Language, Metaphor & Film

1. Language, Metaphor& Film East & West in Film & Print

2. Basic Concepts Language & Truth • Language is extremely imprecise • Language at best approximates reality • It is a system of signs (signifiers) that represent or connote “meaning” (signified) • Words work best at describing objects that can be verified by the senses • Words become less accurate and more metaphorical when attempting to describe other spheres of reality THE MEANING OF MEANING

3. Classical and “Modern” View Two Views of Language • Idealists • Romanticists • Mystics • Archetypal SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIER THE MEANING OF MEANING

4. Classical View Plato METAPHYSICS The Ideal • The world of "forms“ or ideals comprehensible by the use of the intellect or understanding (universals that are the referents of general concepts and truths) The Real • The perceptual world of “imperfect copies” of these universals; the world of illusions and particulars (never see the absolute).

5. Classical View Ralph Waldo Emerson LANGUAGE (1849) 1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE

6. Classical View (Platonic) Ralph Waldo Emerson LANGUAGE (1849) “Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind...We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature.” NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE

7. Classical View (Platonic) Ralph Waldo Emerson LANGUAGE (1849) “It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope.” NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE

8. Classical View (Platonic) Ralph Waldo Emerson LANGUAGE (1849) “The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.” NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE

9. Basic Concepts The Power of Metaphor Metaphor is the basis of language and thought. THE MEANING OF MEANING

10. Postmodern The Postmodern View: There are no absolute truths. THE MEANING OF MEANING

11. Postmodern Two Views of Language • Idealists • Romanticists • Mystics • Archetypal SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIER • Postmodernists • Poststructuralists • Constructivists THE MEANING OF MEANING

12. Postmodern View The Power of Metaphor All we can say about anything is that it is sort of like this... THE MEANING OF MEANING

13. Postmodern View The Power of Metaphor Evolution is like a tree… The atom is like the solar system… Melancholy is like the color blue… Sin is Iike a stain on a white cloth… THE MEANING OF MEANING

14. Basic Concepts Postmodern View The Power of Metaphor We can never say exactly what it is like. We can never get at the absolute truth. There are no absolute signifieds. All we can do is use signifiers that have meaning only in reference to other signifiers. THE MEANING OF MEANING

15. Power of Metaphor Postmodern View Robert Frost EDUCATION BY POETRY “I have wanted in late years to go further and further in making metaphor the whole of thinking." METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING

16. Power of Metaphor T. S. Eliot OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE (1919) “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." EVOKING OF EMOTIONS

17. Power of Metaphor Postmodern View Freiderich Nietzche WHAT IS TRUTH? “What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors..." All philosophies rest on the shifting texture of figurative language. METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING

18. Power of Metaphor Postmodern View Milan Kundera “Metaphor is a means of grasping, through instantaneous revelation, the ungraspable essence of things.” METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING

19. The Power of the Cinematic Image “ In Blue Kieslowski is attempting to render complex and difficult emotional states and situations from within the confines of the cinematic language he has at his disposal. Indeed, I would certainly contend that he stretches that language as far as possible so as to open the ground of new cinematic vistas (the sugar cube receding in the coffee, the mysterious flautist). “

20. Krzysztof Kieslowski “There are details in Blue that seem to convey a proximity to hell, despair, dread and damnation. What Kieslowski is trying to do is to find a cinematic language that can express Julie’s dilemmas (in much the same way that Shakespeare, for example, stretched the written and spoken word to express the dilemmas and passions of his characters).” Richard Rushton, Reading Three Colours: Blue, Senses of Cinema

21. Film Theory Two Approaches to Film Making MONTAGE EDITING • “Tell” the audience what to think and how to feel by dictating the meaning, via intellectual montage, and regulating emotional response, via rapid edits, non-diegetic music, and orchestrated camera movements CINEMATIC REALISM • Allow the audience to become immersed in the ambiguity of reality, via sustained cinematic images METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF CINEMATIC TRUTH

22. Film Theory Two Approaches to Film Making MONTAGE EDITING • “Tell” the audience what to think and how to feel by dictating the meaning, via intellectual montage, and regulating emotional response, via rapid edits, non-diegetic music, and orchestrated camera movements CINEMATIC REALISM • Allow the audience to become immersed in the ambiguity of reality, via sustained cinematic images METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF CINEMATIC TRUTH

23. Film Theory Two Approaches to Film Making MONTAGE EDITING • Mechanical manipulation of the audience CINEMATIC REALISM • Film as a phenomenological experience METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF CINEMATIC TRUTH

24. Film Theory Two Approaches to Film Making MONTAGE EDITING • Rapid cuts • A + B = C (Kuleshov effect) • Intellectual montage (ideas) Rooted in Hegelian dialectic, Marxist propaganda and Pavlonianpsychology • Rythmic montage (emotional response) • The Hollywood Model METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF CINEMATIC TRUTH

32. Film Theory Two Approaches to Film Making MONTAGE EDITING • Rapid cuts • A + B = C (Kuleshov effect) • Intellectual montage (ideas) Rooted in Hegelian dialectic and Marxist propaganda • Rythmic montage (emotional response) • The Hollywood Model METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF CINEMATIC TRUTH

33. Soviet Montage Cinema (1910s-20s) SERGEI EISENSTEIN(1899-1970) • Viewed montage as the basis of cinema • Juxtaposition of contrasting elements • Constructivist emphasis upon mechanistic assemblage • Montage of attractions • “Objects in collision, producing an explosion that would arouse the viewer” • Pavlovian theory: Controlled orchestration to mold and manipulate the audience

34. Soviet Montage Cinema (1910s-20s) EISENSTEIN FILM THEORY • Rooted in Marxist concept of dialectic materialism--point and counterpoint • Cognitive model of artistic creation • Dominant organizing principle • Four major types of montage • Metric Different shot lengths • Rhythmic Different pace • Tonal Atmosphere • Intellectual Symbolic meaning

35. Soviet Montage Cinema (1910s-20s)

36. Two Approaches to Editing • CINEMATIC REALISM(Mise en scene) • Long takes • Capture “reality” as it is • Deep focus, depth of field • Less directorial control of what the viewer should focus upon • Ambiguity • More “real”

37. Two Approaches to Editing • CINEMATIC REALISM • Emphasis on the power of the pure image • Mise en scene, not montage • Viewer must think about what he /she is seeing • Required to look deep into the image • Experiential

38. Two Approaches to Editing • CINEMATIC REALISM • More metaphorical • Often more romantic, spiritual, and philosophical subjects • “Experience the rain, be one with the mud”

39. Two Approaches to Editing • CINEMATIC REALISM • Emphasis on the image • Audience must think and participate (look closely, become sutured into the scene) • “Divining the real”

40. Kieslowski

41. Kieslowski

42. Kieslowski

43. Kieslowski

44. Kieslowski

45. Andrei Tarkovsky “ The artist expresses these things by creating the image…Through the image is sustained and awareness of the infinite: the eternal within the finite, the spiritual within matter, the limitless given form.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 37).

46. Andrei Tarkovsky “Sculpting in time.” “The image incarnate.” “Cinema as a religious experience.”

47. Andrei Tarkovsky “ Thought is brief. The image is absolute.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 41).

48. Andrei Tarkovsky “ I reject…montage cinema because [it does]…not allow the audience to bring personal experience to bear on what is in front of them on film. Montage cinema presents the audience with puzzles and riddles, makes them decipher symbols …appealing all the time to the intellectual experience. [Montage cinema] proceeds to make a total onslaught on the audience, imposing upon them his own attitude to what is happening.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 118).

49. The Sacred Image

50. Film Theory Andre Bazin(1918-1958) CINEMATIC REALISM • Cinema and photography are media that an artist can utilize to review the deeper meanings behind the phenomena of existence • Close observation of natural phenomena reveal planetary consciousness • The spirit behind the “real” object • Long takes (long hard gaze) METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF CINEMATIC TRUTH