – actual people – clearly do have access to fiction simply by reading a text or watching a film. Moreover, the inability to directly record fiction does not amount to the inability to directly show fiction. As Wilson has demonstrated himself, it is possible to show fictional events without fictionally showing them.40 Consider a fictional shadow play in which a hawk attacks a mole. The shadows on the wall serve as props for makebelieving a hawk appearing in the sky, swooping down and grabbing its prey. The fictional story is clearly conveyed but, like in the theatre example above, it is hardly the case that any agency from within fiction told it. The only candidate for showing the story is the flesh-and-blood person who used her hands to generate the shadows on the wall. This, interestingly, does not lead Wilson to dismiss the idea of the implicit fictional narrator. Instead, building on Metz’s and Laffay’s notion of the grand image-maker, Wilson constructs the most robust defence of the implicit fictional film narrator to date.41 He starts off by taking literally the ordinary language expressions we use to describe our experience of fiction films. The fact that we regularly say ‘I see Joker’ or ‘I see Batman’ when watching films about the Dark Knight, Wilson construes as getting at the core of the epistemology of motion pictures. According to Wilson, in other words, when looking at the screen we imagine seeing the fictional events and characters. His point is that we do not see Heath Ledger and Christian Bale in costume and then use images to visually make-believe what Joker and Batman look like and what they are doing.42 Rather, we imagine seeing Joker and Batman. Another important point for Wilson is that we do not imagine seeing fictional events and characters directly because there are numerous filmic devices which would make such seeing absurd – split screens, wipes, superimposed letters, intertitles, etc. It seems strange in the fictional world of Psycho, for instance, for words ‘Phoenix, Arizona, Friday, December the Eleventh, Two Forty-Three P.M.’ to suddenly appear over the vista of Phoenix at the film’s opening. Instead, the fictional events and characters are mediated. Put differently, Wilson proposes that all fiction films are sort of documentaries made from within the fictional world (editing, letter superimposition, etc. done in fictional post-production). It is not that

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Noël Carroll and Film generally some fictional documentary crew makes these films like in The Office (2001 –3), for that would again cause problems for our understanding of many films. How, for instance, would we reconcile the idea of a documentary crew accompanying Ethan Hunt as he breaks into the CIA offices in Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996)? Rather, fiction films are made from what Wilson dubs ‘natural iconic images’ – photographs of the fictional world which occur within that world in some indeterminate fashion. Much like in Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges, 1980) where there is a device which gives visual access to any part of the galaxy by means of some unexplained technology, so do, according to Wilson, natural iconic images provide recordings of fictional worlds in general. That we imagine seeing such images, finally, for Wilson entails that somebody is fictionally showing them. The fictional shower is, of course, Metz’s grand image-maker who preselects and organises the images. Carroll concedes that, logically speaking, Wilson’s mediated version of the imagined seeing thesis resolves problems plaguing earlier versions of the thesis, which postulated direct seeing. But other problems arise. First, although there is nothing internally incoherent in natural iconic images, these artefacts are so complex that it is highly unlikely that by default viewers imagine anything of the sort. In fact, the only time similar objects are make-believed is when they are explicitly invoked, as is the case in Flash Gordon. We need to remember that we are speaking of implicit fictional narrators. Second, if the way in which naturally iconic images occur is indeterminate, then why not assume that their handling is indeterminate as well? In other words, why imagine a narrator arranging and presenting them – why simply not say that their presentation is as mysterious as their production? Third, imagining seeing does not entail fictional showing. Put differently, if we imagine seeing a fictional event it does not follow that we need to imagine being shown it. In reality, not even seeing something entails being shown something – if I look out of the window and see the view of the city nobody is showing me the vista. There is, therefore, no reason to postulate a ubiquitous grand image-maker, that is, an implicit fictional narrator in cinema. Next to the reasons outlined by Carroll, there is an even deeper problem for arguing for the narrator’s existence on the basis of the imagined seeing thesis. Although of relevance for the epistemology of film, it is inapplicable to the discussion of film narrators. The reason for this

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Analytic and Cognitivist Debates stems from the confusion between game-worlds and work-worlds. Wilson claims that it is fictional in the work (or work-fictional) that spectators are seeing cinematic images and in turn being presented with them. He explicitly bases this claim on Walton’s understanding of the work-world. More specifically, for so-and-so to be work-fictional means it is the work’s standard function to prompt appreciators to makebelieve so-and-so: [I]t is a standard function of a cinematic work of fiction to prompt viewers to imagine – to make believe – themselves being shown the narrative events and circumstances of successive shots. Moreover [. . .] it is fictional in the movie [. . .] Since ‘fictional showing’ is putatively what the movie’s images are meant to achieve, and ‘imagined seeing’ is putatively what movie viewers do in response to those images, it is often easier to formulate certain points in terms of one thesis rather than the other. But, to repeat, the two theses are utterly interdependent, although, of the two, the Imagined Seeing Thesis is probably the more fundamental.43

There is more to work’s standard function in Walton than Wilson lets on, however. Walton claims that something is work-fictional if and only if it holds for any game the work prompts.44 Otherwise, it is game-fictional. Drawing on an example from Walton, although it is both work- and gamefictional that there is a couple strolling in Georges Seurat’s painting A Sunday Afternoon, it is only game-fictional that Mark, a visitor at the Chicago Art Institute, is seeing the couple strolling. In other words, regardless of who is playing the game there is a couple strolling so long as the game is authorised. But given that on this occasion it is Mark who is appropriately playing an authorised game of make-believe, it is only gamefictional that he is seeing the couple. For if Julia were to take a look at the painting she would be prompted to imagine that it is she who is seeing the couple, and not Mark. Notice that Wilson cannot defend his claim by replacing Mark and Julia for a variable x and saying that it is work-fictional that x sees the couple strolling. There is simply no x in the painting doing the looking. In other words, A Sunday Afternoon mandates no game of make-believe in which we are prompted to imagine somebody looking at the depicted lazy Sunday who sees that which exactly corresponds to Seurat’s depiction.

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Noël Carroll and Film An alternative which concedes that there is no such work-fictional character but claims that there is subject-less work-fictional ‘seeing’ would not work either. For in the same sense there is no x doing the relevant looking and seeing, there is no subject-less ‘seeing’ on top of Mark imagining himself or on top of Julia imagining herself seeing the couple. Under Wilson’s framework we are forced to conclude then that the imagined seeing thesis and, in turn the fictional showing hypothesis, are not work- but game-fictional. As such they cannot tell us anything about fictional narrators because the narrators’ existence or absence is work-fictional. This is not to say that no implicit fictional narrators can be found. As I have already noted, in TV shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation (2009 –15) fictional characters respond to queries which, arguably, come from a crew filming the events at the workplace. In Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008) it is implied that somebody has run the file from the SD card documenting the attack of an unknown monster on New York City which makes up the whole of the film. But the very fact that we can clearly identify films with implied fictional narrators suggests that there must be markers of implied narration within the film itself. On most occasions, there are simply no signs which would warrant Wilson’s invocation of the grand image-maker. This is only a sample of the debates that Carroll has engaged in with his fellow philosophers and film scholars invested in the analytic tradition and cognitivism. Carroll might be an authority in this domain of inquiry but, as we have seen, there is still space for staking out new positions on a number of pressing issues in film theory, not least of all the definition of the moving image and the nature of the photographic image.

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5 Interpretation and Filmmaking

As the introduction already made clear, Carroll is not somebody encroaching from a different discipline but a film scholar in his own right. He started writing film interpretations as a journalist covering the New York avant-garde scene and began publishing essays on films in academic journals in the early 1970s. Interpreting the Moving Image presents a collection of his most important contributions to film interpretation.1 (Following Carroll’s own distinction, I will be differentiating between interpretation and criticism to distinguish between film appreciation and film evaluation.) It is true, that, as Warren Buckland points out in his review of the book, publishing a collection of articles signals an attempt at establishing the writer as an authority.2 Having published Theorizing the Moving Image in 1996 – a collection of Carroll’s essays on film theory – Cambridge University Press quickly proceeded to build up Carroll as an authoritative figure by doing the same with his interpretative work only two years later.3 And it is true that, by that time, Carroll had garnered attention among film scholars almost exclusively due to his theoretical work. This, Buckland implies, means that we should take Carroll’s interpretative work with a grain of salt. But this does not mean Carroll’s interpretative work is irrelevant. In fact, it shines light not only on where Carroll’s main theoretical commitments come from but also allows us to recast Carroll as a film scholar who has far more to contribute to the 113

Noël Carroll and Film discipline than theory. Crucially, Carroll’s interpretative work also allows us to see that he is not a priori opposed to Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotician approaches, but only to frameworks in which it is the theory rather than the film that drives the way films are interpreted. In this chapter, I will tackle how Carroll’s interpretative practice relates to his main theoretical commitments (anti-essentialism and the insistence on formal reasoning and methodological rigor), explain Carroll’s understanding of interpretation (as appreciation rather than the reconstruction of meaning or evaluation) and take a closer look at how interpretation can perform theoretical work (by providing counterexamples to a competing theory). In the conclusion, I will address Carroll’s experience of working in documentary film and how this corresponds to his broader defence of objectivity and truth in the wake of post-modern scepticism.

Interpretation and Theoretical Commitments Carroll’s first article to appear in an academic journal – ‘For God and country’ – already evinces concern with analytic forms of reasoning.4 More specifically, Carroll reads the intellectual montage sequence depicting various deities from Sergei Eisenstein’s October (1928) as an attempt to mount a logical argument. The sequence opens with a shot of an Orthodox church followed by a shot of Christ the King (Figure 5.1). After a few more shots of the church and Christ, a shot of a non-Christian deity appears twice (Figure 5.2) followed by three shots of what seems to be a mosque. Seventeen more shots follow with 12 different representations of deities altogether. To Carroll’s mind, the juxtaposition of Christ and the images of the church set up the first premise of Eisenstein’s argument: ‘If there is a God, he is benevolent.’ The series of ensuing shots which depict different deities – from pagan gods to Buddha and back – articulate new premises: ‘different people believe in different gods’ and ‘the existence of these gods is incompatible with one another’. This implies that, if there is a god, he has not made himself known to all, which further implies that he is not omnipotent or that he is not benevolent. Because the Christian God is omnipotent, this means that he cannot be benevolent. But by modus tollens (‘If there is a God, he is benevolent’; ‘God is not benevolent’) this leads to the conclusion that there is no God. In other words, montage is seen not only as producing spatial, temporal, causal or psychological relations but 114

Figure 5.1 Christ is only one of the gods revered by humans (the argument against the existence of God in October).

Figure 5.2 The existence of different deities undermines the idea of a benevolent God (the argument against the existence of God in October).

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Noël Carroll and Film also as potentially capable of conveying the structure of a logical argument. As such, it is hardly a coincidence that already in his earliest forays into film studies Carroll devotes so much attention to the structures of formal reasoning. He even points out that the argument itself does not necessarily prove anything about the existence of God but that, as it stands, it is formally valid (meaning that to deny it one cannot attack the inference from the premises to the conclusion but instead needs to disprove one of its premises). At this point a concern might be voiced that there is an inconsistency between Carroll’s interpretative practice and theoretical work. In the previous chapters, I have emphasised that Carroll criticises the code thesis – the view that film is akin to language. But if film and language are insufficiently similar, then how can film articulate premises and arguments of the sort that Carroll claims are put forward in October? It is true that in general Carroll denies that shots are like words or that combinations of shots are like sentences. This much is clear already from Carroll’s review of Christian Metz’s Film Language written around the time of ‘For God and country’.5 But even there Carroll points out that some shots may function like words and refers to the shot of the peacock in October. And even three-and-a-half decades after the publication of these pieces he does not forget to mention that on special occasions shots can function like words and form simple sentences.6 In fact, the very example he uses comes only a few shots after the ‘For God and country’ sequence – the comparison of Kerensky to Napoleon. Kerensky is seen with his arms across his chest and is immediately followed by a shot of a bust of Napoleon crossing his arms in the same way. Because of the graphic matching, it is perfectly legitimate to construe this shot pair as ‘Kerensky is like Napoleon’. In other words, as Carroll already points out in his review of Metz, the fact that the shot is not equivalent to its sentence-like description does not mean that the sentence-like description is not a valid account of the communicative intention behind the shot. Or, as he puts it in the ‘For God and country’ essay, if editing can convey spatiotemporal and causal relations, it can potentially communicate logical arguments. Of course, this does not mean that the audience will necessarily perceive the shot-sequence as an argument against the existence of God, but that there was an intention to communicate an argument along those lines seems difficult to deny.

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Interpretation and Filmmaking The article on October also implicitly subscribes to the anti-essentialist lesson that Carroll would later articulate fully in his theoretical writings – the success of a film does not hinge on using some essentially ‘cinematic’ device. It is true that Carroll focuses on a famous montage sequence in October but he does not exalt (or criticise) the sequence just because it employs montage. His implicit evaluation, instead, hinges on whether it is successful in lieu of what it sets out to do and how innovative the use of the device is. It is notable, moreover, that already in 1978, before having published any strictly theoretical pieces (by that time he had published a few reviews of theoretical works), Carroll explicitly denies the notion of the cinematic as the criterion for evaluation. When speaking of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920), Carroll points out: Two kinds of charges plague it. The first relies on one or another myth of the cinematic. Either Caligari is too theatrical or it violates film’s supposed commitment to realism. [. . .] [These type of arguments] seems the least serious because they lean so heavily on discredited theories of film.7

Similarly, Carroll sees no reason to prefer either G. W. Pabst’s Comradeship (1931) or Fritz Lang’s M (1931) over the other just because the former treats sound as a realist element and the latter as an anti-realist element.8 In other words, there is no reason to a priori dismiss a film because of its ‘non-cinematic’ traits (whatever they might be). Or, to put it yet in another way, arguments based on non-factual premises – whether they are realist or anti-realist – are invalid not only when used in theory, but also when applied to evaluation and/or interpretation. Even when Carroll endeavours to demonstrate that a film is more ‘cinematic’ than previously thought, as he does in the case of The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925), this is not marshalled as an argument in evaluation.9 Instead, the point is simply to show that Chaplin uses more ‘non-theatrical’ devices than the received wisdom admits. This does not mean that Chaplin’s film vocabulary is as broad as, say, Buster Keaton’s but it is to claim that even in as restricted a film vocabulary as the one in The Gold Rush, Chaplin is perfectly capable of developing the themes of pathos and social alienation, which is his primary intention: ‘What is disdained as retrograde is actually an organic artistic programme that has fully developed its potential and which can confidently rework its basic 117

Noël Carroll and Film premises with little if any innovation.’10 Put differently, for Carroll it is more interesting to analyse the function of formal devices than to determine whether they are ‘cinematic’ or not. For instance, in many shots the Tramp is isolated in the foreground while a group of people moves in the background. Similarly, in the first saloon shot-sequence the editing demonstrates that the Tramp is in nobody’s line of sight. Speaking generally, ‘[Chaplin’s] way of visually underlining the difference between the Tramp and others by means of foreground/background juxtapositions, scale oppositions, blocking, sight lines and costuming continually individuate and differentiate the Tramp.’11 One last point to be made about Carroll’s anti-essentialism – constitutive already of his interpretative work – is his refusal to interpret films in terms of a limited number of concepts borrowed from what has been referred to as grand narratives or master codes – the Marxist view that the society’s economic conditions define its political and ideological structures or the psychoanalytic claim that personal development is the outcome of early childhood events. As Buckland points out, Carroll presents an opposition to typical interpretative work.12 For instance, something like Dana Polan’s argument that Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) ‘represents the very triumph of late capital’13 because an office worker interrupts the titular couple’s privacy could never appear in Carroll’s interpretations. This is not only a matter of diverging from the Marxist – Psychoanalytic –Semiotic grand narratives, but also from smaller-scale theories such as auteurism which, at the time when Carroll began writing interpretations, in fact exerted more influence on film scholars than the former. As a theory championed in the US in the early 1960s by Andrew Sarris, auteurism built on the Romanticist notion of the author as genius.14 Applied to film, it was the director who was identified as somebody who managed to convey their personal vision across their entire oeuvre, despite the pressures of working under the studio system. It is true that on occasions Carroll offers interpretations of a director’s oeuvre – his pieces on Buster Keaton and Werner Herzog being the most notable examples.15 For instance, he identifies the importance of bodily intelligence in work and ordinary life as ‘Keaton’s great theme’.16 Similarly, he finds Herzog to be primarily engaged in capturing the experiences ineffable and unexplainable in language on camera. Although the attempt

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Interpretation and Filmmaking to group all director’s films under a single heading is indebted to classificatory procedures of auteur theory, it is still sufficiently distinct from how Sarris envisaged the project. First, that there is a recurrent set of characteristics across films for Carroll does not entail that the films in question are immediately accomplished, as it does for Sarris. In fact, Carroll argues that the repetition of traits in Herzog’s later films evinces the incapability to evoke the ineffable any more.17 In other words, what used to evoke a feeling of strangeness now comes across as already-seen and codelike. Second, in practice auteur criticism is predominantly theme-focused.  zek, for instance, repeatedly categorises Hitchcock’s films Slavoj Zi according to themes with only a cursory nod to formal traits.18 Carroll, by contrast, is at least as interested in the recurrent formal features. In discussing Keaton, Carroll develops the theme of bodily intelligence in terms of a detailed analysis of the filmmaker’s acting understood primarily as the manipulation of objects and people as objects. In Herzog’s case, the ineffable is captured not only through narrative themes, but also through formal devices such as the persistently held long shots of landscapes and cityscapes, the emphasis on lighting and the shots’ visual features through recurrent motifs of clouds and mists, and the use of ghostly colours. It is also true that the notion of a unified and organic artwork is crucial for Carroll’s interpretations. We have already seen how, for Carroll, the formal elaboration of the theme of social alienation and loneliness unites The Gold Rush into an organic whole. Similarly, Carroll claims that Entr’acte (René Clair, 1924) ‘is unified by its Dadaist stance, by its contempt and disdain for the bourgeois version of culture’.19 Buckland argues that the standard conclusion of Carroll’s interpretations is that the film under scrutiny is unified.20 Given that it is undeniable that the theory of an artwork as an organic and unified whole is a crucial component of traditional aesthetics going at least as far as to the Romanticists, it might be objected that in his interpretative work Carroll is not an anti-essentialist. The hypothetical objection is misplaced for two reasons. First, although the art theory at hand is hardly a minor one, it is far from a master code such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, or the combination thereof popular among film scholars writing in the 1970s and 1980s. The theory of a unified artwork only has artworks as its object and is as such inapplicable to the society or the individual at large. Second, although Buckland is right to say that unity is the dominant notion in

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Noël Carroll and Film Carroll’s interpretations it still does not organise all of them. The October piece, for instance, focuses only on one shot-sequence in the film so it can be hardly said that the essay articulates the whole film as unified. Third, and most important, even if the notion of unity did organise all of Carroll’s interpretations, it needs to be recognised that the unity is not taken for granted but is understood as a hypothesis which can be disproved. By contrast, the essentialists – be they classical film theorists or Marxist– Psychoanalytic –Semioticians – take their premises as givens. Carroll, therefore, not only demands that interpretations articulate arguments which are formally valid and based on factual propositions, but he also actively engages potential refutations of his own interpretations. A good example of such testing for counterexamples and the examination of counterarguments which could disprove his hypotheses is the piece on The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962).21 In it Carroll argues that the disjunctive editing pattern is a deliberate strategy rather than an unintentional failure. He gives three separate reasons for this claim. First, there are films such as Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929) and The Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau, 1932) which deliberately use disjunctive editing. Given the iconographic nods to surrealism in the film, it is legitimate to assume that Welles is aware of the strategy. Second, there are simply too many mismatches to dismiss them as an error on the part of the director. Welles’s oeuvre certainly attests to the fact that he can follow the rules of continuity perfectly. And last, there is a function to the disjunctive use of editing. It is to spatially confuse the viewer and, in doing so, to mirror K.’s own confusion with the legal system. The active engagement with possible objections and counterexamples, as we have seen in the previous chapters, is a key trait of Carroll’s theory. But Carroll’s interpretative work reveals that he is deeply indebted to this kind of practice from his earliest writings. Moreover, it is safe to say that such an approach establishes Carroll as an anomaly among interpreters. As David Bordwell has argued at length, the critical engagement with the propositions of the applied theory, the search for counterexamples, and the commitment to formal validity of arguments, is rarely observed among film interpreters.22 Given that Bordwell’s book appeared 15 years after Carroll started producing interpretations, it is safe to say that Carroll’s work had already exercised many of the lessons Bordwell would impart in a theoretical form later on.

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Interpretation and Filmmaking Engaging Carroll’s interpretative practice should also help us accept more easily the fact that he is by no means a methodological imperialist and dissuade us from the idea that he is a priori antagonistic to specific forms of inquiry, such as psychoanalysis. For instance, in his interpretation of Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic (1962) Carroll argues that the film represents human thought both in terms of empiricist and psychoanalytic metaphors of the mind.23 In other words, to explain the film’s imagery Carroll draws on Locke’s idea of the mind as a cabinet and Hume’s view of the mind as a bundle of different perceptions as much as on Freud’s understanding of the unconscious and the processes of condensation and dramatisation. For example, on many occasions Carroll identifies the relation between the sound and image as exemplary of condensation – the construction of an object by means of some traits of other objects. At one point in the film a row of small couches separates the gymnast from his goal. Depending on the accompanying sound, which changes throughout the sequence, this row of couches comes across as a ravine (the sound of wind) or as car traffic (the sound of honking). Relating to dramatisation, similarly, Carroll identifies a tendency to literalise concepts through visual imagery. For example, expressions describing drug experiences – ‘being high’ and ‘coming down’ – are visually literalised by depicting upward and downward movement, respectively. This does not mean that Carroll subscribes to the psychoanalytic theory of the mind (or its grand narrative about personal development) any more than it means that he thinks that either Locke or Hume are right to take the mind as a camera obscura or a collection of perceptions, respectively. But if the metaphors of the mind that these theories popularised can be seen to have influenced the filmmakers and/or organised the film’s theme or representational strategies, then it is perfectly legitimate to turn to those theories to provide interpretative insights. In other words, one need not subscribe to a theory to use it as a tool for explaining authorial intentions or the relations of elements that make up the work. Put in yet another way, to say that a theory cannot be informative of an artwork just because it has been debunked as false is akin to saying that racism could not have played a role in the making of The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915) just because the then current scientific racism has since been disproven. Even in his monograph which comes closest to combining interpretation and theory – The Philosophy of Horror – as well as in his

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Noël Carroll and Film later more theoretical pieces, Carroll does not deny the potential usefulness of psychoanalysis for interpretation of various genres and cycles.24 This seems to be most obvious in horror films where, due to the filmmakers’ self-conscious engagement with psychoanalysis or the proliferation of psychoanalytic ideas and imagery into general culture, dismissing psychoanalytic accounts would diminish our understanding of the film rather than pave the way for it. It is true that Carroll argues that psychanalysis cannot provide a comprehensive theory of the whole horror genre but this does not mean that it has nothing to contribute to the reading of many of its instances. Numerous monsters in horror films, for example, can be interpreted in terms of repressed desires. Whereas vampires offer themselves to readings in terms of gratification of necrophilic and incestuous desires, demons like those in The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) or Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) seem to present the infantile wish of omnipotence of the will. Similarly, it would be futile to deny the importance of psychoanalytic ideas for the relationship between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), or the films of David Lynch. Psychoanalysis, moreover, is not the only continental approach that can be found in Carroll’s work. His thesis on Buster Keaton and The General (1926) from 1976, published approximately three decades later, as well as articles based on the thesis have phenomenology and the work of Henri Bergson as one of its major influences. Carroll distinguishes between two main types of gags in Keaton – the inept automatism and the adept insights gags.25 Whereas the former hinge on the Keaton character’s inability to adapt or even notice the changes in his environment, the latter revolve on his capacity to quickly rethink the situation and offer a novel solution. An occasion in The General where the locomotive refuses to budge because there is insufficient traction on the tracks illustrates the automatism gag well. Keaton gets off the locomotive to shovel some sand on the track to provide traction but he continues to shovel for some time without noticing that the locomotive has moved leaving him behind. The ending of The General provides an example of the insights gag. Keaton’s character, Johnnie, tries to kiss his girlfriend, Annabelle, but his every attempt is thwarted by passing soldiers who he must salute. In a moment of brilliance, Johnnie realises he needs to switch sides with Annabelle to free his right hand for saluting.

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Interpretation and Filmmaking Carroll explains the automatism gags with recourse to Bergson’s theory of comedy. According to Bergson, laughter serves as a corrective to various forms of ill-adapted behaviour.26 We laugh at people who conduct themselves in a rigid, inflexible and mechanical fashion – the very traits that Keaton characters exhibit in cases such as the above described attempt at getting the locomotive to move. Bergson’s theory of comedy, however, only goes so far because the insights gags capitalise on precisely the opposite type of behaviour. Under Bergson’s framework there could be hardly anything to laugh at when the character adapts to the situation as quickly and as effectively as Johnnie does when he realises how to kiss Annabelle and salute soldiers at the same time. What brings both types of gag together is the notion of bodily intelligence as developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.27 Merleau-Ponty argues that the body is able to act, orientate itself and engage objects without these actions necessarily being reflected upon consciously. To Carroll’s mind, it is precisely bodily intelligence which informs both the inept automatism and the adept insights gags. Whereas the former exemplifies the failure of bodily intelligence, the latter celebrates its ingenuity. In other words, it is the film or a body of films that dictates what theory is to be used or developed to explain them and not the other way around.

What is Interpretation? Carroll has also taken the opportunity to explain his understanding of interpretation. In his perhaps lengthiest treatment of the subject – the introduction to Interpreting the Moving Image – Carroll relates the practice to, and at the same time distinguishes it from, what Bordwell refers to as ‘explicatory criticism’.28 Whereas for Bordwell explicatory criticism represents the articulation of implicit meaning of a given film, Carroll considers the explication of implicit meaning as only one aspect of interpretative practice and not even a necessary one at that. For instance, the explicatory critic tends to articulate the meaning of the film in terms of humanistic categories of morals and values. Of October they might say that it is a film which privileges collective action over individualism and the necessity of the former for the establishment of a just society. By contrast, Carroll homes in on one specific aspect of the film – the ‘For God and country’ montage sequence – to articulate how editing may be used for 123

Noël Carroll and Film conveying logical arguments. In the case of King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack, 1933), the interpreter may argue that the film is a tale of the revenge of nature on industrial society. Carroll, by comparison, attempts to explain the rhyming in imagery on Skull Island and that of Kong’s riot on Manhattan.29 This is not to say that the two approaches are opposed to each other – for Carroll’s interpretations can be embedded into explications of implicit meaning – but it is to point out that the articulation of the film’s overarching meaning is not what Carroll sees as the primary goal of interpretation. In other words, Carroll construes the explanation of traits and their mutual relationships regardless of whether the explanation is thematic (as they usually are in explicatory criticism), formal, functional or a combination thereof. Carroll’s interpretative practice is also distinct from what Bordwell calls ‘symptomatic interpretation’ – a type of interpretation that in film studies was popularised by Cahiers du Cinéma in the late 1960s, became highly influential in the following decades and is still relevant today.30 Whereas Carroll starts from the hypothesis that films and artworks are unified, the symptomatic interpreter assumes that these are plagued with contradictions. While Carroll seeks to explain how various elements work together towards the achievement of a unity, symptomatic interpreters look for symptoms and ‘structuring absences’ – that which signifies by the virtue of being absent from the film – which point to the underlying tensions in the work. In the aforementioned essay on Heaven and Earth Magic, Carroll argues that the marshalling of numerous devices to visually depict metaphors about the mind is what unifies the film. In probably the most famous example of a symptomatic reading in film studies – ‘Young Mr Lincoln’ – the editors of Cahiers du Cinéma, by contrast, point out that whereas the intention of the film is straightforward – to transform the man Lincoln into a mythical guarantor of Law and Truth – the need for narrative suspense undermines the mythical view of Lincoln.31 As a lawyer of two boys accused of murder he does not discover the culprit through a painstaking investigation but through a sheer stroke of luck. To Carroll’s mind, there is no necessary incompatibility between the two approaches. First, there seem to be both unified and disunified films. Even the greatest proponents of symptomatic interpretation admit that there are films – a majority in fact – whose ideology is completely in tune with the ideology of the culture they are embedded in. Second, even if it

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Interpretation and Filmmaking turned out that all films and artworks were disunified, the discussion of unity is still a prerequisite for undertaking a symptomatic interpretation. In other words, to point out that there are gaps and fissures in a work, one must hypothesise a unity which is undermined through these gaps and fissures. In the case of Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939), it is only against the notion of film as presenting the mythical vision of Lincoln that contradictions which subvert this purported unity can be spotted. In other words, although neither approach can be a priori eliminated, it is only the concept of the unified work that informs both. There appears to be a mirroring between Carroll’s views on how symptomatic interpretation and psychoanalytic theory relate to his own work. Carroll admits that there is no a priori argument against symptomatic interpretation much like there is no a priori argument against psychoanalytic theory.32 But the proper undertaking of both symptomatic interpretation and psychoanalytic theory demands engagement with the concepts of its competitors – the notion of unity in the case of interpretation and the explanatory power of rational cognitive processes in the case of theory. In that sense, Carroll sees both his interpretative and theoretical work as logically prior to his main competitors’ toil. In Chapter 3, we have already seen that this need not be the case if psychoanalytic theory is understood as a theory which is not scientific. Under these conditions, a psychoanalyst does not have to demonstrate that there is no satisfactory cognitivist explanation to propose their own account. In the case of interpretation, it also does not seem that Carroll is right because the unity/ disunity pair is a conceptual pair in which neither of the terms is logically primary. Simply put, if we understand what it means for something to be x, then we also understand what it means for something to be not x. This much is also clear from Carroll’s search for counterexamples to his own interpretative hypotheses. The fact that he is interested in ways in which his hypotheses can be disproved means that he understands that the marshalling of elements in the attempt to achieve unity can always fail, in other words, that instead of unity, disunity may be the product. Carroll is not merely tacitly allowing for disunity, but actively engaging it as a notion. In other words, it would be fairer to say that neither Carroll’s nor the symptomatic approach can proceed without the understanding of each other’s key concepts – disunity and unity, respectively. The difference is a matter of emphasis rather than one of logical primacy.

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Noël Carroll and Film The above mirroring should not come as a great surprise given that, for Carroll, much of what is referred to as psychanalytic theory is in fact interpretation in disguise.33 The fact that numerous essays are replete with theoretical concepts such as the imaginary, scopophilia, masochism, etc. does not mean that they are doing theory. Following Bordwell’s understanding of interpretation, Carroll argues that essays of this sort appropriate premises and/or semantic fields – relations of meaning between conceptual or linguistic units (e.g. Symbolic/Imaginary/Real, binary oppositions) – from existing theories and apply them to a film or set of films. A case in point is Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ which, regularly regarded as a theoretical piece, from Carroll’s perspective amounts to no more than an interpretation of classical Hollywood cinema.34 What Carroll identifies as Mulvey’s key problem is that she takes the existence of various psychoanalytic processes – mirror phase identification, castration complex, etc. – for granted without investigating either whether these processes exist or whether their explanations are valid. Moreover, when applying these concepts to classical Hollywood cinema she does not offer an account of what would count as proof of their inapplicability. In other words, Mulvey does succeed in articulating classical Hollywood cinema in terms of the castration complex. But she not only merely assumes rather than demonstrates that there is such a thing as the castration complex and that psychoanalysis provides a satisfactory explanation for it, but also fails to specify the conditions under which film does not activate the castration complex. This is a mainstay of interpretative rather than of theoretical work. Much like theory, such interpretations, moreover, often capitalise on equivocation and/or sufficiently abstract expressions to connect semantic fields and the film in question. Barbara Klinger’s interpretation of Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960), for instance, argues that the film presents a strong link between the law and the family. One example is Arbogast who, ‘as a private detective, is a domestic version of the policeman’.35 But here ‘domestic’ seems only to play on the fact that Arbogast is a sort of a ‘house’ detective hired by Marion’s employer. In that sense, although Arbogast is clearly linked to the law as a private detective he can be linked to family only through equivocation. Similarly, Klinger emphasises that ‘[p]erhaps the bond between the family and the law is most concisely presented in the dissolve from the just-discovered mother’s corpse to the

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Interpretation and Filmmaking courthouse, which begins the explanatory epilogue of the psychiatrist.’36 By phrasing the dissolve between the shots as a ‘bond’ Klinger manages to link family and law not through an appeal to some character traits or motives (as in the case of Arbogast) but to formal means – the fact that the shot of the key representative of the family (the mother’s corpse) is ‘dissolved’ into the shot of the key representation of the law (the courthouse). Simply put, the ‘bond’ is established because editing is vaguely articulated as linking of elements. In other words, given that Klinger’s interpretation proceeds by way of argument, it fails because its argument is based on equivocation. At this point the question arises whether Carroll himself falls prey to equivocation. For instance, interpreters often defend the notion of unity by claiming that there is a correspondence between the formal elements and the content. The correspondence in question may be literal – as when the speed of a vehicle is conveyed through fast editing (think of Abel Gance’s The Wheel (1923)) – or metaphoric – as when Klinger states that the very dissolve links the themes across the shots. In his essay on The Trial, Carroll states that ‘[i]nsofar as the system or code of editing is associated with the legal system of code, the breakdown of the one stylistically implies or connotes the breakdown of the other.’37 At the very least such a formulation demands an analysis, whether we are dealing with the correspondence of the former or the latter type. It is hardly the case that there is a direct connection between the system of editing and the system of legal code in the sense in which, for instance, the undercranking in early cinema relates to the representation of speed. But at the same time, it does not seem to be fair to dismiss the formulation as pure rhetoric. We can recognise at least one other way in which the relationship between content and form can be articulated as one of unity – when the filmmakers themselves capitalise on verbal equivocation. For instance, in the essay on Entr’acte, Carroll notices that the superimposition of burning matches and a man scratching his head rests on the fact that the verb ‘to scratch’ can be employed to describe both the latter and the former (‘to scratch a head/match’).38 The connection between the two shots becomes intelligible because the verbal descriptions used to denote the actions on screen already share ambiguous terminology. The connection is certainly not literal but it is also unlike Klinger’s example, where the purported explanation comes after the fact. Here, it is the very existence

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Noël Carroll and Film of ordinary language expressions that motivates the introduction of the superimposed shots. In other words, the equivocation already informs the filmmakers’ work – it is not only an after-the-fact strategy on the part of the interpreter. The same explanation is applicable to Carroll’s account of The Trial. As Carroll points out, metaphors of spatial disorientation are regularly invoked when describing the legal system – ‘to get lost in red tape’, for instance, is a standard expression. It is reasonable to assume that filmmakers may enact such metaphors in their films in one way or another. The disjunctive editing which characterises Welles’s adaptation is the key way to make it hard for the viewer to make sense of the film’s fictional geography. For example, when K. visits the interrogation hall, not only do the adjacent halls seem not to allow a plausible path to the huge hall, but the entrance and the exit from this hall are clearly not the same (the former is a small door whereas the latter is much larger). This is despite the fact that directional cues entail that K. had to have exited and entered through the same door. So, in a sense, the viewer is as lost in understanding the space of The Trial as they are in construing the legal procedures governing it. In other words, Carroll undeniably connects the form of editing to the theme of the legal system based on equivocation of literal and metaphorical meaning of spatial disorientation. But he does so because there is sufficient evidence that the filmmaker either already intended the relation between the two to be read in terms of linguistic puns or that the puns are so deeply embedded in the culture that they offer themselves immediately to this type of use.39 There is at least one time when Carroll indulges in what he regularly averts others from doing – the use of an overly abstract notion to bring disparate films together. But even then, Carroll does not read symptomatically, rather he seems closer to the explicative critic. In his interpretation of Herzog’s oeuvre, Carroll argues that the characters in Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) present the template for Herzog’s paradigmatic heroes such as Aguirre (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 1972), Kaspar Hauser (The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, 1974), Stroszek (Stroszek, 1977), Nosferatu (Nosferatu the Vampyre, 1979), Woyzeck (Woyzeck, 1979) and Fitzcarraldo (Fitzcarraldo, 1982).40 The problem is that in the case of the deaf and blind real-life people from Land of Silence and Darkness, it is impossible for the viewer to truly understand what their subjective experiences might be. Plugging our ears and shutting our eyes is

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Interpretation and Filmmaking a poor substitute for this experience. By contrast, although all the characters listed here certainly have atypical personal traits, those of the deaf and blind appear to entail qualitatively foreign personal experiences when compared to those of the remaining characters on the list. In other words, it seems false to claim that ‘[all] these characters are moved by inner forces that for Herzog remain inexplicable, unnameable, and indescribable.’41 Many of his fictional characters have relatively understandable, although morally otiose, personal features. Aguirre, for instance, is essentially a power-hungry conquistador whose ambition eventually drives him mad (and for those of normal hearing and sight even madness seems to be more relatable than deafness and blindness). Similarly, Fitzcarraldo’s motives to build an opera house in Iquitos might seem eccentric to say the least, but this is still a far cry from the experiential inexplicability of how it is to be deaf and blind. Alternatively, we can say that it is impossible to truly experience anybody else’s subjective condition but then we would also have to admit that all films which have characters would be trying to convey something ineffable. It needs to be emphasised, however, that even if we have identified an occasion when Carroll uses terms too abstractly, this is hardly representative of his overall interpretative work, for even the above claim is only one small part of the essay on Herzog. Next to saying what an interpretation is, Carroll also weighs in on its purpose. On his account, interpretation is primarily a form of aesthetic appreciation where appreciation is understood as the contemplation of the mutual relationships between an artwork’s features or between artworks themselves.42 In the former case, for instance, Carroll investigates how the framing story relates to the rest of the narrative in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or how the sound relates to the image in Comradeship and M. In the latter, Carroll attempts to articulate the common traits in Keaton’s oeuvre or to group a number of Hollywood films of the 1970s under the heading of allusion.43 Carroll does not deny that other forms of appreciation are possible, ideology critique being one of the most important ones in film studies to this day. And he does not shy away from discussing political issues – in the essay on October, for instance, he clearly contextualises Eisenstein’s intellectual montage within the parameters of Marxist critique of religion. But even ideology critique needs to address the artwork’s features to make its point.

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Noël Carroll and Film Perhaps most importantly, Carroll understands interpretation as distinct from reception studies.44 According to him, the point of interpretation is neither to reconstruct how historical audiences appreciated films nor to claim that what is outlined in the interpretation is how the present audience appreciates the film in question. Instead, interpretation allows spectators to compare their own appreciations of the film with the interpreter’s. The better an interpretation articulates the hitherto unperceived or not understood relations, the better, to Carroll’s mind, it is. This also means that we can evaluate interpretations according to how correct they are. In other words, Carroll argues against the view typical of film studies in particular and humanities in general that there is no such thing as a true interpretation. Much like other interpreters Carroll offers his reading as an alternative to existing ones. In his essay on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, for instance, Carroll argues against Siegfried Kracauer’s view that the addition of the framing story undermines the anti-authoritarian message and turns the film into a tale of conformism. But what distinguishes Carroll from others is his view on the logical relations between possible interpretations. Most film and literary scholars view individual interpretations as additions to the cultural engagement with an artwork such that, although some will inevitably exert greater influence than others, there is place for their peaceful coexistence. According to this view, none among the multiple interpretations is exactly true or false.45 For Carroll, by contrast, some interpretations necessarily exclude others. Although this does not mean that there cannot be multiple interpretations, it does mean that if there are two contradictory interpretations only one of them can be true. In the above case, either Kracauer is right or Carroll is. When it comes to Citizen Kane, similarly, either the film illustrates that the human life is ultimately unknowable or it conveys that Kane’s life can be explained with recourse to Rosebud.46 At least one of the two must be wrong and at most one can be right. Again, we can see how crucial a place the rules of formal reasoning have already in Carroll’s earliest work. Carroll also holds a minority view of the role of the importance of the author for the meaning of the work, at least as far as film and literary studies are concerned. The position that authorial intentions have no place in determining the meaning of the work – anti-intentionalism – has gained strong currency since the work of William Kurtz Wimsatt and

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Interpretation and Filmmaking Monroe C. Beardsley, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault.47 On this view, it is the reader and their access to the conventions of language and art history rather than the author and their intended project that are constitutive of the meaning of the work. To the anti-intentionalist, the reconstruction of authorial intentions is not only inessential but may even be logically incoherent. First, because intentions are unobservable mental states and, second, because there is a discrepancy between intention and execution. The intentionalist view to which Carroll subscribes, by contrast, holds that authorial intentions play an important role in understanding artworks.48 His position is moderate insofar as he does not deny the possibility of failing to convey one’s intentions. At the same time, however, he points out that given that the unobservability of mental states does not make the everyday reconstruction of our collocutor’s intentions impossible, there is no reason to think that such problems are endemic to communication through artworks. Moreover, he does not insist that authorial intentions are the only trait determining the meaning of a work – the rules of language and the art’s tradition play an important role as well. But he does assert that authorial intentions are relevant for the appreciation of artworks. For instance, Eisenstein’s written remarks on the ‘For God and country’ montage sequence in October are not just extraneous material but can help us to better understand the shot-sequence in question. Similarly, one way to argue that the disjunctive editing in The Trial is no mistake is by appealing to Welles’s familiarity with the tradition of such editing and his deliberate resolve to capitalise on it. The intentionalist position, then, is implicitly espoused by Carroll from the beginning.49

From Interpretation to Theory If interpretation as practised by Carroll is the testing of hypotheses through engagement with premises, the formal validity of arguments and potential counterexamples and counterarguments, then how is this distinct from his theory? Or, if, as Carroll argues, most of the Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotic theory is interpretation in disguise, are Carroll’s interpretations not then crypto-theories? Put shortly, no. The difference between interpretation and theory for Carroll is less a question of method and more a matter of scale. If we remind ourselves of 131

Noël Carroll and Film Carroll’s definition, theory is construed as ‘the production of generalizations or general explanations or general taxonomies and concepts about film practice’.50 Carroll’s theories are about the shot, editing, narrative, affect, etc. His interpretations, by contrast, are about a specific aspect of a film, relations among various aspects of a specific film, a specific director’s oeuvre, or, at most, about a group of films from a specific timeframe. Although both appeal to propositional factuality, formal validity and dialectical competition, theorising constitutes a more general form of investigation. Carroll’s interpretations, on the one hand, continuously test whether the theory of an artwork as a unified whole is valid and articulate the specificities of unification on a case-by-case basis: how is unity (if that indeed is the case) afforded in King Kong and how is it accomplished in Citizen Kane? On the other hand, they tackle anomalies which do not fit general theories. How can we explain the atypical editing patterns in October and The Trial? What is the function of the unusually prolonged long shots in Herzog? How do we grapple with non-narrative or loosely narrative films such as Entr’acte and Heaven and Earth Magic? For Carroll, interpretative practice can also decide between competing theories. In an article on Andy Kaufman – the comedian best known for his role of Latka in the TV series Taxi (1978 –83) and as the focus of Milos Forman’s biopic Man on the Moon (1999) – Carroll distinguishes between two theories of interpretation – modest authorial intentionalism and hypothetical intentionalism.51 The latter argues that only publicly available information about the author should inform our understanding of the meaning of the work – the work itself, the author’s interviews, biographies and preceding work, and the generic, disciplinary, and historical context. The former holds that publicly unavailable information such as personal conversations, notes, diaries, drafts, etc. should be added to the pool of relevant sources. Carroll argues that Kaufman’s wrestling performances near the end of his career present an excellent case study to decide between the two views. Kaufman garnered fame as a comedian on late night shows like Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the Late Show with David Letterman in the 1970s. His general strategy was to make it seem as if the performance is a complete failure only to be revealed that the ineptness exhibited is in fact a deliberate part of the joke and that he is in full command of the situation. In his first appearance on Saturday

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Interpretation and Filmmaking Night Live, for instance, Kaufman seemed completely out of place and incapable of starting his bit. Playing a song from an old TV show on a recorder next to him did not help much. But when the refrain ‘Here I come to save the day’ came, Kaufman lip-synched it with such skill and confidence that the audience realised they had been had and burst into laughter. Near the end of his life Kaufman assumed an aggressive persona and started provoking women to wrestle him during his stand-up acts, branding himself as the ‘Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World’. He persisted, despite getting voted off Saturday Night Live, and even went to Memphis – the world capital of wrestling – where he taunted not only the spectators as the residents of ‘the nation’s redneck capital’ but also the famous wrestler Jerry Lawler. He even stepped into the ring with Lawler where he took a proper beating resulting in a real injury. The two were supposed to reconcile on Letterman’s show but even that degenerated into an on-air fight. To anybody paying attention to Kaufman’s career, this appeared as a sad downfall and descent into madness. Shortly thereafter Kaufman died. It was only more than a decade after his death that the wrestling episodes were revealed to be an elaborate hoax and that Lawler and Kaufman were in fact friends who staged the whole affair together. Carroll points out that under hypothetical intentionalism we are forced to dismiss any recourse to authorial intentions communicated in private (the plans hatched with Lawler) and focus exclusively on publicly available information. Given Kaufman’s persistent appearances in his wrestler persona, the hypothetical intentionalist is forced to conclude that Kaufman was simply mad. Modest authorial intentionalism, by contrast, can easily argue that Kaufman’s wrestling was a more ambitious version of his earlier routines. The key point to keep in mind is that the hypothetical intentionalist claims that, when faced with interpretative dilemmas, the implicit rules of interpretative practice entail recourse to public information only. But the currently accepted interpretation of Kaufman’s wrestling performances is that they were a ruse rather than madness. This contradicts the implicit rules of interpretation that the hypothetical intentionalist invokes. In other words, modest authorial intentionalism better describes interpretative practice than hypothetical intentionalism. This type of interpretative work, which aims to resolve larger theoretical questions, appears in many of Carroll’s essays recently collected

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Noël Carroll and Film in a volume titled Minerva’s Night Out. Perhaps the best example is Carroll’s article on Memento (Cristopher Nolan, 2000) which explores the question of whether moving images can do philosophy.52 In the last decade, this question has spurred a significant debate among film scholars and philosophers. Those who oppose the idea that films can philosophise most often argue either explicitly or implicitly that true philosophy takes place only in language.53 It is language alone that offers the structures necessary for developing philosophical arguments. Contrariwise, Carroll argues that for something to do philosophical work it is sufficient for it to lead the appreciator to arrive at certain conclusions rather than explicitly spell out those conclusions.54 Memento, according to Carroll, does precisely that. By presenting the spectator with an atypically constructed narrative and by making the comprehension of it difficult, Memento forces the spectator to reflect on the very process of how the narrative is understood, thereby allowing them to formulate theories about the comprehension of narratives in general. Nolan’s film is highly atypical because, for the most part, it tells the story backwards. Already the opening credits involve a shot of a polaroid image disappearing, signalling the traversal of the story in the opposite direction. Most ensuing shots end where the previous shot started. Lenny shoots Teddy. Then Teddy screams just before getting shot. Or, Lenny sits next to a heap of burnt ashes. Then we see the things Lenny is burning. This structure, to Carroll’s mind, forces the viewer to make some important insights about the nature of the narrative. First, that there is a distinction between the sequence in which the events are presented and the sequence in which they unfold in the story world. Unlike most films which progress linearly, Memento makes this painfully obvious. Second, that the story is not simply given in the narrative. The spectator is an active coparticipant in the process of meaning-making. Third, that consumers make sense of narratives by keeping track of what questions the narrative raises and answers. While watching ordinary films the questions are tacit but here, virtually every shot forces the viewer to explicitly ask themselves what happened prior to it. It is true that the insights that Memento affords are hardly on a par with the latest developments in philosophy but amount to some basic tenets from theories about narratives. To deny that this is philosophy, however, is akin to denying that there is no philosophising during undergraduate seminars. Theoretical work is being done so long as nontrivial

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Interpretation and Filmmaking generalisations are being formed. The insights for the average film-viewer who has not taken a class in philosophy or narratology, moreover, may be far from commonplace.55 We can say, then, that when interpretation is doing proper theoretical work in Carroll, it is not a matter of demonstrating that a theory is applicable to a film or that the film exemplifies a certain theoretical position, as is most often the case in both Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotic and auteurist approaches. For them a film illustrates the allpervasiveness of capitalist ideology, enacts the drama of subject positioning or demonstrates the author’s personal vision. For Carroll, by contrast, the goal is to demonstrate that a competing theory is proven wrong by this specific interpretation. In other words, hypotheses, be they interpretations or theories, are vindicated by putting them to the test rather than by finding examples which easily fit them.

Carroll’s Filmmaking Alongside his interpretative work, Carroll has also had practical filmmaking experience as a screenwriter. He wrote scripts for five films, four of which aired as a part of the Film and Radio Review TV series on WNET in the early 1980s.56 It is only his last film – The Last Conversation: Eisenstein’s Carmen Ballet – that enjoyed a wider circulation and remains relatively easily available.57 It is undeniable that Carroll’s filmmaking has had the least impact of all his work on film. But I would argue that it is still worth exploring, however briefly, in its connection to Carroll’s theory. First, given that these films are non-fiction films and that they started appearing at the time when Carroll was also making his first theories of non-fiction, we can better understand Carroll’s views on the subject.58 Second, because two of these films are primarily devoted to dance there are also insights to be gained about Carroll’s understanding of what he refers to as moving-picture dance as defined below.59 Given that The Last Conversation is not only a non-fiction film about dance but is also the easiest to find among Carroll’s five films, it presents the best case study for addressing these topics. The Last Conversation is a reconstruction of a short ballet Eisenstein prepared near the end of his life in 1947 by dance historian Sally Banes (Carroll’s spouse) and a documentary about the reconstruction itself. 135

Noël Carroll and Film Having completed Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1958), Eisenstein was met with Stalin’s disapproval which, combined with the heart attack Eisenstein suffered during the filming, effectively precluded him from further film work. He quickly found another project, however. Upon befriending one of the performers from the Dance of Oprichniki segment from Ivan the Terrible, Part II – Konstantin Richter – and his dance partner Susanna Zvyagina, Eisenstein decided to stage a miniature ballet for the couple. In five minutes, ‘The Last Conversation’ condensed the story of Carmen by presenting the final meeting between the titular character and Don Jose. In it Don Jose implores Carmen not to leave him, the two briefly dance ‘a flashback’ of their foregone love, but it is too late. Don Jose realises that Carmen is going to leave him for another and kills her in a fit of jealous rage (Figure 5.3). Having recounted the story of Eisenstein’s ballet, the documentary shows Banes’s five-minute reconstruction twice; first, in a single long-shot take and then in an edited version. The film also tells the story of the reconstruction itself. The idea for it began in 1995 when film historian Naum Kleiman showed the original sketches from the rehearsals of the ballet to Banes. Drawn by a student of Eisenstein’s – a certain B. Lebin – among other things these images present a score for the ballet – the sequence of 33 poses from the dance with movement directions. Following this discovery, Banes researched Russian

Figure 5.3 Don Jose (James Sutton) has murdered Carmen (Galina Zakrutkina) in The Last Conversation: Eisenstein’s Carmen Ballet.

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Interpretation and Filmmaking archives where she found both Eisenstein’s musical score and his directorial notes detailing action, emotional cues and costume design. Following the advice of Elizabeth Souritz and Natalia Sheremetevskaya – Russian historians of ballet and variety stage, respectively – Banes found a Russian dancer who had a similar experience with the Spanish dancing tradition as Zvyagina did – Galina Zakrutkina. Similarly, for the role of Don Jose, Banes chose James Sutton – a ballet dancer specialising in character roles. Using all the available materials and ‘working with her dancers in much the same way Eisenstein must have directed his, Banes tried to recreate, as closely as possible, the original conditions under which the dance was made’.60 From the perspective of genre, then, The Last Conversation is not only a documentary film but a member of what Carroll dubs the moving-picture dance. There is again here a deep anti-essentialist commitment. Contrary to the medium-specific characterisation of ciné-dance, which insists that the treatment of dance needs to be cinematic to secure membership in the category, moving-picture dance includes all moving-pictures which depict dance.61 According to Carroll, the reason why only films like Maya Deren’s A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), in which Talley Beatty leaps across spaces with the help of editing, are said to belong to the category of ciné-dances is the blind adherence to the modernist demands for medium purity. Medium purity, however, is, as was already pointed out in Chapter 2, a criterion of evaluation (and a particularly biased one at that) and not a criterion of categorisation. Specifically, there are some routines by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire that are shot in a long take and deep focus yet we could hardly deny that they are instances of ciné-dance. The first version of the reconstruction in The Last Conversation is precisely like that. Finally, not even the use of camera as a recording device appears to be the necessary condition for calling something a moving-picture dance, because dances could be represented by use of computer-generated imagery alone, as numerous dance routines from Pixar films attest. The Last Conversation is a specific subclass of moving-picture dance that Carroll refers to as moving-picture dance reconstructions.62 Carroll bases the subdivision on the relative importance of the moving-picture component and the dance component. Films which emphasise the former he dubs moving-picture dance documentations, those which stress the latter, like A Study in Choreography the Camera, he calls moving-picture dance constructions and those in between, moving-picture dance

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Noël Carroll and Film reconstructions.63 Carroll agrees with the criticism that moving-picture dance documentations, in focusing on a single performance and a single set of performers and in presenting the dance from only one perspective, both mistake the dancer for the dance and make it difficult to appreciate and understand specific dance moves. But he points out that that is no reason to dismiss all such moving-picture dances a priori. As already noted, Astaire and Rogers numbers are effective instances of moving-picture dance documentations. Moreover, it is possible to record a dance both in a long take with deep focus and with multiple cameras and then present both versions. Given that The Last Conversation does precisely that, it serves as a practical example of how the aforementioned problems can be overcome. In other words, The Last Conversation demonstrates that the choice between variable editing and a single take, emphasised by numerous critics, is a false dilemma. Turning from how The Last Conversation figures in Carroll’s definitional work to the role it plays in his theory, it is true that, in general, extrapolating theories from films is not particularly advisable, for they regularly underdetermine what theory the filmmakers espouse, if any. In other words, most films do not explicitly articulate a specific film theory and this allows for multiple theories to be extrapolated from them. As we have seen, Hollywood films can sustain both the extrapolation and the application of a range of theories, including classical approaches, Marxist – Psychoanalytic –Semiotics, auteur theory, cognitivism, etc. The Last Conversation can hardly be said to present a theory on a par with, say, Carroll’s natural prompt recognition thesis or thought-theory. And, unlike Memento, it does not push the spectators towards a theoretical consideration of some aspect of film. But although The Last Conversation scarcely presents or invites an extensive theoretical argument, Banes’s and Carroll’s film still makes at least two clear assertions which are general enough to be counted as theoretical – the possibility of an accurate recreation of a historical phenomenon when sufficient materials are available and the documentary film’s capability to render such recreation successfully. Whereas the above quote about Banes’s recreation attempt attests the former, the very fact of choosing film as the medium to disseminate the recreation strongly implies the latter. Investigating these claims further, therefore, presents a natural bridge to Carroll’s specific arguments on the subject.

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Interpretation and Filmmaking Both propositions evince Carroll’s commitment to non-sceptical ideas of objectivity and truth. This is nothing new, for we have seen in Chapter 3 that, for Carroll, theories are not simply formally valid constructs, but bodies of knowledge which succeed because their premises are factual and because they outperform their competitors in providing explanations for existing facts. What is new here is Carroll’s idea of how objectivity and truth relate to documentary film, a point developed in most detail in relation to post-modernist theories of objectivity and truth in his ‘Nonfiction film and postmodernist skepticism’ essay. In this piece written around the time of Banes’s and his work on The Last Conversation, Carroll criticises theories which see documentary film as incapable of objectivity and truthfulness.64 According to one type of this argument, documentaries are not factual but rather fictive because they employ narrative structures.65 For instance, because The Last Conversation tells stories (of Eisenstein’s ballet and of its recreation) and because a story is different from life, it is closer to fiction than to fact. Another argument professes that objectivity is impossible because documentaries regularly demonstrate no reflexivity and always harbour political assumptions.66 Given that The Last Conversation does not recurrently address the fact that it is constructed and because it unequivocally presents its subject as true, the film conceals more than it reveals. According to the last sceptical argument, documentaries cannot be objective because they are selective.67 Under this charge The Last Conversation presents only some information about Eisenstein, Richter, Zvyagina, Banes, etc. and shows only some images of the materials used in reconstruction, which means that it is biased. Carroll successfully dismantles each of these arguments. The first claim – all documentaries are fictive – rests on the argument of a notable post-modern historian, Hayden White. According to White, narrative representations of historical events cannot be factual because narratives impose structures which are not present in history.68 For instance, an historical piece can tell the story of the reception of montage among 1920s German critics but the closure the work will offer when it reaches the year 1929 cannot correspond to anything in the reality of the historical process.69 It is true that many historical processes do not have equivalents in narrative structure, such as closure. As Carroll points out, however, some do and this is sufficient to invalidate claims that all narratives and, in turn, all narrative documentaries are necessarily fictive.

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Noël Carroll and Film A narrative history of cinema in Imperial Germany allows for a proper closure because the German Empire ends with the abdication of the German Emperor Wilhelm II on 9 November 1918. The Last Conversation, similarly, ends with the execution of the ballet’s performance because Banes’s work on the recreation was successfully completed once the ballet was performed. Carroll also makes a strong argument in favour of the view that, contrary to White, narratives do exhibit sufficient structural equivalence with historical processes to allow for factual representations of the latter. Given that both narratives and historical processes are organised around causal chains, so long as causal chains in the narrative are those that were operational in the historical process, narratives are factual. The Last Conversation, for instance, well captures the causal chain that Eisenstein turned to ballet because he was unable to continue making films or that Banes became interested in recreating the ballet once Kleiman showed her the drawings from the rehearsals. The second sceptical argument, exemplified by Bill Nichols, conflates objectivity with self-reflexivity by asserting that documentaries lack objectivity if they do not thematise their own status as artefacts and if they do not question the correspondence between the truth and what is shown.70 It is undeniable that The Last Conversation does not refer to its own production processes in the way that, say, Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) does. We do not see the cameraman preparing the shot nor is there any sustained focus on the cinematic apparatus. But to say that a documentary film cannot be objective because its production processes are not explicitly represented within the film is akin to saying that an academic article cannot be objective because there is no reference in the article as to whether it was handwritten or typed. Similarly, there is nothing strange about an implicit claim that what is shown corresponds to truth because every linguistic statement (except for irony) also implies that what is said is true. If political bias does not necessarily follow from issuing everyday statements, then political bias does not necessarily follow from implying that what is shown is true either. Although the thematisation of the process of production and the articulation of implicit appeals to truth in presentations may be used for identifying modernist and/or postmodernist artworks, or even as criteria in their evaluation, they tell us nothing about the epistemic category of objectivity.

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Interpretation and Filmmaking The last argument, typified by Erik Barnouw, claims that because selection guarantees bias it also necessarily eliminates objectivity.71 In The Last Conversation, for instance, Banes’s introduction to the drawings is presented as the sole cause for her idea of recreation. But, the sceptic might ask, who is to say that there were no other causal factors, such as the aspiration for academic career progression? The point is well taken but it still does not disqualify the fact that the drawings were crucial for the recreation to be embarked upon – even if Banes had entertained the idea of recreation earlier, she only started working on it once she learned of and saw the drawings. And, even if we do admit bias on this one point, the sceptic claims something far stronger. According to the sceptic, it is not only that some selections are biased, but that they all are. From this perspective, the choice to use one image of Eisenstein rather than another is also biased. But given that the point is to illustrate what Eisenstein looked like, the two images shown at the beginning of the film are as good as any others which are sufficiently verisimilar. In other words, although selection allows for bias it does not necessitate bias. The arguments against objectivity in documentary film are in fact embedded within broader arguments that objectivity is impossible not only in documentary film but in general – in journalism, humanities, social sciences and even natural sciences.72 The point is misplaced and suffers from essentially the same structural problem as the charges about Carroll’s methodological imperialism. In Chapter 3 we have demonstrated that Carroll’s opponents use logical reasoning to argue that logical arguments should not be applied to their reasoning – a clearly unsustainable position. Here, similarly, to make a claim that objectivity, understood as the existence of standards of describing the state of affairs acceptable to all, is impossible, the sceptic makes an argument. But that there is an argument at all means that the sceptic attempts to convey their conclusion – that there is no objectivity – as an objective fact, something that should be accepted by all according to some overarching standard of describing the state of affairs. So, they simultaneously hold that objectivity is impossible and that their claims are objective – another untenable position. All this demonstrates how well Carroll’s interpretative work and practical filmmaking not only resonate with his theoretical commitments but also provides a clue to where some of these commitments derive from. As we have seen, his first interpretations already evince the subscription to

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Noël Carroll and Film propositional factuality, formal validity, hypothesis testing and dialectical engagement with competitors that he would apply extensively to more general problems in his theoretical work. The same can be said of his anti-essentialist stances, which also first appeared in his interpretations. More recently he has also shown how interpretations can do actual theoretical work by disproving rival theories. Carroll’s filmmaking, similarly, shines light on his interest in defining the category of movingpicture dance and, more importantly, in arguing for the incoherence of sceptical challenges to the objective nature of documentary film. In other words, Carroll’s commitment to objectivity and truthfulness informs his theoretical, interpretative and practical work alike.

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6 Philosophy of Art

Carroll’s initial focus on film has shifted over the years to a more ambitious philosophy of art in general. In fact, his most cited work – The Philosophy of Horror – is an investigation of the genre across the arts rather than a monograph devoted solely to film horrors.1 But the main tenets of his engagement with film – anti-essentialism, piecemeal theorising and cognitivism – have remained crucial to his aesthetics at large as well. In this chapter, I will give a critical overview of Carroll’s main contributions to the philosophy of art – identifying narratives, the philosophy of evaluation, mass art and the affective engagement with fiction.

Anti-Essentialism As we have already learned in Chapter 2, Carroll argues against both versions of the ‘medium-specificity thesis’: first, that every art is defined by a singular medium and, second, that the excellence of an artwork hinges on whether it uses devices suited to the medium of that art. Regarding the first point, we have already seen that numerous tangible media are used in the production of paintings, sculptures and films. The same is true of architecture. We could add that literature and music do not even necessarily need a tangible medium to exist – oral literature and live performances belong to the respective arts as much as written literature 143

Noël Carroll and Film and music recordings do. Concerning the second point, it is impossible to derive a single stylistic device that is exemplary of the medium if there is no single thing that is the medium. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s insistence on immobility as the essential trait of sculpture is, for instance, belied by Li Hongbo’s paper sculptures which can stretch in all possible directions. And even if we could single out a single or a set of essential traits, then we would still be unable to explain why artworks which do not use the trait(s) in question are evaluated highly. In other words, Lessing’s evaluative dismissal of Laocoön and His Sons still does not explain why the titular sculpture remains highly regarded to this very day. As an alternative to the medium-specificity approach, Carroll offers a non-essentialist account of the arts and their evaluation alike. In the former case, Carroll has published important monographs and collections of essays on both mass art and art in general.2 In the latter, he has produced a book-length study of art criticism understood as evaluation.3 In both cases, his writings on film have been a significant influence. Since the late 1980s, Carroll has been grappling with the question of how to define art, that is, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions to count something as a work of art?4 What distinguishes novels, on the one hand, and newspapers, magazines, diaries, etc., on the other? What brings together Da Vinci’s figural Mona Lisa and Yves Klein’s minimalist Monochrome Painting? Why is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain an artwork but an identical urinal in a public toilet is not? The first definitions of art started appearing in the eighteenth century once the system of the arts become consolidated to include roughly dance, theatre, literature, music, painting, sculpture and architecture (the twentieth century would add photography and film). Already in his 1746 treatise The Fine Arts Reduced to the Same Principle, Charles Batteux proposed that the principle in question is the imitation of beauty.5 The problem with that definition was that already at the time there was an art form which was not representational – dance. The appearance of ballet that represents a story was a later development, while at the time of Batteux’s writing dance mostly involved elegant cadence steps. The theory was given its final blow with the appearance of absolute music in the early nineteenth century. The Romanticists, who were behind the absolute music programme, also developed an alternative theory of art according to which something is

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Philosophy of Art an artwork if and only if it expresses the author’s emotions.6 The theory could nicely accommodate the developments in music while being able to cover all the arts successfully addressed by the theory of art as representation. In fact, this theory played an important role in securing the art status for cinema during the silent era. Rudolf Arnheim, most notably, argued that in emphasising, interpreting, distorting, etc. what is represented through devices such as editing, colour or framing, the filmmaker is not just mechanically reproducing reality but expressing feelings.7 Even before Arnheim’s theory of film, however, various forms of aleatoric art started producing unmanageable counterexamples for general theories of art indebted to the idea of art as expression. If an artwork is produced by drawing random cut-outs of newspapers from a hat, as is the case in Tristan Tzara’s work, then how could there be any connection between what the artist is feeling and what, if anything, is expressed in the word strings produced in such a manner? The two theories which could accommodate these counterexamples were the formalist theory and the aesthetic theory of art.8 According to the former, something is an artwork if and only if it is produced so that it exhibits a formal pattern that affords an aesthetic experience – an experience of disinterested pleasure which is valuable on its own.9 According to the latter, the requirement about the exhibition of a formal pattern is dropped and an artwork is primarily that which elicits aesthetic experience.10 The problem with these theories, however, is both that there are artefacts which cause pleasures valuable on their own but are not artworks and that there are artworks whose function entails something far more than disinterested experience. Playing solitaire for the sake of playing solitaire fits the former case. Numerous religious artworks where the point is to instil reverence, the fear of God, piety, etc., rather than disinterested experience, attest the latter. Faced with the poor results of these traditional theories, many analytic philosophers of art of the second half of the twentieth century started doubting that any definition of art could be produced in terms of necessary conditions which are conjointly sufficient.11 Inspired by Wittgenstein, rather than trying to give a definition of art they instead turned to articulating epistemic conditions for identifying works of art. One such approach uses cluster concepts to argue that something is likelier to be an artwork the more of the following 10 criteria it meets: (1) possession of

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Noël Carroll and Film aesthetic features, (2) expression of emotion, (3) intellectually challenging, (4) coherence and complexity, (5) expression of complex meaning, (6) exhibition of personal perspective, (7) imaginatively original, (8) skilful product, (9) belonging to an existing art form and (10) intended to be a work of art.12 Carroll quickly marshals a counterexample which meets all the criteria except number 9 yet does not seem to be an artwork – a master chef’s dessert made for his or her lover to express his or her devotion and their love together over the years. Carroll’s alternative non-definitional approach to determining whether an artefact is an artwork or not rests on ‘identifying narratives’.13 According to Carroll, the developments in the arts since the late nineteenth century have introduced numerous works which were initially met with consternation, bewilderment and outright dismissal from the domain of art. For instance, Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, first exhibited in 1874, was proclaimed to be closer to a wallpaper than a painting.14 Similarly, the 1896 premiere of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi caused a riot, leading to the play’s ban from the legitimate theatre stage.15 For Carroll, such outrage is the result of the audiences’ and the critics’ failure to place the work in question in a lineage deriving from already existing art practices. In other words, the way in which the contested works’ artistic status was eventually secured was through an historical narrative which connected the works to the already accepted art practices. In the case of Impression, Sunrise, the piece was eventually understood as a critique of traditional realist landscape painting with the aim of suggesting the scene rather than representing it verisimilarly. In Ubu Roi’s case, the obscene, frivolous and anti-realist nature of the play was also framed in terms of the critique of existing art practices, specifically the norms of bourgeois and realist theatre. Whereas the play’s obscenity and travesty were construed as a reaction to the sentimentality of bourgeois theatre, its anti-realist sets were meant to point out that no theatre set could possibly realistically convey things like scenes of mass warfare. Such historical narratives are precisely what Carroll refers to as identifying narratives. They are accounts of how the contested artwork came to be understood as deriving from already acknowledged art practices. This usually boils down to clarifying how the author of the contested work assessed the artistic context in which they found themselves (the already acknowledged artworld) and the actions they

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Philosophy of Art undertook to change the existing practices. Given that, according to Carroll, the twentieth-century definitions of art are primarily methods for identifying artworks motivated by the necessity to accommodate initially contested artworks such as the ones listed above, there is no reason why the identification of artworks should proceed with recourse to definitions in the first place. His method does the job without any appeal to essential – necessary and conjointly sufficient – features of art. There are some issues with Carroll’s proposal, however. First, it needs to be remembered that Carroll’s method always falls back onto functional identification of artworks – the identifying narratives need to be grounded in accepted artwork practices and these, finally, go back to the pre-avant-garde era.16 In other words, the identifying narratives are regularly grounded in art practices which fulfil at least one of the functions specified by the four traditional theories of art outlined above – representation, expression, formal appreciation and aesthetic experience. It seems, then, that Carroll is perfectly happy to use discredited art theories for identifying ‘unproblematic’ works of art and his own approach for ‘problematic’ ones. This, however, not only smacks of ad hockery but unnecessarily dismisses unitary solutions proposed by others. Perhaps the most influential of these is the institutional theory of art proposed by none other than a teacher of Carroll’s and an important philosopher of art himself – George Dickie.17 Dickie recognises that artworks cannot be identified with the appeal to functional features because not only will there always be a counterexample, but there are also artefacts which are functionally identical yet only one of them is an artwork (Duchamp’s Fountain as opposed to the non-exhibited urinal). But this does not mean that defining properties cannot be found elsewhere – namely, in the artwork’s cultural context. According to Dickie, the notion of the artwork can only be understood in relation to the concepts of art, artist, public and artworld: An artist is a person who participates with understanding in the making of a work of art. A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public. A public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to understand an object which is presented to them. The artworld is the totality of all artworld systems.

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Noël Carroll and Film An artworld system is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an artworld public.18

From the perspective of Dickie’s theory, Carroll’s identifying narratives only articulate the interaction between these five interrelated concepts in more detail in the cases of contested avant-garde works – they are in no way opposed to the institutional framework Dickie outlines. It is true that, as Carroll points out, Dickie’s definition is no real definition because it is circular – artwork is defined in terms of the artworld, which is then defined in terms of artwork (as well as art, artist and public). But if we treat Dickie’s account not as a definition but as a method for identifying artworks, then it does the same job as Carroll’s identifying narratives and more. Specifically, it identifies both the initially contested avant-garde works and the accepted traditional art practices by appealing to the same contextual information. Carroll does not hide the fact that it is the flood of avant-garde works starting from the late nineteenth century onwards that is the primary motivation for his method of identifying artworks. But what if we want to determine the art status of a work which has no avant-garde aspirations? Are all instances of landscape painting art? If I take a brush for the first time in my life and produce something barely passable as a landscape, is that an artwork? Or, more generally, does membership in a form which has produced artworks immediately guarantee the member’s art status? Dickie’s method would provide some headway on the matter, specifically by asking whether the work was created with an artworld public in mind and with a reasonable dose of understanding of the art and the medium. With Carroll, the guidelines on how to resolve these questions are far less certain. Carroll says, for instance, that not all films, that is, moving images, constitute art.19 Ads, weather channel reports and game shows are among the many examples which do not. In photography, similarly, ordinary family snapshots do not count as art for Carroll either.20 When speaking of mass art more generally, Carroll writes: [M]y concern is with those items of mass culture that are more narrowly identifiable as art – such as dramas, stories, and songs rather than news programs, cooking shows, or sporting events. Since mass artworks are not avant-garde, there should be little

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Philosophy of Art problem classifying items in terms of whether or not they fall into already entrenched artforms – such as drama or song – or in terms of whether they discharge classically recognized artistic purposes like representation or expression.21

When we are not dealing with avant-garde works it seems that, although for Carroll the identification of art status does not rest on membership in a broader form such as literature or music, it does hinge on membership in a genre such as drama or song and/or the implementation of functions usually associated with art. But consider ordinary family snapshots – a class of artefacts which Carroll explicitly denies art status. They can be easily classified as one genre of photography – portraiture. Ordinary family photos, moreover, can easily fulfil both mimetic and expressionist functions – they verisimilarly depict family members and are regularly made with emotional devotion to the members in mind. Or consider run-ofthe-mill ads like those for McDonald’s which regularly have a story structure to them and are both expressive and representational at the same time. They would need to be artworks if Carroll’s above quote was any guideline but, as we have seen earlier, Carroll denies art membership to them. Carroll might try to resolve the incongruity by claiming that the above quote was never meant as a strict criterion for identifying non-avant-garde artworks. The answer, moreover, could continue that although there might not be any conjointly sufficient criteria for identifying such artworks, there are some necessary conditions for art status. Crucially, in his discussion of identifying narratives Carroll implies that the necessary but not sufficient condition for art status is that the author intends the work to be an artwork: ‘My own approach [. . .] places decisive weight on the artist’s intentions for the purpose of identifying artworks.’22 Ordinary family photos and run-of-the-mill ads are not usually intended to be artworks, which means that they are not artworks after all. But what if I make such an ad or a photo while intending it to be taken as art? Or, to return to the example with taking up the paint and brush for the first time, what if I intend the landscape to be an artwork despite having no painting skills whatsoever? Imagine that I manage to paint a shabby vista which registers, barely but still, as a generic painting? Carroll is clear that the art status of a work is independent of its merit (as is Dickie).23 In other words, there can be works of art of poor quality.

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Noël Carroll and Film But it still seems to be a stretch to confer the status of art to my inept undertaking. One would want to demand at least some skill or, as Dickie puts it, some understanding of the medium used. Or if this example still leaves some doubt, consider the fresco of Jesus by Elías García Martínez from circa 1930 which, although artistically not especially remarkable, enjoyed art status until its restoration. In 2012 an elderly amateur decided to restore the fresco but the result was so poor that the ‘restored’ version quickly became an internet laughing stock, described as ‘crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic’.24 The elderly amateur honestly saw herself doing an artist’s work at the time of ‘restoration’ but the outcome was so underwhelming that the painting was deemed completely ruined – certainly a sign of the loss of art status.25 From Carroll’s perspective, however, the (new) painting should still count as an artwork because of the amateur’s intentions. Dickie, by contrast, can dismiss the painting as an artwork because the amateur simply did not have the proper understanding of the medium she was working in. All of this suggests that intentions alone cannot count as a necessary condition for identifying artworks. One wonders, moreover, if, contra both Carroll and Dickie, intentions are a necessary condition for art status to begin with. Consider, for instance, prehistoric painted hands dating back to at least 40,000 BC, which we nowadays treat as art and regularly place at the beginnings of art histories. It is undeniable that such artefacts were made with a good understanding of the medium – one technique, for instance, entailed holding a hand on the wall while blowing pigment through a hollow tube over the hand, leaving an outline of the hand on the rock. But it seems a stretch to say that whoever made the artefact thought themselves to be making an artwork in a sense sufficiently like ours. Put differently, it is unlikely that at the time there was a sufficiently articulated concept of art for there to be an intention to make art in the first place. More likely the production of these artefacts was a part of other practices such as religious rituals. In other words, there was no artworld to situate something as an artwork to begin with. If the example of prehistoric paintings involves too much speculation about authorial intentions for it to be conclusive, consider the Lumière brothers’ early films like Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895 – 7). The Lumières were undoubtedly already skilled filmmakers at this early

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Philosophy of Art stage of film history, but it is all but certain that they never intended the film in question to be an artwork in the then traditional sense. Rather Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat was intended as a novelty highlighting the illusory and sensational power of moving images, much like the presentday demonstrations of 3D virtual reality systems.26 It seems, then, that there are artworks whose art status was conferred not only after the fact but also despite authorial intentions. In conclusion to the discussion of the problem of identifying artworks, we should also note that battles for the status of art are often not waged on the level of a single work but on that of the overall form as well. Film, for instance, won its status as an art form only in the 1920s and 1930s. Carroll is, of course, aware of this and he offers a brief account in terms of identifying narratives of how film as a new artworld system developed by fulfilling the functions of the accepted pre-existing systems such as short story, novel, theatre, painting, etc.27 Very early on filmmakers started making narrative films based on well-known plays and novels of the time, while also capitalising on the tradition of tableaux vivants or living pictures (e.g. Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 Uncle Tom’s Cabin). The problem here is, however, twofold. First, though applicable to many films either in part or in full, Carroll’s identifying narrative does not work with films like Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat. The functions Carroll has in mind are mostly narrative and/or pictorial, while the film in question capitalises on what film historians have called attraction – emphasis on a sudden shocking event such as the image of a train unexpectedly coming to life and rushing towards you rather than on absorption in a story or an image.28 Second, an identifying narrative about fulfilling storytelling functions could be employed to describe ads – those very moving images to which Carroll denies art status. Ads also owe their story structure and pictorial qualities to accepted pre-existing narrative and pictorial art systems, while their sales function can be connected to the fact that most artworks are also under pressure to sell (themselves). That an identifying narrative can be told, moreover, does not mean that the tale told reflects how a form actually became accepted as an art form. As Carroll himself knows, the historical issue with allowing film among the muses was not that it was somehow avant-garde but that it seemed to preclude proper intentionality and control over the artefact on the part of the filmmaker.29 Instead, the film was said to be nothing but an automatic

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Noël Carroll and Film recording of reality where, if there were any recognisable artmaking, it was a matter of actors performing and by no means that of the (filmmaker) recording. The status of art was won for film only after theorists such as Arnheim convincingly argued that film can fulfil traditional functions such as artistic expression. Once the status of an artwork is established, we can proceed to the evaluation of its merits. We have already learned in Chapter 2 that Carroll dismisses evaluations based on essentialist arguments. But this does not mean that evaluation on objective grounds is impossible. Carroll, in fact, argues that not all evaluation is a matter of subjective liking but that some evaluations can be grounded in intersubjectively verifiable facts. There is, however, a long tradition in the philosophy of art which Carroll does not address in his work on film but which deems objective evaluation impossible on logical grounds. The first version of the argument, going back to at least David Hume, finds that because in evaluations we are essentially dealing with taste, they must be subjective.30 The second version, and a more recent one, purports that there exist no objective critical principles.31 According to the first argument, taste is the evaluation of sensations derived from certain stimuli. For instance, eating sugar produces a feeling of sweetness which may, but need not, be evaluated positively. The fact that some people like the sweet taste while others do not means that taste is a subjective matter. The same, for instance, holds for bitterness, saltiness, sourness, etc. Some simply like a specific taste whereas others do not. Whereas these tastes pertain to the evaluation of gustatory stimuli, beauty is the name for the positive evaluation of sensations invoked by, among other things, artworks. Much like a wine taster has a developed taste for wine, so does a critic have a developed taste for artworks. But no matter how developed their palates may be, the final evaluation – the liking or the disliking of a certain sensation – is a subjective judgement. If taste is an appropriate model for evaluations of artworks, then the latter must be subjective. Carroll presents a counterargument in his monograph On Criticism.32 He concedes that on occasions art criticism is interested in identifying beauty, but points out that this cannot be all that a critic is concerned with when evaluating artworks. For instance, the wit of Joyce’s linguistic puns is surely a part of the evaluation of Finnegans Wake but their humorous

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Philosophy of Art aspect is hardly (only) beautiful. Humour cannot be reduced to beauty, even if the former does include positive evaluation of sensations deriving from artworks. This is so because humour also includes cognitive processes which are not merely perceptual. Crucially, we need to understand Joyce’s pun, whereas there is nothing to understand about the pleasure deriving from chocolate – the latter just needs to be felt.33 The point, then, is that because we evaluate numerous aspects of artworks which are not merely perceptual – Dostoyevsky’s psychological acumen, the novelty of Stravinsky’s compositions, the strength of ideas in conceptual art, etc. – we can hardly model criticism as evaluation on the liking of precepts of our taste buds. By denying that all evaluation of art is a matter of taste (which is subjective), in other words, Carroll denies that all evaluation is subjective. The second claim against objectivity in art evaluation allows that there are formally valid arguments in defending evaluations, but it denies that they are based on factual premises. For example, it is often claimed that a work of art is good because it is unified in the sense that was outlined in Chapter 5. The argument takes the form: (1) x is a unified work of art; (2) all unified works of art are good; therefore, (3) x is a good work of art. Formally, this is a perfectly valid argument but the problem is with premise (2) – it is too general. There are artworks which are unified but do not seem to be particularly good. Take a run-of-the-mill Hollywood film which is most often unified – the protagonists’ goals are clear, by the end of the film they are achieved and the couple falls in love, no loose ends are left dangling – yet it would be a stretch to say that such films are particularly good. Having identified the problems with a premise in this specific argument, the opponents of objectivity in evaluation then proceed to extrapolate that no single feature will ever constitute a marker of quality for all artworks. In other words, whatever we substitute for ‘unified’ in premises (1) and (2) (‘varied’, ‘entertaining’, ‘serious’, ‘stylistically virtuous’, etc.), the opponent will find at least a single artwork where the work’s variety, entertainment value, seriousness, stylistic virtuosity, etc. has not produced good outcomes. Carroll admits that it is unlikely that any feature could be found which would guarantee the quality of all artworks that use it. But this does not mean that this could not be done for a subgroup of artworks. As we have already discussed in Chapter 2, there is nothing wrong with arguing that a film is good because it successfully implements the features of its genre. For

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Noël Carroll and Film instance, Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, 1923) is a slapstick comedy which abounds with physical humour. Given the function of slapstick comedy, those which contain numerous instances of successful physical gags are, all other things being equal, good. Therefore, Safety Last! is a good slapstick comedy. Generally, the knowledge of the purpose of the artefact’s category provides us with criteria for determining the artefact’s goodness. Much like knowing that the function of a knife is to cut objects allows us to evaluate knives depending on how sharp they are, so does knowing that the purpose of slapstick comedies is to make us laugh through physical feats afford singling out films like Safety Last! as good slapstick comedies. At this point it may be objected that to ground the evaluation in objective terms it is still necessary to categorise the artwork objectively. According to Carroll, there are at least three intersubjective criteria for successful categorisation – structural, contextual and intentional. The first concerns clearly identifiable traits which recur in a specific category – dance and song routines in musicals, the solving of a crime in detective films, explorations of future in science fiction films. The presence of these elements is not subjective fancy but a fact open to everybody for verification. The second principle relates to historical and cultural information which may help categorisation – religious portraiture, for instance, has been a mainstay of Christian art but remains essentially prohibited in Islamic art. This, again, can be objectively ascertained from Islamic religious texts. The last criterion pertains to how the author intended their artwork to be categorised; through the artwork itself, through their statements on the artwork, through the labelling of the artwork, etc. If Shakespeare’s play makes one laugh, if Hitchcock speaks of his film as a mystery in an interview, or if Monet titles his painting Still Life with Apples and Grapes, then there is good reason to classify these works as a comedy, mystery and still life, respectively. Carroll admits that even when applied in tandem these criteria will not necessarily be successful every time. Regardless, on most occasions they will still afford effective categorisation, which is sufficient for Carroll’s larger point – at least some evaluations of artworks can be grounded in objective facts.34 In short, then, Carroll’s anti-essentialist approach to art builds on the twentieth-century lesson that no directly exhibited traits suffice for identifying artworks. Instead, it is necessary to delve into the work’s

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Philosophy of Art context. Carroll’s identifying narratives are particularly strong tools for determining the art status of avant-garde works while they arguably falter with traditional artworks and new systems of presentations, such as film. Where Carroll makes most headway is in providing a model for rational evaluation based on categorisation by demonstrating that there exists at least one such system of categorisation – genre.

The Philosophies of Arts Similar to the piecemeal approach Carroll advocated in the case of film theory, when it comes to art in general he calls for the philosophies of arts to replace the philosophy of art.35 Carroll has philosophised dance,36 theatre,37 performance art,38 music39 and literature.40 The art form to which Carroll has devoted the most attention is, of course, film. But as well as being one of the first analytic philosophers to seriously tackle film, Carroll was also among the first from the analytic tradition to devote considerable attention to the phenomenon of mass art.41 Mass art becomes a key cultural force with the emergence of the mass industrial society. Initially aimed at working masses, mass art is nowadays routinely consumed across the globe by people from all walks of life, from the unemployed and working poor to high-income and highly-educated individuals – just think of Hollywood cinema or the Rolling Stones. The art status of mass art, however, to this very day remains contested within the tradition exemplified by Theodor Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer’s work.42 Carroll’s 1998 widely cited A Philosophy of Mass Art was the first book in the analytic tradition to launch a sustained critique of the idea that mass art cannot be art because it is formulaic and because it allegedly demands little of the viewer. First, Carroll points out that numerous traditional artworks are also formulaic – Shakespeare’s sonnets, Beethoven’s sonata allegros and many Greek tragedies follow a clearly defined pattern.43 Second, there are non-demanding traditional artworks, such as Pride and Prejudice.44 At the same time, Carroll is critical of those like Walter Benjamin who have a celebratory view of mass art but do little to explain what mass art is.45 Benjamin’s notion of mechanical reproducibility, for instance, might work well for photographs and films but does not capture broadcasting forms of mass art, such as early radio or television. It is difficult to either 155

Noël Carroll and Film defend or criticise mass art without understanding what mass art is. For these reasons, Carroll has articulated and defended the following definition of mass art in a number of works since the early 1990s: X is a mass artwork if and only if 1.) X is a multiple instance or type artwork 2.) produced and distributed by a mass technology 3.) Which artwork is intentionally designed to gravitate in its structural choices (for example, its narrative forms, symbolism, intended affect, and even its content) toward those choices that promise accessibility with minimum effort, virtually on first contact, for the largest number of untutored (or relatively untutored) audiences.46

The first criterion eliminates some traditional art forms such as painting, sculpture and architecture from mass art. It is undeniable that the image of the Mona Lisa is nowadays disseminated widely through our culture. The image appears in art history books, on posters, postcards, stationary, refrigerator magnets, television, online, etc. Laocoön and His Sons, similarly, has been reproduced many times. But these mechanical reproductions are not their token instantiations in the sense that my DVD copy of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is a token instantiation of the film directed by Murnau. If somebody stole the Da Vinci painting from the Louvre and burnt it or ransacked the Vatican museums and smashed the ancient statue, both the Mona Lisa and Laocoön and His Sons would be forever lost to us, despite their images and replicas being readily available. In other words, works such as the Mona Lisa and Laocoön and His Sons are token-forms because only the original counts as the relevant artwork. This contrasts with film where even if the original negative were to be destroyed – as was the case with Nosferatu – the artwork remains in existence so long as there is a single copy of the film. In other words, films and other mass artworks are types because any instance of them – a token – is as good as any other (all other things being equal). But not all traditional art forms are token-forms. In Chapter 2 we have learned that plays are type-arts as well. For instance, each performance of Sophocles’ Antigone presents a token of the work written by the Ancient playwright. But Sophocles’ play was clearly neither produced nor disseminated by means of mass technology. This option becomes available 156

Philosophy of Art only with the invention of technologies such as the printing press. The second condition, then, allows for distinguishing between mass-produced artworks and other type-arts. The third criterion, finally, bars avant-garde type-forms produced and distributed by means of mass technologies from mass art proper. For instance, although James Joyce’s type-work Finnegans Wake was published in mass print form, it does not seem felicitous to categorise this extremely difficult novel as mass art. Instead, Carroll argues, the mass art label should be reserved for artworks which can be easily consumed by average appreciators. It is Daniele Steele’s pulp fiction rather than Joyce’s experimental writing that constitutes mass art, rock music with its harmonies rather than Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone compositions, Hollywood cinema rather than the avant-garde films of Hollis Frampton. This, however, does not mean that popular art is the same as mass art. Vaudevilles of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, for example, undeniably satisfy the first and the third criterion but fail to meet the second. Vaudeville token performances, unlike those of films, can only take place in a single place at a single time. It first must be recognised that, as Carroll himself admits, the above definition can only go so far in identifying mass artworks because a part of the first condition for an artefact to be a mass artwork is that it is an artwork to begin with.47 To identify artworks in the first place, Carroll proposes that we turn to his identifying narratives.48 I have argued in the previous section, however, that an identifying narrative can be told about an ad as much as it can be told about a Hollywood film. Moreover, I have also played the ball into Carroll’s court when it comes to articulating identifying narratives for films like Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, given that such films neither partake in the tradition of short story, novel, theatre or painting, nor were intended as artworks to begin with. The second criterion is set up in such a way as to eliminate artworks which are aimed at huge audiences, but which have only a single reception site at any given moment, from the category of mass art – for example, live rock concerts, grand-scale architectural projects and open-air theatre performances. But consider the possibility of simultaneously staging the same theatre play by two different troupes at two different locations. In the nineteenth-century American theatre circuit, for instance, it was common that different troupes would get the exclusive rights for the play in different

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Noël Carroll and Film parts of the country. Carroll would probably parry that the dissemination of the works needs to happen by means of mass technologies – having different people stage the same play at various locations simultaneously is different from a film being played at multiple locations from multiple prints. But why would the performance itself need to be technically reproducible – is it not enough that the performers are using multiple mass-produced copies of the printed text of the play (what we called template tokens in Chapter 2) in their productions? And even if we do insist that the performances be mass reproducible, consider a live performance of a popular song at a concert which is broadcast all over the world. Queen playing Bohemian Rhapsody at the Wembley Stadium in 1985 for the Live Aid concert is a mass-distributed performance of a mass artwork written in 1975, broadcast to millions of homes simultaneously. The last objection relates to Carroll’s third criterion or, as he has dubbed it, the accessibility condition – the idea that mass artworks are made intentionally to be accessible to as broad an audience as possible.49 There seem to be both mass artworks which are inaccessible and avantgarde mass artworks which are accessible. In the first case, standard film production is, to Carroll’s mind, exemplary of easily understandable mass art. But this neglects the fact that during the early years of cinema, when the storytelling film was becoming the industry’s main product, films were regularly decried as unintelligible despite the filmmakers’ best intentions. A letter from a theatre manager published in the trade press of the day evinces the crisis of narrative comprehensibility in cinema between 1908 and 1912: Many a time I have watched a new film subject projected on the screen and thought to myself: If I only knew what this or that part of the picture meant, then I could get very much more enjoyment out of the entertainment. [. . .] I think that half of the time the theater manager himself does not understand the picture as it is projected on the canvas.50

Regarding potentially accessible avant-garde mass artworks, Carroll admits the bestseller status of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses but tries to downplay it by alleging that, although people bought the novel in great numbers, hardly anybody read it.51 Carroll, however, never substantiates his hypothesis with any proof, such as reader surveys. And even if Carroll 158

Philosophy of Art were right in this specific case, there are other examples. Consider Alfred Döblin’s 1929 experimental novel Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf, often described as the German Ulysses, which became a bestseller as soon as it was published. Despite the narrative being told with constant shifts in focalisation and persistently interrupted by newspaper articles, statistics, biblical paraphrases, and so on, the novel generated a flurry of letters from the general reading public to the publisher, attesting that it was both widely purchased, read and understood.52 Or take the back-to-front running Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) discussed in the previous chapter. Despite its complex narrative structure – complex enough to prompt the viewer to, according to Carroll, philosophise the very nature of narrative – it was a box office hit. It seems, then, that there are accessible avant-garde mass artworks. In fact, one might want to argue that art house films in general – not aimed at the largest untutored audiences like Hollywood films but still commanding considerably larger viewership than avant-garde works proper – satisfy the third criterion. Ontologically speaking, Carroll argues that all mass art can be understood in terms of a type – template(token) – reception(token) relationship, where template causally generates the token. To take the example of cinema, every film is a type insofar as any of its instantiations exemplifies the film fully. The instantiations – prints, DVDs, video tapes, digital files, etc. – Carroll calls templates. These templates are tokens themselves because they occupy a singular spatiotemporal position. Moreover, each screening from the template token – from a specific DVD, a specific video tape, etc. – is a reception token instance of a given film type. So, Nosferatu is a film type, my DVD of it is its template (which is itself a token), and my screening of the DVD for my class on Murnau is a reception token instance. The same type –template(token) – reception (token) structure holds for other mass arts. Photography clearly operates in the same way as film. Mass literary artworks are types which are instantiated through templates (physical books, e-books, etc.) the reading of which constitutes reception token instances. Radio and television broadcasts are often based on recordings such as magnetic tapes, videotapes, digital files, etc. (templates) which are subsequently broadcast to multiple receivers where reception token instances take place. And even in the older cases of one-time broadcasts of, say, songs or dramas, the same

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Noël Carroll and Film type –template(token) –reception(token) relationship obtains – there it is the transmitted signal that is the template while the sound/video produced by the receiver constitutes the reception token instance. This, importantly, is distinct from other type-arts such as theatre where it is not a template that is the key causal factor in securing the reception token instance, but an interpretation. Interpretation, unlike template, is not a token but a type. The token reception instance of a theatrical play (performance), unlike that of a mass artwork, is an artwork in itself. In the case of Antigone, the performances (screening equivalents) are not based on something like a print but rather on a general recipe on how to perform – an interpretation. For instance, the director might want to use minimalist scenography, the actress playing the titular character may want to present her as a modern woman, the actor playing Creon may want to present him as a weakling, etc. This interpretation, crucially, does not necessarily have a singular spatiotemporal position. Given that, moreover, somebody may revive the interpretation after a long hiatus we are dealing with a type instantiation (the interpretation) and not a token instantiation (the template) of type artwork. Although all artworks which possess type –template(token) – reception (token) structure are mass artworks, it does not seem that all mass artworks exhibit type – template(token) – reception(token) structure. Consider pop songs and their token live performances rather than their reception token instances derived from CDs, vinyl records, digital files, etc. The latter undeniably have type –template(token) – reception(token) structure but the former appear to be of the type – interpretation(type) – reception (token) format. Live performances of songs are based on interpretations as much as live performances of dramas are. One can perform Mark Ronson’s Toxic both in a pop saccharine fashion like Britney Spears or in a funky mode like Ronson himself, Metallica can play their songs both unplugged and accompanied by orchestration, etc. and all these variants can be revived depending on the occasion. In other words, type –interpretation (type) –reception(token) structure is applicable to both mass artworks and traditional artworks. Although if my criticism is correct and there are some dents in Carroll’s ontology of mass art, we are still dealing with a well-thought-out project which seeks to define mass-produced art in terms of formal rather than social properties (such as the oft-floated idea that the masses consume

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Philosophy of Art mass art as opposed to high art which is consumed by the elites). Next to a sustained critique of the aforementioned deeply ingrained biases against mass art in the tradition of Adorno and Horkheimer, Carroll’s philosophy of mass art also offers a criticism of arguments alleging the art form’s ideological and moral failings.53 Put otherwise, despite its shortcomings Carroll’s mass art project offers a toolbox for investigating the phenomenon from perspectives ranging from ontology and epistemology to ideology and audience responses.

Affective Responses to Art Carroll has also written widely on a range of trans-medial phenomena which are at the core of audience responses to the arts from a cognitivist perspective. He has argued that human nature has a role to play in answering at least some questions in art.54 He has hypothesised how art is capable of inducing moods.55 He has devoted a whole chapter to the relation between emotion and mass art.56 He has advocated for philosophising humour in terms of non-threatening incongruities.57 He has offered a solution to the paradox of why we are afraid of horror films although the threats within them are not real.58 He has proposed an explanation of why audiences feel suspense even on repeated engagements with the same work.59 He has discussed the structure and comprehension of narrative at length and has edited the first anthology on the philosophy of narrative in the analytic vein.60 Perhaps most importantly, he has philosophised our engagement with fictional characters by seeking to clarify and provide alternatives to the notion of identification.61 It was Plato who presented probably the earliest theory of affective engagement with fictional characters. His idea from Book 10 of the Republic, that audiences appropriate the emotional traits of the protagonists, has been the mainstay of our understanding of fictional narratives and forms the core of the concept of identification. Despite the term’s longevity and popularity among professionals and the general audience alike, Carroll complains that, beyond this general understanding, identification remains heavily undertheorised. For instance, people speak of identification in such varied situations as when they simply think of a character as being ‘cool’ (e.g. Fonzie from Happy Days or the Dude from The Big Lebowski), when they wish they possessed some of the character’s 161

Noël Carroll and Film traits (e.g. Sherlock Holmes’s intellect or Ripley’s courage) or when they report roughly the same experience as the character (e.g. if, like the protagonist, they have been dumped, fired, wronged, etc.). This, however, is not what Plato had in mind. For Plato, emotional engagement with the characters involves having the same type of emotions as the protagonists. If the protagonist is afraid, then the audience member is afraid as well, if the protagonist is overcome by pity so is the audience member. Moreover, it is not only that the protagonist and the audience feel the same type of emotion but that the reason the audience feels the emotion in question is because the protagonist feels it. According to Carroll, then, the true, although rarely articulated, meaning of identification entails the ‘infection model’ – the protagonists’ emotional states cause those very emotional states in the audience.62 Carroll argues, however, that this model cannot give a comprehensive account of our actual engagement with fictional characters for two reasons. First, there are numerous occasions when we do not feel the same type of emotion as the protagonist.63 When, for instance, Marion Crane is taking a shower in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) she is metaphorically washing her sins away but the spectators, instead of partaking in her newfound absolution, are afraid for her as the ominous shadow approaches behind the screen. Or, when Bill Murray’s and Andie MacDowell’s characters in Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) finally fall in love we are pleased for them, but we hardly fall in love ourselves. Second, even when we feel the same type of emotion as the protagonist, it is unlikely that we feel it because of the protagonist.64 When near the end of Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) Ripley turns to her left and we catch a glimpse of the monster from her point of view, both we and Ripley are scared. But it is unlikely that it is Ripley’s fear that infects us into being afraid ourselves, because a shotsequence in which there were no point of view structure would have the same effect on us. After all, in the run-up to the alien bursting out of Kane’s chest there are no point of view shots, yet the effect is one of shock and fright nonetheless. In other words, the underlying reason for the emotional congruence appears to be the criterial prefocusing discussed in Chapter 2 – the marshalling of multiple stylistic devices for intended emotional affect – rather than the character’s emotions. This does not mean that there is no causal connection between the protagonist’s and the audience member’s emotional states. Characters’

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Philosophy of Art emotions are often one of the many devices used in criterial prefocusing. And although the feelings might not be of the same type, often they are of the same valence – we might not fall in love when watching Groundhog Day, but we are happy to see the film’s protagonists happy. However, we should still be careful to distinguish between such ‘vectorially converging emotional states’ and what Carroll refers to as sympathy – a general proattitude towards persons (fictional or otherwise).65 The reason is that sympathy need not be of the same valence as the protagonist’s feelings. If the protagonist is smitten by a femme fatale, he may be over the moon, but we feel worried for him. In other words, it is neither identification understood as emotional infection nor vectorially converging emotional states that best describe our emotional responses to protagonists, but sympathy. Sympathy towards characters, according to Carroll, is secured by depicting the characters in question as morally good in the broadest sense possible so that the virtues in question are shared by atheists and religious alike, by Muslims as much as Christians, by Chinese as well as Namibians. The characters are presented as just, fair, loyal, protectors of the weak, etc. It is difficult, for instance, not to nurture sympathy towards George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946) or the little Chihiro from Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001). Even anti-heroes who may appear rough and uncaring on the surface have an unshakable moral code deep down – just think of Batman or Rick from Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942). And even when we are dealing with a protagonist who appears to have no redeemable qualities, such as Tony Soprano from The Sopranos (1999 –2007), it is possible to feel sympathy for him because all other key characters are even more deplorable.66 However despicable Tony may be, he never goes as far as one of his captains – Ralph Cifaretto – to beat a girl, pregnant with his own child, to death. It comes as no surprise that when the two finally clash physically, everybody appears to be rooting for Tony. Sympathy towards the protagonists, in other words, is accompanied by antipathy for the antagonists. Having identified a number of emotional responses towards the characters – asymmetrical emotions, type-identical emotions of independent cause, vectorially converging emotions, sympathy – none of which amount to identification proper, Carroll singles out one type of response which does approach the epidemiological understanding

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Noël Carroll and Film of identification and is unique to visual arts – mirror reflexes.67 It is well known that in everyday life people imitate the facial expressions and postures of their immediate company – if an interlocutor smiles we tend to smile as well, if she frowns we do too. Even before the discovery of mirror neurons, people were aware of this phenomenon. Sergei Eisenstein, for instance, tried to make use of it when he shot close-ups of people exhibiting various emotional states that he wished to impart on the audience.68 Although not full-blown emotions, mirror reflexes are still both affective states and infectious. Mirror reflexes are clearly a part of our innate capabilities for quickly assessing social situations – they allow us to promptly construe the emotional states of our interlocutors/companions and act accordingly. In fact, an important, if not crucial, reason we are such gluttonous consumers of fiction in the first place is because, according to the traditional view, fictional protagonists provide information of relevance for real-life social interactions. By keeping track of the protagonists’ character traits and the way they behave, we learn to predict how people will act in the future and to explain their actions. The Good Samaritan, for instance, can help us forecast and account for actions of a flesh-and-blood person who is regarded to be an altruist. If somebody is in need, the altruist will help them, much like the Good Samaritan did in the tale. Carroll admits that numerous experiments in social psychology have cast doubt on the idea that it is character traits that govern people’s behaviour. Instead, social psychologists have argued that the situation is a far better predictor of people’s actions than their character.69 It was found, for instance, that sound levels and whether the subject has found a coin planted by the experimenters or not significantly influenced the subject’s willingness to help a person in need of assistance. But even if it were true that character is not a good predictor of human behaviour, Carroll argues that this still does not mean that fictions provide no social information. At the very least, they provide information on how people should behave in a given situation.70 Although helping other people may be contingent on intuitively irrelevant situational factors, such as finding a dime, the tale of the Good Samaritan still sets up the norm that one should help a person in need. Carroll’s account of different types of emotional engagement with characters undoubtedly clarifies the various responses made available to

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Philosophy of Art the audience and exploited by the authors. But as Jonathan Frome correctly observes, just because most of these reactions do not fit the epidemiological understanding of identification does not mean that they do not constitute how identification is construed in ordinary language.71 Carroll himself admits that people speak of identification to denote a plethora of distinct phenomena – from a character’s ‘coolness’ to sympathising with them. If the point is to understand how the critics and the public understand identification, then we would be better served by a theory which accounts for all these uses, rather than the one focusing on sympathy or infectious identification. Carroll, for instance, never demonstrates that anybody insists on either of the two points of Plato’s model of identification (typeidentity of emotions and contagious causality). I also wonder if sympathy with characters can really be said to rest on their (comparatively) positive moral depiction. Carroll speaks of Tony as being the least bad character in The Sopranos but that is hardly the case (Figure 6.1). Although undeniably a hardened criminal himself, Silvio, Tony’s consigliere, never has any ambitions to be the boss of the family and as such harbours no hubris comparable to Tony’s. Furio, contrary to Carroll labelling him as ‘maniacal’, is never seen as hurting anybody outside his role as Tony’s enforcer. Moreover, it is precisely because he

Figure 6.1 Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) murders the informant Febby Petrulio (Tony Ray Rossi) (The Sopranos, Season 1, Episode 5).

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Noël Carroll and Film is depicted as sensitive that Tony’s wife Carmela falls in love with him. Bobby Baccalieri is the member of Tony’s crime family who is consistently not only presented as shy and genuinely caring (he is the only married mobster not to have a mistress) but appears to be no more violent than an average man. Carmela, although undeniably tacitly complicit in Tony’s crimes, has never committed any violent crime herself. Doctor Melfi, Tony’s psychiatrist, might be complicit in his crimes by agreeing to treat someone who she knows is a gangster, but she never profits out of it personally. In fact, although she could easily have Tony take revenge on her rapist, she decides against it. All these characters seem to occupy a higher moral ground than Tony, yet it is to Tony that we are most devoted and for whom we feel the most sympathy. If Tony’s example is not convincing enough, consider Walter White from Breaking Bad (2008 – 13). After all the heinous crimes he has committed, we are still more inclined towards Walter than towards his wife Skyler (who, at worst, is domineering) or his upstanding DEA brother-inlaw, Hank. Or take Frank Underwood from House of Cards (2013 –). Even though it is revenge rather than pure ambition that initially motivates him, there is nobody as evil as Frank in his fictional universe. And yet we root for him throughout the show. It seems to me that this has less to do with morals and more to do with the fact that all these characters are charismatic. Although Silvio, Furio, Bobby, Carmela and Melfi are all morally superior to Tony, nobody comes close to his charisma. There is, similarly, virtually nobody worse than Walter in the show but there is nobody as charismatic as him either. Frank, finally, outshines everybody with his charisma, despite being a moral dwarf. This hypothesis, I believe, can also help explain why people often root for the villain rather than the hero – Loki seems more compelling than his heroic adversaries in The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012) and I would wager that most adults prefer Wile E. Coyote to the Road Runner. This chapter has outlined some of Carroll’s key contributions to the philosophy of art or, better, philosophies of art – the attempt to replace the definition of art with a method of identifying artworks, a non-normative but objective alternative to evaluation based on medium-specificity, the ontology of mass art and the theorisation of the function and types of emotional engagement with fictional characters. These contributions are by no means without problems – identifying narratives work poorly in

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Philosophy of Art distinguishing between mass products and mass art, some mass artworks are ontologically indistinguishable from traditional artworks which have performance aspects and counterexamples plague the hypothesis that the positive moral depiction secures sympathy towards fictional characters. The point of the critical attitude towards Carroll exhibited throughout these pages, however, is not to argue that he is wrong in general but to demonstrate how much critical engagement with his work can help in proposing our own solutions to various problems in philosophy of art in general and film studies in particular.

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Conclusion

Throughout this monograph, I have argued that Carroll’s work has a lot to offer to those interested in film, not only because of its clarity of expression and the strict adherence to the norms of logical reasoning, but also because of the wide applicability and testability of Carroll’s contributions to the problems of both film theory and criticism (understood as interpretation and evaluation alike). I have shown that there is no a priori reason to dismiss the analytic method from film studies because it is neither imperialistic nor incommensurable with the continental approach generally preferred by the discipline. Quite the contrary, analytic philosophy, together with cognitivism, is perfectly capable of addressing the questions of ideology broadly construed which to this day present the single most dominant research programme in film studies. I have argued, moreover, that treating Carroll solely as a theorist does disservice both to him and the discipline as a whole. Regarding the former, when both Carroll’s interpretative and practical work is considered a fuller understanding of his theoretical commitments emerges. Regarding the latter, Carroll provides a model for interpretative practice which diverges from today’s lax norms. Instead of interpretations which focus only on positive evidence, Carroll actively seeks out counterexamples which might disprove his hypothesis about the work. At the very least, the methodological advantages of such an approach to standard interpretative practice should be taken notice of. Carroll’s philosophy of art and the way in which it grows from his engagement with film, finally, deserves no less attention. For one, since Victor Perkins’s 1972 Film as Film there has been barely any work on film evaluation. The standard practice in evaluation remains either to subscribe

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Conclusion to some form of medium-specificity thesis, as classical film theorists did, or to implicitly attribute value to the films that subvert the dominant ideology, as scholars indebted to the theories of the 1970s and 1980s did. (That the work is somehow perceived as democratic also appears regularly as a tacit criterion.) Another important point is that film scholars invested in the continental tradition have, despite being interested in different reactions of various minority audiences, rarely investigated affective responses to film. Visual pleasure has undoubtedly been a key term for these scholars, but they had little to say about why we laugh at Charlie Chaplin’s slapstick comedy, why Alfred Hitchcock’s films are suspenseful or why we tend to sympathise with Tony Soprano. I would like to conclude with three things. The first concerns some of Carroll’s main theoretical commitments – anti-essentialism and intentionalism. The second relates to a part of film studies about which Carroll says little but which proves relevant for his understanding of moving images – film history. The last concerns the future of film theory. Already in his early attempts at defining the moving image, Carroll has tried to dispel potential criticism that definitions entail essentialism.1 Carroll is well aware that real definitions – lists of necessary conditions which are conjointly sufficient for category membership – are essentialist. But he argues that his definition is not essentialist because it stops short of making claims about the sufficient conditions – the conditions he lists are merely necessary. Jonathan Frome has recognised that this is true of Carroll’s earlier definitions of the moving image, but his latest definition explicitly states that the five necessary conditions – detached images, the possibility of movement, type –template(token) –reception(token) structure, the non-artistic nature of screenings and two-dimensionality – are conjointly sufficient for something to count as a moving image.2 I might add that Carroll’s definition of mass art also enumerates necessary conditions which are conjointly sufficient. This, of course, does not mean that Carroll is an essentialist in the sense that classical film theorists were. They were primarily mediumessentialists. For Carroll, the medium neither plays a role in the definition of film nor helps in its evaluation. But it still means that in a relevant sense, at least when it comes to moving images and mass art, Carroll is an essentialist. The sense being that it is possible to identify a set of features that are essential to film and mass art alike.

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Noël Carroll and Film Carroll’s essentialism in this respect should not worry us that much for a couple of reasons. First, it is the function of essentialism rather than essentialism itself that was problematic in film studies and philosophy of art. Classical film theorists grounded their theories on what they believed to be the essential properties of film. They drew inferences about film style and the evaluation of films based on the film medium’s perceived essential traits. In philosophical jargon, medium-essentialists derived aesthetic, axiological and epistemological accounts of film from its ontology. Stanley Cavell, for instance, identified film as an antidote to epistemological scepticism based on his definition of film as ‘a succession of automatic world projections’.3 For Carroll, by contrast, no crucial theoretical proposal follows from the definition of film. That the images are detached and two-dimensional, for example, in no way entails the natural prompt recognition thesis he advocates. That they are capable of reproducing movement does not mean that their aesthetic success hinges on reproducing it. Second, Carroll does not believe that all phenomena can be described in terms of essential features. He explicitly expresses scepticism that a list of necessary and conjointly sufficient conditions could be found for art. Instead of trying to define art, he argues for a method of identifying narratives which will allow us to determine whether an artefact is an artwork or not. In fact, he also believes that the dance art form cannot be defined in essential terms either.4 In short then, although Carroll does subscribe to a definitional form of essentialism in his work on film, he does not fall prey to problems plaguing the essentialist approaches preceding him – the recourse to film ontology as the basis for the theory of film. In other words, even if Carroll’s definition of moving images turns out to be indefensible (as argued in Chapter 4 and developed further here) this would have no repercussions for his theories, interpretations or evaluations. Carroll’s other theoretical commitment I wish to address here is intentionalism. Chapter 5 outlined Carroll’s brand of modest authorial intentionalism when it comes to the meaning of the artwork. Without denying the importance of parameters such as the historical context for the meaning of an artwork, Carroll advocates the idea that authorial intentions beyond those retrievable from the public context must play an important if not crucial role in exegesis. This might seem like a hard pill to swallow to scholars indebted to Roland Barthes’s or Michel Foucault’s critique of

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Conclusion intentionalism. But even those working in this vein should be aware that the debate between anti-intentionalists and intentionalists is far from settled. After all, Carroll is one of the key players in the debate.5 The goal here is not to argue for one side or the other when it comes to meaning. Rather, the point is to highlight the importance of intentions for Carroll’s research overall and to draw attention to some problems in that research on the example of Carroll’s understanding of fiction. This does not mean that Carroll’s intentionalism is always misplaced and that it should be completely overhauled by anti-intentionalism, but rather that a finer balance between the two should be struck. For Carroll, intention is not only the key constituent of meaning. It also plays a role in a variety of other aspects of the artwork, ranging from its design to its execution and reception. As we have seen in Chapter 6, it is the artmaker who conceptualises the work of art as a response to the tradition in which they are working. Based on the reactions they are trying to elicit in the audience, it is they who create the artefact by choosing from a variety of stylistic choices available or by developing new ones. And it is due in large part to their intentions that the audience members categorise the work in question and evaluate it accordingly. Citing prehistorical artworks and the Lumière brothers’ early work on film, it has already been shown that intentions are unlikely candidates for securing the art status of a work. Here it is worth adding, again contra Carroll, that intentions are not a necessary factor in determining whether a work is fiction either. According to Carroll, a film is a work of fiction if the author intends the audience to imagine whatever the film represents.6 The proposal seems enticing because determining authorial intentions about whether the author categorises their film as fiction or non-fiction is relatively easily accomplished by looking at the film’s title, its generic specifications in TV guides and specialised internet portals, interviews, press releases, promotional campaigns, and the likes. The problems arise, however, when it becomes clear that the intentionalist model for film is merely a special case of the general view on fiction. In other words, a representation is fiction according to this model if its author intends the audience to imagine whatever is represented. Otherwise, it is non-fiction. For instance, Oliver Twist is a fictional work because Charles Dickens intended it to be fictional and not because there never existed such a boy as Oliver. Similarly, A People’s History of the

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Noël Carroll and Film United States is not fictional because Howard Zinn did not intend the audience to take it as fictional. This general model fails to accommodate the status of some crucial cultural texts such as mythologies, however. Consider Hesiod’s Theogony, the genealogy of the birth of the gods, from c.700 BC. For us, Greek mythology, with the Theogony as one of its most comprehensive accounts, is clearly a body of fiction. It would be reasonable to assume, however, that for Hesiod the history of the gods (though not necessarily fact) was a matter of belief rather than make-believe. But according to the intentionalist model this makes the Theogony a work of non-fiction. The intentionalist could resolve this counter-intuitive result by emphasising that his or her definition of (non-)fiction is normative, so later imaginative engagements with a text that was initially intended as non-fiction do not matter at all. But this hardly gets at the notion of how fiction is ordinarily construed. Normative definitions of ordinary language phenomena cannot be supported by the mere fact that they make categorisation relatively easy. If they diverge substantially from how the phenomenon is usually construed, then they need to provide better reasons for the proposed redefinition. Though conceding on the matter of fiction in general, the intentionalist might point out that demonstrating that texts can migrate across boundaries between fiction and non-fiction does not evince that films can do the same. Therefore, so long as there is no proof of the latter, the intentionalist model is still applicable to at least cinema. Let us consider this objection by looking at early cinema productions based on the Bible, specifically passion plays. Given the American and European late nineteenth and early twentieth century cultural and religious context, it is safe to assume that for the greatest majority of filmmakers working at the turn of the century the Bible was a matter of belief rather than makebelieve. Following this logic most, if not all, passion plays constitute nonfiction. Siegmund Lubin, for instance, the producer of one of the earliest passion plays – Passion Play (1898) – and a convert to Christianity from Judaism, introduces his film and the accompanying lecture he himself penned by clearly articulating the intention to present the true story of Jesus Christ as recorded by the Holy Scripture: A brief, clear and vivid narrative of the birth, life, sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ is here presented under the title of

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Conclusion THE PASSION PLAY, which has not alone proven beneficial to the young in Bible classes, but has served to impress on the minds of all who are interested a better knowledge and clearer knowledge of Holy Scripture.7

But with the waning of the power of Christian religion throughout the twentieth century (which is essentially no different than growing out of mythology, be it Greek, Polynesian, Judeo-Christian or otherwise) we can say that at this point a great number of people, myself included, can perfectly legitimately call these works instances of fiction. At the very least, the intentionalist has to admit that there is place for transformation of non-fiction to fiction even in cinema. If a text intended as non-fictional can migrate into the fictional domain, then clearly (non-)fiction must be a category that hinges on something other than authorial intentions. It seems to me that the best way to approach fiction is institutionally. Rather than privileging intentions we should look at the nexus of production, promotion, exhibition and reception contexts to establish how each of these nodal points contributes to the formation of (non-)imaginative engagement with film.8 This is particularly important for early cinema where disclaimers like ‘All persons fictitious’ or labels such as ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction’ were not in circulation. In other words, though nowadays we most often know well in advance to what category the film we are going to see belongs, we cannot assume that the same institutional framework was in place during the earliest days of cinema. This brings me to my second point – the relatively minor role film history has in Carroll’s research programme. Carroll is undeniably knowledgeable about film history and history in general. He has written on the philosophy of history, the history of film theory and the importance of history for the philosophy of art.9 And he is clearly aware of specific historical techniques of visual representation such as the zoetrope or flipbooks which, although they do not seem to be covered by the ordinary understanding of film, do fit his five-point definition of moving images. Despite this, however, there appears to be at least one significant film historical phenomenon which Carroll never addresses but which has significant repercussions for his definition of the moving images – namely, benshi.

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Noël Carroll and Film Benshi were Japanese orators who for more than four decades introduced and explained films, translated intertitles, spoke dialogue lines, provided poetic commentary and, on occasions, even transformed the meaning of the screened images. During the first decade, benshi standardly gave maesetsu – detailed accounts of films to be shown – describing, at first, exotic Western locales and places (as most of films at the time were foreign imports) and, as more narrative films started appearing, summarising plot and character traits. In the wake of the Russo-Japanese War (1904 – 5) benshi started developing the art of concurrent vocal narration – setsumei – which quickly displaced maesetsu in importance. By the mid-1910s, moreover, two types of setsumei arose – a solo performance reserved for foreign films and explaining the ongoing action, and kowairo setsumei accompanying Japanese films in which dialogue lines were spoken (by one or more benshi). Under the ensuing attack of the Pure Film Movement, only the form of solo setsumei survived but such a style combining narration, commentary, and mimetic dialogue also succeeded in ushering in the Golden Age of benshi between 1925 and 1932 and in establishing the audio and visual tracks as equals. Regardless of whether they imitated character voices as in kowairo, or narrated and commented on the action as in solo setsumei, Jeffrey Dym and Aaron Andrew Gerow have convincingly argued that benshi were a key ingredient in the Japanese cinema experience from 1896 to 1939. Crucially, at least since the Russo-Japanese war, their setsumei performance together with the images screened constituted the film text.10 In fact, it has been argued that similar performances, albeit for a shorter time, were an important part of early filmgoing in Europe and America as well.11 Given that benshi and their Western counterparts were performance artists like singers, dancers or theatre actors, their performances were based on interpretations – general recipes – rather than templates – specific recordings of the work. This also means that benshi performances, like those of fellow performance artists, constitute artworks in their own right. In other words, there are moving images which appear to break even Carroll’s third condition – type – template(token) –performance (token) structure. Carroll would probably respond that here we are not dealing with a moving image proper but a multimedia artwork instead. When speaking of avant-garde filmmakers like Harry Smith who sometimes changed

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Conclusion coloured gels in front of the projector during the screening of the film as a potential definitional counterexample, for instance, Carroll argues that we are not dealing with moving images but a hybrid art form which uses moving images as one of its aspects.12 The same argument could also be applied to benshi to claim that we are dealing with a multimedia artwork rather than a moving image. But if adding other media to the moving image constitutes a multimedia work, why stop at the medium of performance and not include, for instance, the medium of sound? Why call sound films moving images and not, say, hybrid works of sound and moving images? One response might be that sound in film is placed on the same template token as the images are. The recording of sound shares the same physical medium as the recording of images – nitrate film, celluloid film, magnetic tape, CD, DVD, Blu-ray, computer file, etc. But there were sound systems known as sound-on-disc systems which used a separate template token for reproducing sound. The Warner Bros. Vitaphone system, for instance, used separate phonograph records for sound and was commercially successful between 1926 and 1931. Given that The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) was distributed on this system, Carroll would be forced to say this is a multimedia work. It seems, then, that Carroll’s dismissal of performative aspects deriving from interpretation is ad hoc rather than justified by his appeal to the notion of moving images. With all of this in mind, perhaps we can rephrase the above worry about Carroll’s unacknowledged essentialism as scepticism about the possibility of providing a successful definition of cultural artefacts, such as film or mass art. I have argued that both of Carroll’s real definitions have problems which need to be addressed. But this does not mean that definitional work, although out of fashion, is useless.13 As Carroll himself puts it, even when definitions fail they help us better understand both the external limits and the internal landscape of the field under scrutiny. At the very least, Carroll’s work does precisely that. It remains to offer a few thoughts on the future of film theory. Although far from dominant in the field, the analytic and cognitivist approaches to film theorising appear to be here to stay. With solid institutional support in analytic philosophy departments, conferences and journals, at least one learned society (the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image) and a journal (Projections) geared towards film scholars, as well as a

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Noël Carroll and Film reasonable climate within film departments, the debates on transparency, the possibility of defining the moving image, the status of fictional narrators, the relationship between film and affect, the type of visual access film fictions afford, the place of intentionality for construing meaning, etc. are bound to continue. There is also plenty of space for new research questions. One, as outlined above, is what challenges does film history pose for the cognitivist brand of film theory? Another, Carroll’s own concern, is a comprehensive theory of film evaluation which would specify not only what counts as an objective criterion for evaluation but also the relative importance of these criteria. Whether or not these questions and the more general approaches behind them will be adopted by more films scholars, however, remains to be seen. This monograph is hopefully a small contribution in that direction. What I suspect might lead to greater receptiveness of analytic and cognitivist approaches in film studies is if the scholars working within this framework devoted more attention to questions of ideology broadly construed. Although Carroll has written on the matter in a number of articles and, most notably, in his book on mass art, it is true that very few book-length studies of, say, questions of race or sexuality in film written from the analytic and/or cognitivist perspective exists.14 This is a shame not only because such studies clearly deserve to be written and because the theoretical framework for such work, as demonstrated by the idea of paradigm scenarios explored in Chapter 1, is undoubtedly available, but also because such scholarship could also be used to bridge the divides between competing camps. Perhaps the most welcoming development in film theory in recent years has been the appearance of platforms and subdisciplines in which analytic and continental approaches have started appearing side by side. Over the last two decades, the journal Film-Philosophy and its annual conference which started in 2008 have brought philosophically-inclined scholars from both camps closer together. A subdiscipline which also goes by the name of film philosophy has, among other things, resulted in edited volumes that have seen contributions from philosophers and film scholars working within the continental and analytic paradigm alike.15 The subdiscipline’s founding question – whether film can philosophise without relying on the recording and/or production of verbal arguments – has caught the attention of film scholars and philosophers across the whole

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Conclusion spectrum. Crucially, the work in this vein has clearly demonstrated that both sides can debate each other with far less vitriol than in the exchanges that raged in the 1980s and 1990s. Hopefully, there will be more of these types of interactions in the future. If so, this will vindicate one of Carroll’s main theoretical commitments – that real theoretical progress is not made simply by producing and practising peacefully coexisting theories, but by a dialectical examination of which of these theories explains more phenomena in the simplest fashion.

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Notes

Introduction 1. For a book-length treatment of the tradition see Hans-Johann Glock, What Is Analytic Philosophy? (Cambridge, 2008). 2. For the founding book of cognitivist film studies see David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison, 1985). 3. For one overview of the tradition see Brian Leiter and Michael Rosen (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (Oxford, 2007). 4. It is difficult to find a balanced discussion of the relationship between continental and analytic approaches to film studies. For a vitriolic example from the analytic perspective see Richard Allen and Murray Smith, ‘Introduction: film theory and philosophy’, in R. Allen and M. Smith (eds), Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford, 1997), pp. 1– 35. For a vehement response from the continental viewpoint see Robert Sinnerbrink, ‘Disenfranchising film? On the analytic-cognitivist turn in film theory’, in J. Reynolds, E. Mares, J. Williams and James Chase (eds), Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides (London, 2010), pp. 173 –189. 5. See Robert Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (London, 2011); Daniel Yacavone, Film Worlds: A Philosophical Aesthetics of Cinema (New York, 2015).

1

Institutional Context

1. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (eds), Post-theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison, 1996). 2. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen and Leo Braudy (eds), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 4th ed. (New York, 1992). 3. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (London, 1990). 4. See Katerina Reed-Tsocha, ‘Noël Carroll’, in D. Costello and J. Vickery (eds), Art: Key Contemporary Thinkers (Oxford, 2007), pp. 106–110.

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Notes to Pages 16 –18 5. There have also been special issues on Deleuze and cinema in journals such as Deleuze Studies, Film-Philosophy and Journal of Chinese Cinemas. 6. Interestingly, 13 of the 26 thinkers listed above also appear in Colman’s edited volume. 7. Daniel Fairfax, ‘Film, theory and philosophy: the key thinkers edited by Felicity Colman’, Senses of Cinema 57, 2010. Available at http://sensesofcinema.com/ 2010/book-reviews/film-theory-and-philosophy-the-key-thinkers-edited-byfelicity-colman/ (accessed 19 January 2018). 8. Jonathan Frome, ‘Noël Carroll’, in P. Livingston and C. Plantinga (eds), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (London, 2009), pp. 334–343. 9. Google scholar ranks journals according to the h5-index defined as the largest number h such that h articles published between 2012 and 2016 have at least h citations each. 10. Film and Philosophy, a journal focused almost exclusively on analytic approaches to the study of film, has, admittedly, devoted a lot of attention to Carroll’s work. Over the years, the journal has published symposia on three of Carroll’s anthologies: Noël Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996); Noël Carroll, Interpreting the Moving Image (Cambridge, 1998); and Noël Carroll, Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003). The journal, however, is run primarily by scholars working in philosophy departments and is a publication of the Society for the Philosophic Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts (closely connected to the American Philosophical Association). 11. Carl Plantinga, ‘Observations on the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference’, 4 April 2015. Available at http://scsmi-online.org/forum/ observations-on-the-society-for-cinema-and-media-studies-conference (accessed 19 January 2018). 12. There is, of course, no a priori reason that these studies cannot be done from an analytic or a cognitivist perspective but in practice they are most often done from the continental one. 13. Available at http://www.cmstudies.org/?page¼ past_conferences (accessed 19 January 2018). 14. Gregory Currie, ‘Cognitivism’, in R. Stam and T. Miller (eds), Film Theory: An Anthology (Malden, 1999), pp. 105 –122; Robert Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction (Malden, 2000), pp. 235– 247; Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses, 2nd ed. (New York, 2015), pp. 186 – 188; Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake, Film Theory: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Manchester, 2006), pp. 144 –147; Kevin McDonald, Film Theory: The Basics (New York, 2016), pp. 134–146. There are, however, some notable guides which address cognitivism either barely or not at all: Francesco Casetti, Theories of Cinema, 1945 – 1995 (Austin, 1999), pp. 104– 106; John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford, 1998). 15. I have looked at the 15 top ranked departments in the UK according to two ranking systems. The Complete University Guide, ‘University subject

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Notes to Pages 18 –22

16. 17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

Tables 2017: drama, dance & cinematics’. Available at https://www. thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?s ¼ Drama%2c þ Danceþ%26þCinematics&y¼2017 (accessed 19 January 2018); The Complete University Guide, ‘University subject Tables 2018: drama, dance & cinematics’. Available at https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/leaguetables/rankings?s¼Drama%2cþDanceþ%26þCinematics (accessed 19 January 2018); Guardian, ‘The Guardian’s university league Tables 2017: media & film studies’. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/education/ ng-interactive/2016/may/23/university-league-tables-2017#S390 (accessed 19 January 2018); Guardian, ‘The Guardian’s university league Tables 2018: media & film studies’. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/education/nginteractive/2017/may/16/university-league-tables-2018 (accessed 19 January 2018). There are no comparable rankings of film studies departments in the US. In fact, as Chapter 5 will argue, Carroll is one of the rare scholars who writes like this even in his interpretative work. Available at http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Film_Studies_2016-2017 (accessed 19 January 2018). I have not counted filmmaking positions such as professorships in cinematography, production or screenwriting. Available at http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Film_Studies_2017-2018 (accessed 19 January 2018). I have again excluded practical filmmaking positions. Robert Sinnerbrink, ‘Disenfranchising film? On the analytic-cognitivist turn in film theory’, in J. Reynolds, E. Mares, J. Williams and James Chase (eds), Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides (London, 2010), p. 174. Noël Carroll, Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction (London, 1999); Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Malden, 2008). Noël Carroll, ‘Postmodernist skepticism and the nonfiction film’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), pp. 188 –189. Noël Carroll, ‘Prospects for film theory: a personal assessment’, in ibid., pp. 392– 393. Noël Carroll, Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor, and Bodily Coping (Oxford, 2007), p. 1. Film historian Barry Salt reports similar experiences when trying to publish his own work: Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, 3rd ed. (London, 2009), p. i. Noël Carroll, ‘Cognitivism, contemporary film theory and method: a response to Warren Buckland’, in Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996), p. 321. Stephen Heath, ‘Le Père Noël’, October 26 (1983), pp. 63– 115. Ibid., p. 65. Ibid., pp. 115– 116. Heath also insinuates that Carroll’s criticism can be shrugged off in a single, albeit tiresome day: ‘it has been a long and dreary day writing this’, ibid., p. 109.

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Notes to Pages 23 –36 29. Noël Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton, 1988). 30. Stam, Film Theory, pp. 240–241. 31. ‘I would have liked [. . .] to have been able to begin elsewhere, not in this position from Carroll. I was working on a piece on ways of thinking about identification and the implications for cinema and ideology [. . .] but that turned out to be another issue’. Heath, ‘Le Père Noël’, p. 109. 32. Noël Carroll, ‘Address to the heathen’, October 23 (1982), pp. 150–153. 33. Ibid., p. 151. 34. Heath, ‘Le Père Noël’, p. 103. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., p. 112. 37. Warren Buckland, ‘Critique of poor reason’, Screen 30.4 (1989), pp. 80 –103; Noël Carroll, Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Criticism (New York, 1988). 38. Noël Carroll, ‘The image of women in film: a defense of a paradigm’, in Theorizing the Moving Image, pp. 260–274; Noël Carroll, ‘Film, rhetoric and ideology’, in ibid., pp. 275 – 289. Noël Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art (Oxford, 1998); Noël Carroll, ‘Film, feminism, and ideology’, in K. L. Stoehr (ed.), Film and Knowledge: Integrating Images and Ideas (Jefferson, 2002), pp. 214– 222. 39. Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and ideological state apparatuses: notes towards an investigation’, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, translated by B. Brewster (New York, 1971), pp. 127 –186. 40. Ibid., p. 158. 41. Carroll, ‘Film, rhetoric and ideology’, p. 279. 42. Carroll, ‘Film, feminism, and ideology’. 43. For more on how specific aspects of film are said to be ideological and the notion of the unified subject see Chapter 2. 44. Lapsley and Westlake, Film Theory, pp. 145 – 146. For the original criticism see Heath, ‘Le Père Noël’, pp. 98– 99. 45. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen 16.3 (1975), pp. 6 –18. 46. Carroll, ‘The image of women in film’. 47. Ronald de Sousa, The Rationality of the Emotions (Cambridge, 1987), p. 182. 48. Carroll, ‘The image of women in film’, pp. 268– 271. 49. Ibid., p. 357. The article appeared some years before Stam’s critique and is included in the collection of Carroll’s essay – Theorizing the Moving Image. 50. Noël Carroll, Art in Three Dimensions (Oxford, 2010). 51. Carroll, ‘Address to the heathen’, pp. 153, 155. 52. Carroll, Mystifying Movies, p. 108. 53. Carroll, ‘Prospects for film theory’, p. 357. 54. Ibid., p. 366. 55. Ibid., p. 358.

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Notes to Pages 38 –44

2 Film Theory 1. Noël Carroll, ‘Introduction’, in Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998), pp. 1– 16. For a detailed discussion see Chapter 5. 2. Noël Carroll, On Criticism (London, 2009). For a detailed discussion see Chapter 6. 3. Carroll, ‘Prospects for film theory: a personal assessment’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), p. 359. 4. This is not to say that there is no bad theory for Carroll, as this and the next chapter demonstrate. 5. Noël Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton, 1988). 6. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoön (London, 1874). 7. Noël Carroll, ‘The specificity of media in the arts’, in Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996), pp. 25 – 36; Noël Carroll, ‘Forget the medium!’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), pp. 1 – 9. 8. Noël Carroll, ‘Medium specificity arguments and the self-consciously invented arts: film, video and photography’, in Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996), pp. 3– 24; Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Malden, 2008), pp. 35– 52. 9. Cf. Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley, 1957); André Bazin, ‘The ontology of the photographic image’, in What is Cinema? Vol. 1, edited and translated by H. Gray (Berkeley, 2004), pp. 9– 16; Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Cambridge, 1979). 10. For an influential account see Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, 2001). 11. Noël Carroll, ‘Defining the moving image’, in Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996), pp. 49– 73; Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 53– 79. 12. The idea comes from F. E. Sparshott, ‘Vision and dream in the cinema’, Philosophic Exchange (1975) 2.1, pp. 111 – 122. 13. For a recent discussion of the digital era ushering in the death of film see André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion, The End of Cinema?: A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age (New York, 2015). 14. André Bazin, ‘The ontology of the photographic image’, in What is Cinema? Vol. 1, edited and translated by H. Gray (Berkeley, 2004), pp. 9– 16. For a more detailed discussion of this special relationship see Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. 15. Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory, p. 260. 16. Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, and The Film Sense, edited and translated by J. Leyda (Cleveland, 1965); Sergei Eisenstein, The Eisenstein Reader, edited and translated by R. Taylor (London, 1998).

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Notes to Pages 44 –51 17. André Bazin, ‘Evolution of the language of cinema’, in What Is Cinema? Vol. 1, edited and translated by H. Gray (Berkeley, 2004), pp. 23 –40. André Bazin, ‘The virtues and limits of montage’, in ibid., pp. 41– 52. 18. Cf. Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 43– 52. 19. Victor Perkins, Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (Harmondsworth, 1972). 20. Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory, pp. 175 –259. 21. Ibid., p. 212. 22. Natascha Drubek, ‘The Three Screenings of a Secret Documentary: Theresienstadt Revised’, Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 2– 3 (2016), Available at http://dx.doi.org/10. 17892/app.2016.0003.51 (accessed 19 January 2018). 23. Kendall Walton, ‘Categories of Art’, Philosophical Review 79.3 (1970), pp. 334 –367; Noël Carroll, ‘Introducing film evaluations’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), pp. 147 –164; Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Malden, 2008), pp. 192– 226. 24. In fact, even if there were a singular medium of film, the essential feature of that medium would still not entail a single dominant or ‘cinematic’ film feature. As has been noted, photographic reproduction counted as the essence of the film medium for many classical film theorists. But depending on additional premises on the nature of art it is possible to argue for different ‘cinematic’ film features. If we hold that art reveals reality, then we can argue with Bazin that ‘cinematic’ film features are precisely those which accomplish verisimilar reproduction of reality (long take). If, on the other hand, we subscribe to the view of art as expression, then we can argue with Arnheim that the ‘cinematic’ film features are precisely those which diverge from verisimilar reproduction of reality (montage, high-angle shots, low-angle shots, etc.). See Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley, 1957). 25. Noël Carroll, ‘Prospects for film theory: a personal assessment’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), pp. 357– 400. 26. Noël Carroll, Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Criticism (New York, 1988). 27. For generalisation on technologies that use renaissance perspective see JeanLouis Baudry, ‘Ideological effects of the basic cinematographic apparatus’, Film Quarterly 28.2 (1974 – 1975), pp. 39– 47. For generalisations on narrative see Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington, 1984), pp. 103–157. 28. Jean-Luc Comolli and Paul Narboni, ‘Cinema/ideology/criticism’, Screen 12.1 (1971), pp. 27– 38. 29. Revisionist historians have shown that there is no contemporary evidence of this. See Stephen Bottomore, ‘The panicking audience?: early cinema and the “train effect”’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 19.2 (1999), pp. 177– 216. 30. Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 87– 93.

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Notes to Pages 52 –61 31. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Vol. 2, edited by J. Shawcross (Oxford, 1907). 32. Baudry, ‘Ideological effects of the basic cinematographic apparatus’. 33. Carroll, Mystifying Movies, pp. 128– 138. 34. Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and ideological state apparatus: notes towards an investigation’, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, translated by B. Brewster (New York, 1971), pp. 127 –186. 35. Jacques Lacan, ‘The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience’, in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. A Reader, 3rd ed. (New York, 2006), pp. 287– 292. 36. Carroll also criticises the idea that subjects are constituted in this way to begin with. Carroll, Mystifying Movies, pp. 62 –72. 37. Ibid., pp. 142– 169. 38. For a more detailed discussion of suture see Chapter 3. 39. Barry Salt, ‘Film style and technology in the forties’, Film Quarterly 31.1 (1977), pp. 46– 57. 40. There is another theory that Carroll argues against – transparency thesis – which will be addressed in detail in Chapter 4. 41. See, for example, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting, translated by I. Montague (New York, 1970), p. 100. 42. Cf. Umberto Eco, ‘On the contribution of film to semiotics’, Quarterly Review of Film Studies 2 (1977), pp. 1 – 14. 43. Julian Hochberg and Virginia Brooks, ‘Pictorial recognition as an unlearned ability: a study of one’s child performance’, American Journal of Psychology 75.4 (1962), pp. 624 – 628. 44. A summary can be found in Paul Messaris, Visual Literacy: Image, Mind & Reality (Boulder, 1994), pp. 60– 64. 45. David Bordwell, ‘You and me and every frog we know’ (20 September 2015). Available at http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2015/09/20/you-and-me-andevery-frog-we-know/ (accessed 19 January 2018). 46. Carroll, ‘Film, attention, and communication: a naturalist account’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), pp. 10 –58; Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 108–114. 47. Ibid., pp. 116– 146, 147– 191. 48. Carroll, Mystifying Movies, pp. 209–213; Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 143 – 144. 49. Ibid., p. 123. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., pp. 147–191; Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (London, 1990), pp. 59 –96. 52. For the seminal understanding of fiction as mandated imagining see Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Cambridge, 1990). Walton’s resolution of the paradox of fiction, although

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53. 54. 55. 56.

3

also based on the appeal to the notion of imagination, is, however, different from Carroll’s. Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 158 – 160. Ibid., pp. 161– 164. Ibid., pp. 177– 182. For more details on Carroll’s understanding of our engagement with fictional characters see Chapter 6.

Assessment of Theory

1. Tom Gunning, ‘Foreword: through Carroll’s looking glass of criticism’, In Noël Carroll, Interpreting the Moving Image (Cambridge, 1998), pp. xi – xviii. 2. Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton, 1988), pp. 102 – 104. 3. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen 16.3 (1975), pp. 6 –18. 4. Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (New York, 1916). 5. André Bazin, ‘The ontology of the photographic image’, in What is Cinema? Vol. 1, edited and translated by H. Gray (Berkeley, 2004), pp. 9 –16. 6. Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in Cinema (Bloomington, 1969). 7. Commens Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce. Available at http://www. commens.org/dictionary/term/icon (accessed 19 January 2018). 8. Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton, 1988), p. 148. 9. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Cambridge, 1979). 10. Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory, p. 127. 11. Bazin, ‘The ontology of the photographic image’, p. 14. 12. For key accounts of the transparency thesis see Kendall Walton, ‘Transparent pictures: on the nature of photographic realism’, in Kendall Walton, Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts (Oxford, 2008), pp. 79 –116; Kendall Walton, ‘On pictures and photographs: objections answered’, in ibid., pp. 117 –132. For Carroll’s criticism see Noël Carroll, ‘Critical study: Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe’, Philosophical Quarterly 45.178, pp. 93– 99; Noël Carroll, ‘Towards an ontology of the moving image’, in Philosophy and Film, edited by Thomas Wartenberg and Cynthia Freeland (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 69 –85; Noël Carroll, ‘Defining the moving image’, in Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996), pp. 55 –63; Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Malden, 2008), pp. 93– 102. I discuss this debate in Chapter 4. 13. Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, p. 34. 14. Carroll, Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Criticism (New York, 1988).

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Notes to Pages 68 –75 15. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (eds), Post-theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison, 1996).  zek, Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in 16. See, for example Slavoj Zi  zek, The Fright of Real Hollywood and out, 2nd ed. (London, 2001); Slavoj Zi Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory (London, 2001). 17. Gunning, ‘Foreword’, p. xiii. 18. Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema (Bloomington, 1981); Noël Carroll, ‘Address to the heathen’, October 23 (1982), pp. 89– 163; Stephen Heath, ‘Le Père Noël’, October 26 (1983), pp. 63– 115; Noël Carroll, ‘Reply to Heath’, in Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996), pp. 343 – 359. 19. Heath, ‘Le Père Noël’, p. 66. 20. Noël Carroll, Mystifying Movies; Warren Buckland, ‘Critique of poor reason’, Screen 30.4 (1989), pp. 80–103; Noël Carroll, ‘Cognitivism, contemporary film theory and method: a response to Warren Buckland’, in Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996), pp. 321 –335. 21. Other problems that Heath does not address are the explanation of the internal structure of narrative in terms of the traversal from one equilibrium to another and the preference of psychoanalytic explanations over cognitivist ones. Whereas the former was tackled in Chapter 2 I shall discuss the latter in the section on methodological imperialism. 22. Jacques-Alain Miller, ‘Suture (elements of the logic of the signifier)’, Screen 18.4 (1977), pp. 24 –34. 23. Jean-Pierre Oudart, ‘Cinema and suture (1969)’, Screen 18.4 (1977): 35–47. 24. Carroll, ‘Address to the heathen’, p. 129. 25. Heath, ‘Le Père Noël’, p. 96. 26. Ibid., p. 95. 27. Cf. Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-believe: On the Foundations of Representational Arts (Cambridge, 1990). 28. Heath, ‘Le Père Noël’, p. 96. 29. What Heath’s phrasing appears to do is to present the feeling of being there as a counterfactual: this is what it might have been like had I been there. Given that counterfactuals entail imagining something that is not the case, we are effectively dealing with make-believe. More specifically, the feeling of being there means make-believing oneself being there. In later work, Carroll does address this possibility but in reference to the ‘imagined seeing thesis’ as developed by Walton and George Wilson rather than in relation to Heath’s ideas. Of course, the key reason is because Heath is still wedded to the notion of illusion. See Walton, Mimesis as Make-believe; George Wilson, ‘Le grand imagier steps out: the primitive basis of film narration’, in N. Carroll and J. Choi (eds), Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology (Oxford, 2006), pp. 175 – 184. Noël Carroll, ‘Introduction to part iv; film narrative/ narration’, in ibid., pp. 175 – 184. 30. Carroll, ‘Address to the heathen’, p. 114. 31. Carroll, ‘A Reply to Heath’, p. 90.

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Notes to Pages 76 –82 32. For an extensive, albeit still metaphorical, application of the notion of grammatical person to film see Francesco Casetti, Inside the Gaze: The Fiction Film and Its Spectator (Bloomington, 1998). 33. Jean-Louis Baudry, ‘The apparatus: metapsychological approaches to the impression of reality in cinema’, in P. Rosen (ed.), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader (New York, 1986), pp. 299– 318. 34. Carroll, Mystifying Movies, p. 18. 35. For the criticism of the remaining analogies see ibid., pp. 16– 32. 36. Carroll, ‘Cognitivism, contemporary film theory and method’, p. 327. 37. Carroll, Mystifying Movies, p. 43. 38. Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, p. 81. 39. Donald Davidson, ‘On the very idea of a conceptual scheme’, in J. E. Adler and L. J. Rips (eds), Reasoning: Studies of Human Inference and Its Foundations (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 986– 994. 40. Ibid., p. 993. 41. Carroll, ‘Cognitivism, contemporary film theory and method’, p. 326. 42. In his later work Buckland articulates this point much more precisely in terms of rational reconstruction. See Warren Buckland, Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions (Oxon, 2012). 43. Buckland, ‘Critique of poor reason’, p. 81. 44. D.N. Rodowick, ‘An elegy for theory’, October 122 (2007), pp. 97–98. 45. Robert Sinnerbrink, ‘Disenfranchising film? On the analytic-cognitivist turn in film theory’, in J. Reynolds, E. Mares, J. Williams and James Chase (eds), Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides (London, 2010), p. 178. 46. Malcolm Turvey, ‘Theory, philosophy, and film studies: a response to D. N. Rodowick’s “An elegy for theory”’, October 122 (2007), pp. 110– 120. 47. Baudry, ‘The apparatus’. 48. Carroll, Mystifying Movies, pp. 14 –32. 49. It has been objected that ‘what terms like “clarity” or “rigour” mean is left unclear: one must suppose an implied collective understanding by members of the [cognitivist] paradigm that certain kinds of method simply are clear and rigorous, on pain of regress’. John Mullarkey, Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image (Basingstoke, 2009), p. 55. It seems to me that the objection is misplaced. ‘Clarity’ is regularly taken to mean the avoidance of deliberate and inadvertent equivocation. ‘Rigour’, similarly, denotes the full observation of the rules of formal reasoning. 50. Ibid., p. 97. 51. Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington, 1982). 52. Carroll, ‘Prospects for film theory: a personal assessment’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), p. 359. 53. Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 7 –79.

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Notes to Pages 82 –90 54. Sigmund Freud, ‘Psychoanalysis: Freudian school’, in: Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 14 (New York, 1929), p. 673. 55. Rodowick, ‘An elegy for theory’, p. 99. 56. Ibid.  zek, The Fright of Real Tears, 57. Buckland, ‘Critique of poor reason’, pp. 87 –88; Zi pp. 6 –7. 58. For more on criticism which appeals to emotionally and politically charged vocabulary see Carroll, ‘Prospects for film theory’, pp. 365–369. Although it is true that such a strategy can be rationally analysed, as Carroll does, it is somewhat naive to think that a rational analysis of persuading by appealing to emotions will diminish the strategy’s effectiveness. 59. Ibid., pp. 385– 400. 60. There seems to be a brief reference to this possibility in Carroll, ‘Cognitivism, contemporary film theory and method’, p. 335, note 14. 61. Carroll claims that psychoanalysts are in fact masquerading interpretation as theory: Ibid., pp. 365– 362. For more on this see Chapter 5.  zek’s approach to film’, 62. Mario Slugan, ‘The rhetorics of interpretation and Zi Slavic Review 72.4 (2013), pp. 728 –749.  zek, ‘The undergrowth of enjoyment: how popular culture can serve as 63. Slavoj Zi  zek Reader an introduction to Lacan’, in E. Wright and E. Wright (eds), The Zi (Oxford, 1999), p. 14.  zek, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were 64. Slavoj Zi Afraid to Ask Hitchcock) (London, 1992), p. 260. 65. John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 167 –173. The notion of natural law, by contrast, is neither internally incoherent nor inaccessible to reason. (Whether there is such a thing as natural law is a different matter.) 66. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1970). 67. Robert Geal, ‘“Theory is always for someone and for some purpose”: thinking through post-structuralism and cognitivism’, New Review of Film and Television Studies 13.3 (2015), p. 265.

4

Analytic and Cognitivist Debates

1. ‘Symposium: Noël Carroll Theorizing the Moving Image’, Film and Philosophy 5/6 (2000/2001), pp. 86–113; ‘Symposium: Noël Carroll Interpreting the Moving Image’, Film and Philosophy 5/6 (2000/2001), pp. 143 – 179; ‘Symposium: Noël Carroll Engaging the Moving Image’, Film and Philosophy 10 (2006), pp. 151 – 182. 2. One notable debate about why people enjoy the horror genre has been between Carroll and Berys Gaut. Berys Gaut, ‘The paradox of horror’, British Journal of Aesthetics 33.4 (1993), pp. 333 –345; Noël Carroll, ‘Enjoying horror fictions: a reply to Gaut’, British Journal of Aesthetics 35.1 (1995), pp. 67– 72;

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Notes to Pages 90 –96

3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

Berys Gaut, ‘The enjoyment theory of horror: a response to Carroll’, British Journal of Aesthetics 35.3 (1995), pp. 284–290. Many essays in Daniel Shaw (ed.), Horror: Special Issue of Film and Philosophy 6 (2001) take issue with Carroll’s work on horror as well. Alan Goldman, ‘Specificity, popularity, and engagement in the moving image’, Film and Philosophy 5/6 (2000/2001), pp. 93 –99; Murray Smith ‘My dinner with Noël; or, can we forget the medium?’, Film Studies 8 (2006), pp. 140 –148. For responses see Noël Carroll, ‘Defending theorizing: response to Casebier and Goldman’, Film and Philosophy 5/6 (2000/2001), pp. 100– 105; Noël Carroll, ‘Engaging critics’, Film Studies 8 (2006), pp. 161–163. Jinhee Choi, ‘Naturalizing Hollywood?: against the naturalistic account of filmic communication’, Film Studies 8 (2006), pp. 149– 153; Carroll, ‘Engaging critics’, pp. 163– 165. Cynthia Freeland, ‘Evaluating film’, Film Studies 8 (2006), pp. 154 –160; Carroll, ‘Engaging critics’, pp. 165–169. Amy Coplan, ‘Empathic engagement in narrative fictions’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62.2 (2004), pp. 141 – 152; Berys Gaut, ‘Identification and emotion in narrative film’, in C. Plantinga and M. Smith (eds), Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion (Baltimore, 1999), pp. 200–216. For criticism see Noël Carroll, ‘Sympathy for Soprano’, in Minerva’s Night Out: Philosophy, Pop Culture, and Moving Pictures (Chichester, 2013), pp. 234 –246; Noël Carroll, ‘The ties that bind: characters, the emotions, and popular fictions’, in ibid., pp. 40 –63. Kendall Walton, ‘Transparent pictures: on the nature of photographic realism’, in Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts (Oxford, 2008), pp. 79 –116; Kendall Walton, ‘On pictures and photographs: objections answered’, in ibid., pp. 117– 132. For key criticism see Gregory Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 49– 69; Noël Carroll, ‘Defining the moving image’, in Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996), pp. 55–63; Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Malden, 2008), pp. 93 – 102; and Berys Gaut, A Philosophy of Cinematic Art (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 78 –97. For a defence and an extension of Walton’s thesis to pictures in general see Dominic McIver Lopes, Understanding Pictures (Oxford, 1996), pp. 179 –193. André Bazin, ‘Theater and cinema – part two’, in What Is Cinema? Vol. 1, edited and translated by H. Gray (Berkeley, 2004), pp. 97 –98. The reference is quoted in Walton, ‘Transparent pictures’, p. 85. Carroll, ‘Defining the moving image’, p. 61; Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 97–98. Kendall Walton, ‘Looking again through photographs: a response to Edwin Martin’, Critical Inquiry 12 (1986), pp. 805– 806; Walton, ‘On pictures and photographs’, pp. 87, note 13, 110– 111. Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 97, 98. Walton, ‘On pictures and photographs’, p. 131.

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Notes to Pages 96 –104 13. It should be noted that Walton fails to neatly delineate photographs from handmade drawings. He, for instance, admits not only that there are degrees of transparency but also that some drawings can be transparent, while some photographs can be opaque. For details see Walton, ‘Transparent pictures’, pp. 103– 105. 14. Gaut, A Philosophy of Cinematic Art, pp. 91–96. 15. Ibid., 94. 16. Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in Cinema (Bloomington, 1969), p. 122. 17. Ibid., p. 123. 18. For details see Mario Slugan, ‘Taking Bazin literally’, Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind 11.1 (2017), pp. 63– 82. 19. Carroll also articulates Bazin’s account of photography as moulding by light as a case of the preservation of similarity relations: ‘The metaphor of film stock as mould, it seems to me, specifies the way Bazin construes the identity relation between the model and the developed film image. That is, the mould “fits” both the image and the model [. . .] [i.e.] patterns of light from the image are identical with pertinent patterns of light from the model.’ Noël Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton, 1988), p. 123. 20. André Bazin, ‘The ontology of the photographic image’, in What Is Cinema? Vol. 1, edited and translated by H. Gray (Berkeley, 2004), p. 14. For the latest attempts at construing Bazin’s ontological commitments see Jonathan Friday, ‘André Bazin’s ontology of photographic and film imagery’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63.4 (2005), pp. 339– 350; and Slugan, ‘Taking Bazin literally’. 21. Goldman, ‘Specificity, popularity, and engagement in the moving image’; Alan Goldman, ‘Response to Carroll’, Film and Philosophy 5/6 (2000/2001), pp. 106– 107; Trevor Ponech, ‘The substance of cinema’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64.1 (2006), pp. 187– 198; Trevor Ponech, ‘Cinema again: a reply to Walley’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65.4 (2007), pp. 412– 416. 22. Robert Yanal, ‘Defining the moving image: response to Noël Carroll’, Film and Philosophy 12 (2008), pp. 135–140. 23. Noël Carroll, ‘Monsters and the moving image: replies to Laetz and Yanal’, Film and Philosophy 13 (2009), pp. 129–136. 24. Beta movement – the key factor in the perception of motion in television and video – already appears at 0.66 Hz. Axel Larsen, Joyce E. Farrell and Claus Bundesen, ‘Short- and long-range processes in visual apparent movement’, Psychological Research 45.1 (1983), p. 13. 25. Goldman, ‘Specificity, popularity, and engagement in the moving image’, p. 94. 26. Noël Carroll, ‘Defending theorizing’; Noël Carroll, ‘Defending theorizing II: the sequel’, Film and Philosophy 5/6 (2000/2001), pp. 110– 113; Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 76– 78.

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Notes to Pages 105 –108 27. If we end up treating holograms as films then we can simply drop the last condition. Condition one is strong enough to exclude clock figurines and other automated performances of three-dimensional objects. 28. Christian Metz, Film Language; A Semiotics of the Cinema (New York, 1974), 20 –21. For a more recent account which can also be found in the key film reader by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, see Tom Gunning, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film (Urbana, 1991), p. 21. 29. Christian Metz, ‘The impersonal enunciation, or the site of film (in the margin of recent works on enunciation in cinema)’, New Literary History 22. 3 (1991), pp. 751–752. The term used is ‘voici’ which can be translated as both ‘here’ and ‘there’. 30. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison, 1985). 31. The same argument applies when other examples are cited as fulfilling the function of subjectivity markers: exaggerated foreground, low angle point of view shot, framing devices such as keyhole image, types of camera movement which make us aware of its presence, artificial make up, montage jump cuts, punctuations such as superimpositions, and looking at the camera. For the most detailed list of examples see André Gaudreault and Franc ois Jost, ‘Enunciation and narration’, in T. Miller and R. Stam (eds), A Companion to Film Theory (Oxford, 1999), pp. 47 –48. For a more extensive critique of enunciation theory as it applies to film narrators see Mario Slugan, ‘Deixis in literary and film fiction: intra-ontological reference and the case of the controlling fictional narrator’, in J. A. Bareis and L. Nordrum (eds), How to Make Believe: The Fictional Truths of Representational Arts (New York, 2015), pp. 185– 202. 32. Noël Carroll, ‘“Introduction” to “part iv: film narrative/narration”’, in N. Carroll and J. Choi (eds), Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures (Malden, 2006), pp. 175 – 184; Noël Carroll, ‘Narration’, in P. Livingston and C. Plantinga (eds), Routledge Companion to Film and Philosophy (Oxon, 2008), pp. 196 –206; Berys Gaut, ‘The philosophy of the movies: cinematic narration’, in P. Kivy (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics (Malden, 2004), pp. 230– 53; Andrew Kania, ‘Against the ubiquity of fictional narrators’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63.1 (2005), pp. 47– 54. 33. There are, by contrast, epistolary novels like Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons which do precisely that – but then this is clearly signalled in the body of the text. 34. George Wilson, ‘Elusive Narrators in Literature and Film’, Philosophical Studies 135.1 (2007), pp. 73– 88. 35. Ibid., p. 83. 36. Although there is no a priori valid argument for the ubiquity of fictional narrators in literature, there is at least one for near-ubiquity which covers anonymous ‘third person’ narratives but excludes Dracula-like epistolary novels and dialogue-only novels. See Mario Slugan, ‘An asymmetry of implicit

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Notes to Pages 108 –117

37.

38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

43. 44.

5

fictional narrators in literature and film’, Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 7.2 (2010), pp. 26– 37; Slugan, ‘Deixis in literary and film fiction’, pp. 185– 191. Carroll, ‘“Introduction”’; Carroll, ‘Narration’; Noël Carroll, ‘Motion picture narration’, in K. Thomson-Jones (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film (New York, 2016), pp. 115– 128. Jerrold Levinson, ‘Film music and narrative agency’, in D. Bordwell and N. Carroll (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison, 1996) pp. 248– 282. George Wilson, ‘Le grand imagier steps out: the primitive basis of film narration’, in N. Carroll and J. Choi (eds), Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology (Oxford, 2006), pp. 185–199; George Wilson, Seeing Fictions in Film: The Epistemology of Movies (Oxford, 2011). Wilson, ‘Le grand imagier steps out’, pp. 187– 190. Wilson, Seeing Fictions in Film. Whether this is the case constitutes another prominent debate in analytic circles. For the position advocated by Wilson see Walton, ‘On pictures and photographs’, pp. 117–124; Kendall Walton, ‘Seeing-in and seeing fictionally’, in Marvelous Images (Oxford, 2008), pp. 117– 132; Wilson, Seeing Fictions, pp. 52 –77; and George Wilson, ‘Imagined seeing and some varieties of cinematic realism’, in K. Thomson-Jones (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film (New York, 2016), pp. 57– 75. For criticism of this view see Gregory Currie, Image and Mind, pp. 164 –197; Carroll, ‘Critical study’; and Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, pp. 108– 114. Wilson, Seeing Fictions, p. 55, italics in the original. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Cambridge, 1990), p. 60.

Interpretation and Filmmaking

1. Noël Carroll, Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998). More recently, he has published a collection of essays from the same period on other performance arts: Noël Carroll, Living in an Artworld: Reviews and Essays on Dance, Performance, Theater, and the Fine Arts (Louisville, 2012). 2. Warren Buckland, ‘The practice of filmic interpretation’, Film-Philosophy 2.1 (1998). 3. Noël Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996). 4. Originally published as Noël Carroll, ‘For God and country’, Artforum 11.5 (1973), pp. 56 –60. 5. Noël Carroll, ‘Film language: a semiotics of the cinema’, Film Comment 10.6 (1974), pp. 62 –63. 6. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Malden, 2008), p. 103. 7. Noël Carroll, ‘The cabinet of Dr. Kracauer’, in Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998), p. 17.

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Notes to Pages 117 –124 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Noël Carroll, ‘Lang, Pabst, and sound’, in ibid., pp. 92 –103. Noël Carroll, ‘The Gold Rush’, in ibid., pp. 34– 43. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 39. Buckland, ‘The practice of filmic interpretation’. Dana Polan, ‘The light side of genius: Hitchcock’s Mr and Mrs Smith in the screwball tradition’, in A. Horton (ed.), Cinema/Comedy/Theory (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 131–152. Andrew Sarris, ‘Notes on the auteur theory in 1962’, in G. Mast, M. Cohen and L. Braudy (eds), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 4th ed (Oxford, 1992), pp. 585– 588. Noël Carroll, ‘Keaton: film acting as action’, in Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998), pp. 44– 63; Noël Carroll, ‘Herzog, presence, and paradox’, in ibid., pp. 284–299. Carroll, ‘Keaton: film acting as action’, p. 45. Carroll, ‘Herzog, presence, and paradox’, pp. 298– 299.  zek’s approach to film’, Mario Slugan, ‘The rhetorics of interpretation and Zi Slavic Review 72.4 (2013), pp. 741–745. Noël Carroll, ‘Entr’acte, Paris and Dada’, in Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998), p. 27. Buckland, ‘The practice of filmic interpretation’. Noël Carroll, ‘Welles and Kafka’, in ibid., pp. 191– 202. David Bordwell, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Cambridge, 1989). Carroll would add that the situation was no better in theory in the 1970s and 1980s. Noël Carroll, ‘Mind, medium, and metaphor in Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic’, in Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998), pp. 178– 190. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (London, 1990), pp. 168– 178; Noël Carroll, ‘Psychoanalysis and the horror film’, in Minerva’s Night Out: Philosophy, Pop Culture, and Moving Pictures (Chichester, 2013), pp. 145–157. Noël Carroll, Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor, and Bodily Coping (Oxford, 2007). Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (New York, 2005). Carroll, Comedy Incarnate, pp. 5 –6. Noël Carroll, ‘Introduction’, in Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998), pp. 1– 16. Noël Carroll, ‘King Kong: ape and essence’, in ibid., pp. 17– 25. Jean-Luc Comolli and Paul Narboni, ‘Cinema/ideology/criticism’, Screen 12.1 (1971), pp. 27– 38. Originally published in October 1969. Cahiers du Cinéma, ‘John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln: a collective text by the editors of Cahiers du Cinéma’, Screen 13.3 (1972), pp. 5– 44.

193

Notes to Pages 125 –134 32. Carroll, ‘Introduction’, pp. 13– 15. 33. Noël Carroll, ‘Prospects for film theory: a personal assessment’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), pp. 362– 365. 34. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen 16.3 (1975), pp. 6 –18. 35. Barbara Klinger, ‘Psycho: the institutionalization of female sexuality’, in M. Deutelbaum and L. Poague (eds), A Hitchcock Reader (Ames, 1986), p. 337. 36. Ibid. 37. Noël Carroll, ‘Welles and Kafka’, in Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998), p. 201. 38. Noël Carroll, ‘Entr’acte, Paris and Dada’, in ibid., pp. 29– 30. 39. Crucially, this is distinct from the practice of Marxist – Psychoanalytic– Semioticians insofar as they have invented new equivocation schemes. Subject positioning is certainly a much younger metaphor than the idea of being lost in red tape. This is not to deny that there are, or that there will be, films which capitalise on the metaphor of subject positioning, for the vocabulary is certainly well known among film students (some of whom will go on to make films). But it is to point out that the notion is still not in as wide a circulation as, for instance, Freud’s unconscious. 40. Carroll, ‘Herzog, presence, and paradox’, pp. 291 – 292. 41. Ibid., p. 292. 42. Carroll, ‘Introduction’, p. 8. 43. Noël Carroll, ‘The future of allusion: Hollywood in the seventies (and beyond)’, in Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998), pp. 240– 264. 44. Carroll, ‘Introduction’, pp. 9– 10. 45. Richard Rorty, ‘The pragmatist’s progress’, in S. Collini (ed.), Interpretation and Overinterpretation (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 89–108; James Stout, ‘What is the meaning of the text’, New Literary History 14.1 (1982), pp. 1 –12. 46. Noël Carroll, ‘Interpreting Citizen Kane’, in Interpreting the Moving Image (New York, 1998), p. 153. 47. William Kurtz Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, The Sewanee Review 54.3 (1946), pp. 468 – 488; Roland Barthes, ‘The death of the author’, in Image-Music-Text, edited and translated by S. Heath (London, 1977), pp. 142 –148; Michel Foucault, ‘What is an author?’ Screen 20.1 (1979), pp. 13– 34. 48. Noël Carroll, ‘Art interpretation’, British Journal of Aesthetics 51.2 (2011), pp. 117– 135. 49. I return to Carroll’s intentionalism in Chapter 6 and conclusion. 50. Carroll, ‘Prospects for film theory: a personal assessment’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), p. 359. 51. Noël Carroll, ‘Kaufman and the philosophy of interpretation’, in Minerva’s Night Out, pp. 324– 347. 52. Noël Carroll, ‘Memento and the phenomenology of comprehending motion picture narration’, in ibid., pp. 203–219.

194

Notes to Pages 134 –139 53. Paisley Livingston, ‘Theses on cinema as philosophy’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64.1 (2006), pp. 11 –18; Bruce Russell, ‘Film’s limits: the sequel’, Film and Philosophy 12 (2008), pp. 1– 16; Bruce Russell, ‘Replies to Carroll and Wartenberg’, Film and Philosophy 12 (2008), pp. 35– 40. 54. Other scholars have produced their own arguments that film can philosophise. For a sample see Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy (London, 2006); Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (London, 2007); Robert Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (London, 2011); and Stephen Mulhall, On Film, 3rd ed. (London, 2016). 55. Another film that does philosophy, according to Carroll, is Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950). Noël Carroll, ‘Philosophical insight, emotion, and popular fiction: the case of Sunset Boulevard’, in Minerva’s Night Out, pp. 161– 182. 56. Noël Carroll, ‘Film as collage’, Film and Video Review, WNET, aired 1982, produced by Robin Leventhal; Noël Carroll and Sally Banes, ‘Dancing with the camera’, Film and Video Review, WNET, aired 1982, produced by Linda Romano; Noël Carroll, ‘Sexual poetics: new films by women’, Film and Video Review, WNET, aired 1983, produced by Robin Leventhal; Noël Carroll, ‘Film as play’, Film and Video Review, WNET, aired 1983, produced by Robin Leventhal. 57. The Last Conversation: Eisenstein’s Carmen Ballet. Directed by Sally Banes. Written by Noël Carroll. Produced by Sally Banes (Art Works Video, 1998). 58. His first theoretical investigation of fiction appears in 1983. Noël Carroll, ‘From real to reel: entangled in nonfiction film’, in Philosophic Exchange (1983), pp. 5– 43. Interestingly, his later work on non-fiction appears precisely at the time when he returns to non-fiction filmmaking with The Last Conversation. Noël Carroll, ‘Postmodernist skepticism and the nonfiction film’, in D. Bordwell and N. Carroll (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison, 1996), pp. 283 –306; Noël Carroll, ‘Fiction, nonfiction and the film of presumptive assertion: a conceptual analysis’, in R. Allen and M. Smith (eds), Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford, 1997), pp. 173– 202. 59. Noël Carroll, ‘Toward a definition of moving-picture dance’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), pp. 234– 254. 60. The Last Conversation, 05:20. 61. Carroll, ‘Toward a definition of moving-picture dance’. 62. Ibid., pp. 247– 250. 63. All three can be fictional or non-fictional (including documentary). The Last Conversation is a documentary, at least in part, because it endeavours to factually convey both the story of the dance’s recreation and the outcome of that recreation. 64. Documentary film is only a part of what Carroll treats as non-fiction. Given that the focus of this essay is on documentaries, I will speak only of them. 65. Michael Renov, ‘Introduction: the truth about non-fiction’, in M. Renov (ed.), Theorizing Documentary (New York, 1993), pp. 1 –11.

195

Notes to Pages 139 –146 66. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington, 1991), p. 195. 67. Erik Barnouw, Documentary (New York: 1974), pp. 287 –288. 68. Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, 1978); Hayden White, The Content of Form (Baltimore, 1987). 69. Cf. Mario Slugan, ‘Late 1920s film theory and criticism as a test-case for Benjamin’s generalizations on the experiential effects of editing’, Early Popular Visual Culture 14.3 (2016), pp. 215– 233. 70. Nichols, Representing Reality, p. 195. 71. Barnouw, Documentary (New York: 1974), pp. 287–288. 72. Brian Winston, ‘The documentary film as scientific inscription’, in Theorizing Documentary, pp. 53– 55.

6

Philosophy of Art

1. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (London, 1990). 2. Noël Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art (Oxford, 1998); Noël Carroll, Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction (London, 1999); Noël Carroll, Art in Three Dimensions (Oxford, 2010). 3. Noël Carroll, On Criticism (London, 2009). 4. Carroll has also edited a volume on various definitions of art: Noël Carroll (ed.), Theories of Art Today (Madison, 2000). 5. Charles Batteux, The Fine Arts Reduced to the Same Principle (Oxford, 2015); Noël Carroll, ‘Definitions of art’, in Art in Three Dimensions (Oxford, 2010), p. 43. 6. Carroll, Philosophy of Art, pp. 58 –106. One notable representative is R. G. Collingwood, Principles of Art (Oxford, 1938). 7. Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley, 1957). 8. Carroll, Philosophy of Art, pp. 107– 154, 155– 204. 9. Clive Bell, Art (London, 1914). 10. Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant), edited by P. Guyer, translated by P. Guyer and E. Matthews (Cambridge, 2000). One of the earliest defences of film as art was made from a neo-Kantian perspective: Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (New York, 1916). 11. There have been notable exceptions: George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic (Ithaca, 1974); Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, MA, 1981). 12. Berys Gaut, ‘“Art” as a cluster concept’, in N. Carroll (ed.), Theories of Art Today, pp. 25– 44. 13. Noël Carroll, ‘Art, practice, and narrative’, in Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays (New York, 2001), pp. 63 –75; Noël Carroll, ‘Identifying art’, in ibid.,

196

Notes to Pages 146 –154

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

pp. 75 –100; Noël Carroll, ‘Historical narratives and the philosophy of art’, in ibid., pp. 100 –118; Carroll, Philosophy of Art, pp. 249 – 266. John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, 4th ed. (New York, 1973), p. 323. Jane Taylor, Ubu and the Truth Commission (Cape Town, 2007). Carroll, ‘Identifying art’, p. 85. George Dickie, The Art Circle: A Theory of Art (New York, 1984). George Dickie, ‘The institutional theory of art’, in N. Carroll (ed.), Theories of Art Today, p. 96. Noël Carroll, ‘Mass art as art: a response to John Fisher’, The Journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism 62.1 (2004), pp. 61– 65. Carroll, ‘Definitions of art’, p. 48. Noël Carroll, ‘The ontology of mass art’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55.2 (1997), p. 191. Carroll, ‘Historical narratives and the philosophy of art’, p. 114. For Dickie, the authorial intentions are also crucial because under his account the artwork need not ever be presented to the public yet it will still constitute an artwork. Ibid. ‘Spanish fresco botched by amateur’, BBC, 23 August 2012. Available at http:// www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-19349921 (accessed 19 January 2018). Raphael Minder, ‘Despite good intentions, a fresco in Spain is ruined’, The New York Times 23 August 2012. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/ world/europe/botched-restoration-of-ecce-homo-fresco-shocks-spain.html (accessed 19 January 2018). Karin Littau, ‘Arrival of a train at La Ciotat: silent films and screaming audiences’, in J. Geiger and R. L. Rutsky (eds), Film Analysis: A Norton Reader, 2nd ed. (New York, 2013), pp. 18 –38. Carroll, ‘Identifying art’, p. 94. Tom Gunning, ‘Early American cinema’, in J. Hill and P. C. Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford, 1997), pp. 255 –271. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Malden, 2008), pp. 7– 34. David Hume, ‘Of the standard of taste’, in S. Copley and A. Edgar (eds), David Hume: Selected Essays (Oxford, 1993). Arnold Isenberg, ‘Critical communication’, The Philosophical Review 58 (1949), pp. 330– 44; Mary Mothersill, ‘Critical reasons’, in F. Coleman (ed.), Contemporary Studies in Aesthetics (New York, 1968); Mary Mothersill, Beauty Restored (Oxford, 1984). Carroll, On Criticism, pp. 155–163. Carroll has also developed a theory of humour: Noël Carroll, Humour: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2014). Next to categorisation according to genre, there are also other systems which could satisfy the requirements of objective evaluation, such as mode of production (e.g. Hollywood film). I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for pointing this out. Though we regularly look at elements of style such as colour, editing, etc. in a work when evaluating, it remains an open

197

Notes to Pages 154 –161

35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

question whether this is an objective evaluation. The problem here is that there does not appear to be a category of ‘stylistic artwork’ in the sense that there is a category of genre. Noël Carroll, ‘Art in Three Dimensions: an introduction’, in Art in Three Dimensions, p. 2. Noël Carroll, ‘Dance’, in J. Levinson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford, 2003), pp. 583– 593. Noël Carroll, ‘Philosophy and drama: performance, interpretation, and intentionality’, in Art in Three Dimensions, pp. 443– 457. Noël Carroll and Sally Banes, ‘Performance art/art performance’, in D. Kennedy (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance. Vol. 2 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 1019 –1023. Noël Carroll and Philip Alperson, ‘Music, mind, and morality: arousing the body politic’, in Art in Three Dimensions, pp. 511–525; Noël Carroll and Margaret Moore, ‘Music and motion pictures’, in T. Gracyk and A. Kania (eds), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music (London, 2011), pp. 456– 467. Noël Carroll and John Gibson (eds), The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Literature (London, 2016). Given that Stanley Cavell’s work does not belong to the analytic school proper, probably the first monograph-length study of film in the analytic vein is George Wilson, Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View (Baltimore, 1986). Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (Stanford, 2002). Noël Carroll, ‘Mass art’, in S. Davies et al. (eds), A Companion to Aesthetics, 2nd ed. (Chichester, 2009), p. 417. Ibid., p. 418. Walter Benjamin, ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, in H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations (New York, 1969), pp. 217– 253. Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art, p. 196. Noël Carroll, ‘Mass art as art’, p. 63. Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art, p. 198. Noël Carroll, ‘Mass art: the debate continues’, The Journal of Aesthetic Education 35.3 (2001), pp. 15 –22. W. M. Rhoads, The Moving Picture World, 22 February 1908, p. 143. Carroll, ‘The ontology of mass art’, p. 189. Matthias Prangel (ed.), Materialen zu Alfred Döblin (Frankfurt am Main, 1975). For more on the novel’s avant-garde strategies see Mario Slugan, Montage as Perceptual Experience: ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ from Döblin to Fassbinder (Rochester, 2017). See especially Noël Carroll, ‘Defending mass art: a response to Kathleen Higgins’s “Mass appeal”’, Philosophy and Literature 23.2 (1999), pp. 378– 386.

198

Notes to Pages 161 –170 54. Noël Carroll, ‘Art and human nature’, in Art in Three Dimensions, pp. 283–300. 55. Noël Carroll, ‘Art and mood: preliminary notes and conjectures’, in ibid., pp. 301– 328. 56. Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art. 57. Carroll, Humour. 58. Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror. 59. Noël Carroll, ‘Toward a theory of film suspense’, in Theorizing the Moving Image, pp. 94–117; Noël Carroll, ‘The paradox of suspense’, in Beyond Aesthetics, pp. 254–270. 60. Noël Carroll (ed.), The Poetics, Aesthetics, and Philosophy of Narrative (Chichester, 2009). 61. Noël Carroll, ‘On some affective relations between audiences and the characters in popular fictions’, in Art in Three Dimensions, pp. 329–352; Noël Carroll, ‘The ties that bind: characters, the emotions, and popular fictions’, in Minerva’s Night Out: Philosophy, Pop Culture, and Moving Pictures (Chichester, 2013), pp. 40– 63; Noël Carroll, ‘Character, social information, and the challenge of psychology’, in ibid., pp. 64–81; Noël Carroll, ‘Movies, the moral emotions, and sympathy’, in ibid., pp. 85 –105. 62. Carroll, ‘The ties that bind’, pp. 42–46. 63. Ibid., p. 43. 64. Ibid., p. 44. 65. Ibid., pp. 50– 54. 66. Noël Carroll, ‘Sympathy for Soprano’, in ibid., pp. 234– 246. 67. Carroll, ‘On some affective relations’. 68. Ibid., pp. 346– 347. 69. Maria W. Merritt, John M. Doris, and Gilbert Harman, ‘Character’, in J. M. Doris and the Moral Psychology Research Group (eds), The Moral Psychology Handbook (Oxford, 2010), pp. 355– 401. 70. Carroll, ‘Character, social information, and the challenge of psychology’, p. 72. 71. Jonathan Frome, ‘Noël Carroll’, in P. Livingston and C. Plantinga (eds), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (London, 2009), pp. 341– 342.

Conclusion 1. Noël Carroll, ‘Defining the moving image’, in Theorizing the Moving Image (New York, 1996), pp. 71 –72. 2. Jonathan Frome, ‘Noël Carroll’, in P. Livingston and C. Plantinga (eds), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (London, 2009), pp. 337 –338. The latest definition can be found in Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Malden, 2008), pp. 53 –79. 3. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Cambridge, 1979), p. 72.

199

Notes to Pages 170 –176 4. Noël Carroll, ‘Dance’, in J. Levinson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford, 2003), pp. 583 –593. 5. Cf. Noël Carroll, ‘Art, intention and conversation’, in G. Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation (Philadelphia, 1992), pp. 97– 131; Noël Carroll, ‘The intentional fallacy: defending myself’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 55.3 (1997), pp. 305– 309; Noël Carroll, ‘Art interpretation’, British Journal of Aesthetics 51.2 (2011), pp. 117– 135. 6. Noël Carroll, ‘Fiction, nonfiction, and the film of presumptive assertion: conceptual analyses’, in Engaging the Moving Image (New Haven, 2003), pp. 193– 224. 7. Lubin Catalogue Special (Philadelphia, 1905), p. 2. Capitalisation in the original. 8. In an earlier essay from 1983, Carroll, admittedly, does allow for a more institutional view of fiction according to which films are indexed as fictions or non-fictions by ‘producers, writers, directors, distributors, and exhibitors’. Cf. Noël Carroll, ‘Nonfiction film and postmodernist skepticism’, in Engaging the Moving Image, pp. 165 –192. Even under this broader account, however, the audience does not get a say in determining the status of films – an element which plays an important role under my proposal. Moreover, given that in his latest essay on the subject from 1997 Carroll explicitly espouses an intentionalist account, I take it that this is his most up-to-date view on the matter. 9. Noël Carroll, ‘Part V: the history of film theory’, in Theorizing the Moving Image, pp. 290–317; Noël Carroll, ‘Part II: art, history and narrative’, in Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays (New York, 2001), pp. 63– 156; Noël Carroll, ‘History and the philosophy of art’, Journal of the Philosophy of History 5.3 (2011), pp. 370–382. 10. Jeffrey Dym, Benshi, Japenese Silent Film Narrators, and their Forgotten Narrative Art of Setsumei: A History of Japanese Silent Film Narration (Lewiston, 2003); Aaron Andrew Gerow, Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895 –1925 (Berkeley, 2010). 11. Mario Slugan, Fiction and Imagination in Early Cinema: A New Film History (London, 2019, forthcoming). 12. Carroll, ‘Defining the moving image’, p. 69. 13. After all, I have proposed my own definition of the moving image. Given that I do not insist on either type –template(token) – performance(token) structure or on the non-artwork nature of performances, my definition allows for benshi. 14. Cf. Dan Flory, Philosophy, Black Film, Film Noir (Unniversity Park, 2008). 15. Havi Carel and Greg Tuck (eds), New Takes in Film Philosophy (New York, 2011).

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Index

24 Hour Psycho, 103, 105 39 Steps, The, 87 Adorno, Theodor, 155, 161 affect, 18, 26, 59– 62, 161–166 Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 128– 129 aid, visual, 91 –97 Alien, 61, 162 Alternating Pink and Gold, 102 Althusser, Louis, 12, 21, 28– 29 Amélie, 61, 62 Annabelle Butterfly Dance, 104 Antigone, 156, 160 Arnheim, Rudolf, 40, 43, 67 –68, 145, 152, 183n24 Arrival, 49 Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 51, 150–151, 157 Arsenal, 44 art aesthetic theory of, 144, 145 and anti-essentialism, 2, 12, 39, 143– 144, 147, 152, 169–170, 175, 183n24 avant-garde, 147, 148– 149, 151, 155, 157, 158–159, 174 –175 as cluster concept, 145– 146 definitions of, 12, 143, 144– 145, 147– 148, 166, 169, 170, 175 expression theory of, 144– 145, 152, 183n24 film as, 43, 145, 150 –152

formalist theory of, 145 and identifying narratives, 146 –149, 151, 155, 157, 166– 167, 170 institutional theory of, 147– 148 and intention, 149–151, 154, 156, 158, 171, 197n22 mass, 12, 148–149, 155–161, 166– 167 and merit, 149–150 philosophy of, 1, 2 –3, 5, 12, 15, 20, 39, 59, 62, 143 –167, 168, 170, 173 popular, 157 representational theory of, 144, 145 and screening, 43, 101, 103, 169, 174– 175 token-, 156 type-, 41– 42, 156– 157, 160 attention management, 57– 60 auteurism, 11, 118– 119, 135, 138 automatism, 91– 93, 98, 101, 151–152 see also dependence, natural counterfactual Avengers, The, 166 Back to the Future, 29, 35 Banes, Sally, 135–141 Barnouw, Erik, 141 Barthes, Roland, 21, 130– 131, 170–171 Batteux, Charles, 144 Battleship Potemkin, 44, 45 Baudry, Jean-Louis, 76 –78, 81, 86

212

Index Bazin, André, 10, 42, 43, 44– 46, 63– 67, 89, 90– 91, 98, 101, 183n24, 190n19, 190n20 Beardsley, Monroe C., 130– 131 Beetlejuice, 49 Benjamin, Walter, 155– 156 benshi, 173 –175, 200n13 Bergson, Henri, 122– 123 Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf, 159 Berys Gaut, 11, 97 Bicycle Thieves, 49 Bigger than Life, 47 Big Lebowski, The, 161 Birds, The, 87 Blood of a Poet, The, 120 Bohemian Rhapsody, 158 Breaking Bad, 57– 59, 166 Bringing up Baby, 31 Buckland, Warren, 3, 5, 25– 26, 68, 71, 76–79, 80, 81, 83– 84, 88, 113, 118, 119, 187n42

credibility, 46 –48, 66 criterial prefocusing, 61, 162– 163 criticism, see evaluation Cruising, 23, 32 Curb Your Enthusiasm, 48

Carrie, 122 Casablanca, 66, 108, 163 castration anxiety, 30– 33, 126 Cavell, Stanley, 6, 16, 66, 91, 170, 198n41 charisma, 166 charity principle, 78 –79 Chien Andalou, Un, 120 cinematic device, 43 –44, 48– 50, 62, 117–118, 137, 183n24 cinematic sequencing, 57– 58 Citizen Kane, 10, 118, 132 classical Hollywood, 54, 126 closure, 53– 54, 59, 139– 140 Cloverfield, 112 cognitive science, 6, 9, 10, 13, 55, 82, 83, 107, 161 Colman, Felicity, 16 comedy, 48 –49, 123, 154, 169 see also humour Comradeship, 117, 129

Earth, 44 Eisenstein, Sergei, 43 –44, 46, 129, 131, 135–137, 139, 140, 141, 164 End of St. Petersburg, The, 44 Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, The, 128 Entr’acte, 119, 127, 132 enunciation, 74 –76 filmic, 76, 106–107, 191n31 evaluation, 4, 11, 38, 44 –46, 48, 71–72, 113, 117, 140, 152, 176, 197n34 and categorisation, 48 –49, 50, 137, 154, 155 and classical film theory, 45, 50, 168 and cognitive film theory, 62 and Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotic film theory, 169 and medium ontology, 11, 39, 44 –46, 49–50, 66, 117, 137, 144, 166, 168–169 normative, 4, 12, 39, 43, 48, 49– 50

Davidson, Donald, 78 Death of Kumbhakarna, The, 42 deixis, 107, 191n31 Deleuze, Gilles, 6, 16, 36, 179n5 dependence belief counterfactual, 98, 100 natural counterfactual, 91 –93, 95 –97 Dickie, George, 15, 147 –150, 197n22 documentary, 12, 47, 60, 138, 142, 173, 195n63, 195n64 and fiction, 139– 140 and objectivity, 139, 140 –141 and truth, 47, 139, 140 Dunkirk, 42 Dying Swan, The, 44

213

Noël Carroll and Film objective, 4, 48 –49, 50, 12, 152 –155, 197n34 subjective, 152– 153 Exorcist, The, 122 Exploits of Elaine, 31, 32 Fatal Attraction, 24, 26, 31– 32 fetishism, 30– 31 fiction, 4, 71, 105– 106, 139, 161 and character, see identification and index, 65– 66 institutional theory of, 173, 200n8 intentionalist theory of, 171– 173, 200n8 as make-believe, 71 –72, 184n52 paradox of, 60– 61, 161 photographic film, 46– 49, 52, 54, 66, 108 social function of, 164 work-world v. game-world, 111 see also narrator fictional showing, 109–112 film history, 4, 45– 46, 150–151, 173–175, 176 film philosophy, 134– 135, 176 film representation and absence, 69– 70 code theory of, 9, 55– 56, 116 and fiction, 47 –48, 65– 66 illusion theory of, 9, 51– 52, 54, 55, 56 –57, 71, 77 –78, 89 and image, detached, 101– 103 index theory of, 10, 65– 67, 88, 90 –91, 98–100 natural recognition theory of, 9, 55– 57, 60 –61, 71– 72, 78, 82, 85, 170 of women, 27– 28, 30 –31 film theory anti-essentialist, 9, 39– 40, 42, 44, 49 –50, 169–170 classical, 9, 39, 43 –46, 48– 49, 55 –56, 62, 63, 81, 120, 168–17, 183n24

cognitivist, 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16 –20, 23, 27, 28, 31, 33, 55, 58, 62, 64, 68, 79, 81, 82– 88, 89, 125, 138, 168, 175– 176, 178n2, 178n4, 179n12, 179n14, 186n21, 187n49 definition of, 82 dialectical, 55, 85, 132, 177 and empirical research, 4, 9, 31, 82 –83 epistemological evaluation of, 7, 26– 28, 79, 81– 82, 84 future of, 175– 177 and incommensurability, 2, 87– 88 Marxist –Psychoanalytic –Semiotic, 3, 5 –7, 11– 12, 17, 21– 22, 25, 28, 34– 36, 50 –54, 67, 68 –69, 77 –79, 81, 89, 114, 118– 120, 131, 135, 138, 169, 193n22, 194n39 and morality, 12, 21, 23 –28, 34 –36 piecemeal, 2, 9, 11, 12, 50, 55, 62 and art, philosophy of, 1, 2, 3 –4, 12, 39, 59, 62, 133, 168– 169 role of, 33– 34 and scientific method, 80, 86 Finnegans Wake, 152– 153, 157 Fitzcarraldo, 128– 129 Flash Gordon, 110 Foucault, Michel, 130– 131, 170– 171 Fountain, 144, 147 Fred Ott’s Sneeze, 104 Freud, Sigmund, 6, 82, 121, 194n39 Frome, Jonathan, 165, 169 Gandhi, 71 General, The, 2, 122– 123 Goldman, Alan, 10, 103– 104 Gold Rush, The, 11, 117–118 grand image-maker, see narrator Great Gatsby, The, 105– 106 Grizzly Man, 51 Groundhog Day, 162– 163

214

Index Happy Days, 161 Heath, Stephen, 3, 5, 10, 22– 23, 24– 26, 33–34, 36, 68–78, 88, 180n28, 186n21, 186n29 Heaven and Earth Magic, 121, 124, 132 Herzog, Werner, 118– 119, 128–129, 132 His Girl Friday, 31 Hitchcock, Alfred, 30, 119, 154, 169 hologram, 40 –41, 102– 103, 104, 191n27 Horkheimer, Max, 155, 161 horror, 48– 49, 59–61, 121– 122, 161, 188n2 House of Cards, 166 Hume, David, 121, 152 humour, 152– 153, 154, 161, 197n33 identification, 13, 62, 161– 166 ideology critique of, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 – 9, 12, 18, 23, 25 –26, 28, 29 –33, 50– 51, 52, 54, 124– 125, 129, 135, 168, 169, 176 definition of, 12, 28– 29 illusion and equivocation, 54 and false belief, 51, 52, 54, 55, 71–72 and fiction, 52, 54, 186n29 and Heath, Stephen, 69, 71 –72, 74, 186n29 perceptual, 46, 51, 55, 72 and subject, 53 see also film representation, illusion theory of image detached, 41–42, 93, 95–97, 101– 102, 169, 170 digital, 40, 42, 65, 91, 182n13 handmade, 91, 93, 98 –101, 190n13 moving, 10–11, 40– 42, 51 –52, 82, 96 –97, 101–105, 112, 148, 151, 169, 170, 173, 174– 175, 200n13 natural iconic, 110

ontology of photographic, 10, 42, 64 –67, 89, 90 –91, 98, 101 stored, 11, 105 transparent, 10–11, 67, 90–98, 101, 184n40, 185n12, 190n13 imagined seeing, 109–112, 186n29 imagining, see make-believe imperialism, methodological, 3, 7, 9– 10, 25 –26, 79– 89 Impression, Sunrise, 146 information, egocentric, see image, detached institutional analysis, 2, 8, 14, 35–36, 43 and academic seniority, 22– 23 and conservatism, 23 –26 and epistemology, 14, 26 –28, 35–36 and importance, 63– 64, 68 and job market, 18 –19 and journal relevance, 16 and morality, 23– 28 and publication records, 15–16 and school of thought, 20–22 and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 17–18 and teaching curriculum, 18–19 and textbooks, 18 intentionalism, 130–133, 149–151, 156, 169, 170– 173, 176, 197n22, 200n8 interpretation (performative), 41–42, 160, 174, 175 interpretation (scholarly), 2, 4, 5, 9, 11, 16, 19, 38, 113– 114, 168, 180n16 and anti-essentialism, 117– 119, 120, 142 as appreciation, 11, 38, 113– 114, 117– 119, 121, 124, 129–130 and classical film theory, 11, 120 and cognitivist film theory, 11– 12, 114, 116, 120, 121 –122, 131 –134, 135, 141–142 and counterexample, 11–12, 114, 120, 125–126, 131, 141–142, 168

215

Noël Carroll and Film and equivocation, 3, 9, 126–128, 194n39 and evaluation, 11, 38, 113–114, 117 as explication, 11, 114, 123–124, 128 and intention, 130–133 and logical reasoning, 114 –117, 120, 124– 127, 130, 131 –134, 135, 141– 142 and Marxist – Psychoanalytic – Semiotic film theory, 3, 11 –12, 50 –51, 53, 73, 114, 118, 119 –120, 126– 127, 131, 135, 188n61 and psychoanalysis, 121–122 and reception, 130 role of, 11, 129–131 symptomatic, 124 –125, 128 truth in, 130 and unified artwork, 2, 117– 120, 124– 125, 132 It’s a Wonderful Life, 163 Ivan the Terrible, Part II, 136 Jazz Singer, The, 175 Kaufman, Andy, 132–133 Keaton, Buster, 117, 118– 119, 122–123, 129 Kieślowski, Krzysztof, 87 kinetoscope, 104–105 King Kong, 124, 132 Klinger, Barbara, 126– 127 Kuhn, Thomas, 87 Lacan, Jacques, 5– 6, 21, 36, 86, 87 Lady from Shanghai, The, 93 Land of Silence and Darkness, 128– 129 Laocoön and His Sons, 43, 144, 156 Last Conversation: Eisenstein’s Carmen Ballet, The, 135– 141 Last Year at Marienbad, 49 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 39, 43, 45, 144 Levinson, Jerrold, 108 Lewin, Bertram, 76– 77, 83

Lichtspiel: Opus 1, 101–102, 103 logical reasoning, 2, 6, 7 – 8, 23– 24, 35, 80–82, 84, 88, 114, 116, 130, 141, 168 circularity in, 101, 102, 148 clarity in, 1, 9, 10, 14, 36, 78, 79, 81, 89, 168, 187n49 equivocation in, see logical reasoning, formal validity in fallacy in, see logical reasoning, formal validity in formal validity in, 8, 9, 48, 53 –54, 68–71, 73, 76, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 89, 126 –128, 187n49, 194n39 and inductive analogy, 76–77, 81 –82, 86 and interpretation, see interpretation, and logical reasoning and ordinary language, 71, 72, 80, 95, 97, 102, 109, 165, 172, 173 and premise 36, 53, 54, 77, 82, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 114– 116, 117, 120, 126, 131, 139, 153, 183n24 and rhetoric, 2, 7– 8, 9, 23 –28, 32 –34, 79 and slippery slope argument, 91 –95 M, 117 make-believe, 48, 61, 71– 72, 108 –112, 184n52, 186n29 Maniac Chase, 45 Man on the Moon, 132 Man on Wire, 51 Man with a Movie Camera, 140 medium specificity, 9, 11, 12, 39 –40, 43–45, 48, 82, 137, 143–144, 166, 168–169 Memento, 134– 135, 159 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 2, 123 mirror phase, 85, 126 Mission: Impossible, 110 Modern Times, 49

216

Index continental, 1 – 2, 3 –8, 9 –10, 14, 15 –21, 33–36, 38, 62, 73, 74, 106– 107, 122– 123, 168, 169, 176– 177, 178n3, 178n4, 179n12 film, 6, 134– 135, 176– 177 of language, 78 of mind, 31 and scientific method, 80 Plan 9 from Outer Space, 52 Plato, 161–162, 165 Poetic Justice, 41 Polan, Dana, 118 Pride and Prejudice, 155 Psycho, 61, 126– 127, 162 psychoanalysis, 6, 9, 15, 28, 30– 31, 35, 50, 53, 55, 69, 76 –77, 79, 81, 83– 89, 118, 119, 121– 122, 125–126, 198n21 as science, 82, 84– 85 as theory, 86

Mona Lisa, 144, 156 Monochrome Painting, 144 Mother, 44 movie, 57 moving-picture dance, 135, 137– 138 Mr. & Mrs. Smith, 118 Mulvey, Laura, 30 –32, 64, 126 Münsterberg, Hugo, 64, 196n10 Nanook of the North, 44 narration, 30, 53–54, 57, 58–59, 69–70, 90, 129, 134, 139– 140, 158–159, 174, 183n27, 186n21 narrator, 10– 11, 105– 110, 112, 191n31, 191n36 Nichols, Bill, 140 non-fiction, 4, 65– 66, 72, 135, 171–173, 195n58, 195n63, 195n64 see also documentary Nosferatu, 44 –45, 156, 159 Nosferatu the Vampyre, 128 Office, The, 110, 112 Oliver Twist, 171 One Second in Montreal, 41 paradigm scenario, 31 –32, 176 Parks and Recreation, 112 Passion Play, 172– 173 Peirce, C.S., 65 Perils of Pauline, 31, 32 perspective, renaissance, 52 –53, 54, 73–74, 183n27 Perkins, Victor, 45– 48, 66, 67 –68, 168 philosophy analytic, 1 – 2, 3– 8, 9 –10, 14, 15– 21, 23, 26, 28, 31, 33, 38, 39, 59, 62, 67, 79– 84, 87, 90– 112, 114, 133, 155, 161, 168, 175– 177, 178n1, 178n4, 178n10, 179n12, 192n42, 198n41 of art, 1, 2 –3, 12– 13, 15, 143– 167, 168, 170

Real, the, 87 reality impression of, 72, 76 reproduction of, 46– 47, 51, 62, 65, 145, 151–152, 183n24 virtual, 151 Red Desert, The, 46– 47 representation, visual, see image Rodowick, D.N., 80, 82 –83 Safety Last!, 154 Sarris, Andrew, 118–119 Satanic Verses, 158– 159 screen, 103–105 Seinfeld, 48 shadow play, 40, 41– 42, 104, 105, 109 Siege, The, 24, 32 sign icon, 65 index, 65 –66, 98– 100 symbol, 65 Sopranos, The, 53, 163, 165 Spellbound, 122

217

Noël Carroll and Film Spirited Away, 163 Stam, Robert, 18, 23– 24, 26, 31, 181n49 Sternberg, Josef von, 30 Still Life with Apples and Grapes, 154 Strike, 44 Stroszek, 128 Study in Choreography for Camera, A, 137–138 subject formation of, 11, 28, 29, 86, 184n36 positioning of, 50, 52– 53, 54, 69, 73, 75, 135, 194n39 rational v. irrational, 5 –6, 81 –82, 86 split in, 74– 76 Sunset Boulevard, 195n55 Superbad, 49 suspension of disbelief, 52, 71 see also illusion, and fiction suture, 50, 53 –54, 69– 71, 73, 76, 84 sympathy, 62, 163, 165– 167 Taxi, 132 template, 41– 42, 101– 102, 158– 160, 169, 174, 175, 200n13 Terezin: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area, 47 Testament of Dr Mabuse, The, 101– 103 Theogony, 172 Thin Red Line, The, 31 thought theory, 61, 72, 138

token, 41– 42, 101– 102, 156– 160, 169, 174, 175, 200n13 Toxic, 160 transparency thesis, see image, transparent Trial, The, 120, 127, 128, 131, 132 Turvey, Malcolm, 80 type, 41–42, 101– 102, 156– 157, 159–160, 169, 174, 200n13 Ubu Roi, 146 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 151 verisimilitude, 47– 48, 66, 141, 146, 149, 183n24 voyeurism, 30 –31 Walton, Kendall, 10, 48, 67, 91– 98, 101, 111, 184n52, 185n12, 186n29, 190n13, 192n42 Waterer Watered, The, 45 Wheel, The, 127 White, Hayden, 139– 140 Wilson, George, 10, 11, 108 –112, 186n29, 192n42, 198n41 Wimsatt, William Kurtz, 130– 131 Wollen, Peter, 65– 66, 98 Woyzeck, 128 Yanal, Robert, 10, 101–102 Young Mr. Lincoln, 124– 125  zek, Slavoj, 7, 16, 19, 119 Zi

218