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Place the real

I just finished reading the book of Kracauer's Redemption of Physical Reality , an essay that focuses on the special relationship between the real and cinematic image. For Kracauer, the real is the basic tool of cinema (and photography), its unique attribute that radically different from other types of artistic expression. The strength of the photographic image is its ability to capture the ephemeral, changing the details of reality that we overlook in our daily lives.

For me, the book is essential, especially for its epilogue where the author places the film in a philosophical and ideological, especially in a spiritual crisis, a rise of science, a loss of benchmarks often portrayed in the twentieth century emerging. Kracauer spoke in particular of a new tendency to abstraction, to deprive the real aspect of all too concrete for design only in abstract patterns, which is reminiscent of John Saul and his critique of reason , particularly in its approach to technical technicians (technocrats Saul would say) "are interested in functions and values rather than for and loved" (Kracauer), they reason thus abstractions - but this way of thinking is not just the technocrats, we are all responsible, as reflects a common technical language more and more flourishing (how new words are introduced each year in computer only?) In addition to this technicality, there is a relativism increasingly common (and more harmful). The media are partly responsible for this new ideology: to force to pass a variety of views of the most diverse, we are confronted with the fragility of our own. The proliferation of image we are constantly reminded that our position in time and space is unique, that our perceptions are related to this site. But by any relative, any look, we "run the risk of neglecting the very essence of the various value systems that we are exposed" (Kracauer). To really understand value system, a culture, we must engage in it, we must explore the interior, do not look, or just last.

Strangely, this conception of reality in abstract terms comes at a time when we hear more and more materialistic, scientific, pragmatic (in the philosophical sense specific Peirce, James Dewey and others). Science, for example, is interested first and foremost to the real, but to do it off a specific element that analysis out of context, so in an abstraction. By moving away from religion, it has not rushed to embrace real now dusted off its idealistic trappings, it was sent instead to re-wrap it in a new structure dematerializing. Pragmatism and its popularity are clear evidence of this idea in theory, pragmatism is a more than a philosophy, a sort of empirical test that shall undergo any metaphysical system to be considered valid. According to the pragmatists, an idea must lead to action or effect in the real, otherwise it is uninteresting. After Hegel and Kant would say pragmatic philosophy has sunk too far into idealism, to the point of losing sight of reality. William James, however, in his Will to Believe (title says), offers a definition of truth leads to relativism derealizing when he sees any real satisfactory proposal. An idea is true if it satisfies me, regardless of whether you thought the opposite and that you also meet (there are many nuances to do here, for example James talks over a perspectivism, a truth that does you still have not abstracted from its context, but James's position has been criticized as subjectivism and received distressing, by Bertrand Russell and others). So, the Christian religion, for example, is true for me because it makes me act, but this does not prove that God exists, only that belief in Him is true for me. Ultimately, there is a return to reality, by its emphasis on action, which is lost once in a subjective truth. All opinions are good often do we hear today (especially in art for that matter), derives from pragmatism also demonstrating that abstraction unstablizing.

How then reconnect with reality? The movie would it be pragmatic tool par excellence, a kind of idea about the real acting? Why not: the movies, as with the pragmatic, action is essential, since through it we can only have access to the idea, a conscience. As the film, by default, can only represent the surface of things, this is an action, a gesture or movement which can reveal the depth, as with the pragmatic idea is valid if it generates an action. Moreover, pragmatism leads relativism as cinema can supply it because, as we have seen, the media and the image we are accustomed to seeing the world as fragmented, as refracted through various points of view. So there is more of a connection to be made between this method and philosophy that art, both have been born almost simultaneously at the turn of the century and found their strongest expression in America, a country still firmly under construction action-oriented, but the power of cinema than that of pragmatism, or at least should, since it does not advocate a return to reality to escape some idealistic views, it is also the developer of this real.

It must first be said that this quest for the real art is an old notion that seems to find its most complete expression in film - until new technology offers better reproduction of reality (3D can be, but I'm skeptical ). In painting, reality is never directly re-produced, rather it is represented, that is to say imagined, designed, staged. The artist has a total control over all its tools, on its frame that can never be limited by material considerations, its colors, shapes, etc.. For Kracauer, this control inevitably leads us to seek meaning in a painting, an interpretation, as the artist has decided to compulsorily every detail, there must be a meaning behind every gesture. While at the cinema and photography, there is a certain amount of unexpected indeterminacy - an image can even seem totally insignificant. In painting, the material (the real) disappears behind the intention, whereas in the cinema this material remains constant on screen, we are directly confronted.

The film puts us in front of everyday reality in all its banality, without any technical or scientific abstraction, we present reality with the power of its insignificance, the film becomes a cure before the actual disease evanescent, hence the need for exploration of reality more than manipulation, as if reality is too manipulated, too diluted in the arts of directing, the film loses power, it is is theatrical or literary. Robert Flaherty, however, reminds us that "Can not superimpose stories of studio pre-fabricated on real locations without the truth of the background only enhances the artificiality of the story" because the real, the movies will always be stronger than the narrative it serves, there is a universality in the cinematic image that transcends any narrative regionalism. A face that expresses the pain or joy, though the emotion is rooted in a specific narrative, it remains a universal image, without any comprehensible narrative. Similarly for most everyday items like a street furniture, landscape, details of the real image that invade and permeate. Is in the details of everyday life, the "flow of life" (Kracauer) that is the power of cinema.

There is an idea that goes back to what I wrote earlier on realism ( here and here ), that is to say that we appear any realistic narrative minor focuses on daily life, routine and habit, which defies morality and sursignification, a story focusing on the "flow of life." Kracauer also offers that luck is one of the main strengths of cinema, a way to bypass a story by introducing a non-causal, as in Chop Shop, which is composed of repeats, the story clicks because the character main, by chance, sees his sister into prostitution, luck starts the drama. Kracauer connects the film to modern literature, Proust in particular, but also to Joyce and Virginia Wolfe, authors of stream-of-consciousness concerned with the everyday and the anecdotal to the detriment of a clear narrative and clear structured (authors Moreover, inspired by the theories Psychological James, who coined the term stream-of-consciousness, and the writings of his brother, the writer Henry James). Among these authors, the chaos of reality is filtered through the consciousness of their characters, it was ordered by the thought of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses example, as does the cinema. In this regard, Kracauer cites Michel Dard (quotation from human Value film that Kracauer was translated into English and I retranslated into French, did not find the original source): "By withdrawing all things outside their chaos in order to plunge into the chaos of our souls, the film causes large eddies in these [...] "In structuring and chaos, by rearranging the real, the film manages to see what other real shifty.

It performs this function when revealing that the film is most critical because it not only can discover the daily life, these gestures, these objects, such as urban landscapes or natural we usually overlook, but it can also allow us to approach the staggering horror. Kracauer, which I repeat here the words, the film brings the myth of Medusa horrifying monster erect a statue of a person her eyes, she was decapitated by Perseus who, with his shield-mirror can approach avoiding this look. Medusa is the real horror, the terrifying reality that we can not contemplate directly, while monstrous event that we struggle to conceive without shaking. The shield-reflector, the cinema is the means by which we can not only finally approach this horror and actually see, through a single reflection, but also through which we can decapitate the horror, then passing it without the rule, by facing rather the only way possible, that of representation.

I quoted two or three times the famous text on the abjection of Rivette shot in Kapo ; this thesis Kracauer, a priori, seems to oppose it. In fact, these two ideas are far from being contradictory. Rivette does not say that the extermination camps, for example, are unrepresentable (as Lanzmann can do it), he says they are not representable as Pontecorvo did, that is to say by excess aesthetics soothing. Make it acceptable horror (real as well) through a camera movement that denies making it beautiful, that's abjection, like a travesty of reality that Kracauer also denounced. And the latter, when he speaks of Medusa, speaks specifically of archive footage, not a fictionalized representation of horror. It is the image which allows to approach the monster, but the documentary image and true, that which is closest to the real, not a recreation of an extermination camp for example. Kracauer is actually quite close to the Aristotelian catharsis: the picture can we heal from the horror, as representing theater can heal our passions. Redemption of Physical Reality is this ability of the film, the image, when sufficiently steeped in reality, to bring us back to the reality that more and more leaks. Just when the new slogan for Cineplex Odeon that one must undergo before each film: Place to escape ...

How To Swallow With Tonsilitis

From image to simulacra

To begin, recall that my entries inspired by my previous reading of Voltaire's Bastards , an essay by John Saul on the tail of reason in Western society over the last two centuries. So far, I have followed quite closely the thinking of Saul, that I now use instead as a springboard. I had to return to the point of departure is to say, this seemingly bottomless void between film critics and the general public, but I bypassed a little longer, deeper question of just this idea of image dead.

I talked a lot about death in image conformity and uniformity television wrongs that have been criticized as in many Hollywood movies, movies that are said also more television. Should first define this aesthetic television: predominance of dialogue, poor image losing its status as virtually narrative as she only serves to account for the dialogue, which essentially translates into worktops, generally close, with characters frontally, almost no depth of field, quick (three or four seconds per plan), a kind of zero degree of staging so that the image is ultimately useless, distracting eyes to better capture Listening attentively to the words (and words only, since we could also add surround sound minimum). It's all about the aesthetics of the television series, filmed mainly on the radio, or perhaps the theater in close-ups (hence the interpretation outrageous, intolerable to so close), the dramas have all of same vocabulary picture book a little richer. The film accuses the TV usually have bequeathed him an aesthetic as flat, having popularized a type of image so simple that it became difficult to provide images more complex and meaningful. Or, he said that since it is distributed largely outside the halls, it is much smaller than seen on the big screen, it adapts to new conditions by adopting the style of the smaller screen, question does not offend the viewer-house. Thus, for a time the cameras were consistent keeping in mind both the movie format (rectangular) that the television format (square), managing to not put too meaningful elements in the margin, since it will disappear when projected on television. That changes a bit today, with digital displays and greater familiarity in panoramic format, but the difference is superficial: the images are more "beautiful", worked more, while remaining as insignificant.

Ah, this Amadeus, key example of a loss of direction in TV format: the disappearance of the two figures flanking the stage may seem trivial, but the character of Salieri is left, our narrator often like that in this primer, a reminder that we face at the point of view, subtlety lost in 4:3 ...

The main reason behind this line is an especially productivity, Hollywood having given the task of producing vast quantities of images. Unlike television, which as we have seen, requires images by its very nature, in the case of film this is not the medium itself which controls the images, but rather the industry so decided. It should not criticize too much television when we impose an aesthetic borrows its ambitions. Finally, to achieve his ideal of productivity, Hollywood has built a production system where the creative elements (first director and the writer) are used in the same way that a single technician. For, in fact, the average Hollywood director is no more than what we see in movies, that is to say a guy (and almost always a guy for that matter) said that action once from time to time. This is not new: the studios also functioned under the aegis of producers, the real architects of this system. The director, producer if not, can not enter an editing room, he does not participate in the scenario, it is present only on the set where he used to place the camera and direct actors.

David Bordwell, in his blog, discusses here this site maintained by the director in Hollywood. To summarize, the problem is that the filmmakers now turning more and more equipment to protect themselves they say (the notion of "coverage"). Thus, when several cameras filming the same scene, where a AFH, there are still others that provide an accurate picture. Multi-camera filming, however, is not an ideal situation: First, it reduces the choice of camera position, since all cameras must stay off camera. So, all cameras may be placed more or less on the same axis, an issue also comply with these good old 180 degrees, one filming the whole, the other a close-up of the character left, and a third a closeup of the character right. This essentially replaces the traditional method of turning a camera where you started with a comprehensive plan, then redo the scene in close-up, then close, alternating actors. Productivity increased at the expense of creativity of course, since the director has no need to wonder where to place the camera in fact it should rather wonder where to put its three cameras to prevent them from filming each other. It is a game of logic, there is nothing that takes the art. Bordwell cites the photo director of Gladiator , who shot some scenes with seven cameras, explaining his choice with that sublime sentence: "I Was thinking, 'Someone has got to Be Getting Something Good." "Finally, get a good image, that is to say an image technically correct, does more than chance.


This way of filming destroyed more creativity that the director has no say in the assembly. Producers want their directors, stage technicians rather, they filmed several cameras for each scene will have several plans with which they can then play their way to mount the stage as they please. The film is no longer on the set, where no election is finally done, but in the editing room, which belongs to the producer, the very man who also had the final word on the script. Some filmmakers skillfully circumventing traditional problem: Hitchcock's example was mounted directly in the shooting, he turned his scenes and even his plans in an orderly and virtually any way it's filmed so there was only one way to go. John Ford also worked well, Soderbergh now refuses to turn on several cameras. It's actually the only remedy of a non-producer filmmaker who wants to keep some control over his work up his film before turning and turn accordingly, so that the editor did not have too much freedom on equipment. This excludes obviously turning as much as possible "to protect themselves." That explains

largely compliance Hollywood: the filmmakers are interchangeable, leaving only the personality of the producers, if ever, by chance, they have. This way multiple cameras to film actually derives from television sitcoms such as who, as public tours before, using multiple cameras so that actors can play their scenes without interruption. In film, the result is essentially the same type of image (same method, same result?), Only to look more slick, more elaborate lighting and art direction technically flawless. Images of banality frightening, hidden under a veneer aesthetisising.

Obviously, the rational structure wanton described by Saul is not alien to this mode of production denying creativity for the benefit of productivity. However, because the contemporary version appears much more evident in our comprehensive report to the image. We must return here on the relationship between word and image on television among others, governed by our priests and journalists. If words are so important on TV, it is obviously that images are not. Just watching a news report tells us nothing, the images which follow are empty and without content, even to the point where it is impossible to know how new it is. For example in the case of murder or an incident with the victim, the police do not always allow reporters to approach the scene. Obliged to produce images, reporters filming the red ribbon and vehicles in the distance, an image without context that tells us absolutely nothing about what is happening. Only the voice of the reporter informs us, the images serve only to words of support. You can say the same of soap opera: cut the sound and it is impossible to know what happens. It's not quite true of Cinema, Hollywood is still rooted in action, not necessarily in the action film with explosion and everything, but the character is revealed by an act by example. The dialogues are essential for the intelligibility of the work, but it is often possible to understand the tenor of events presented only through the image (which is also due to this famous Hollywood redundancy by which everything must be repeated three times often in the image and sound).

But what happens exactly, tells us this image of a typical newscast?

The problem with these images, empty of content injected by speech, interpreted by the words is that they still give us the impression of being meaningful, or, to be exact they seem to us to attend the event, "as if we were there." Yet without the word, it is impossible to know what, exactly, we participate, but the perfection of mechanical reproduction of reality offered by the photographic image gives us the illusion of direct experience and therefore a greater knowledge of the world. And then, the realism of the photographic image becomes particularly dangerous since it is a misconception purveyor of the world. These images that assail us every day are a sham, merely a mechanical reproduction of a reality that was before the eye of a camera almost by chance, and they are certainly not a source of knowledge.

The image is magical, I wrote in my previous post, she takes us into it to make us experience the world. The dummy also gives the impression that we do see the world, but this is an illusion. All we see is the simulacrum as a sham. Therein lies the danger because, as has been repeated so often (and so) Baudrillard simulacrum which is what has now covered the real point of hiding almost completely, the card which now covers the territory. The problem is not the abundance of images, but the abundance of images, images purporting to involve us in the world when they are merely a reflection of themselves. But the realism of the photographic image is so strong that we are easily absorbed by these simulacra, especially since the words that accompany them invite us. When Saul talks about the artist who can no longer serve as a critical pillar of society, is what he describes is the artist ordered to make the flight, the frills and "beautiful" An artist who embellished, so who is sentenced to sham (beauty is the best way to seduce sham).

Do not overlook the repetitive nature of these images, their redundancy, because the important thing is not the content but the stimuli, sensation. Pictures accompany the words in order to satisfy that thirst audio-visual stimulation, these images are intended as a drug and we consume them as such, as if they allowed us to cross time and space, as if we discovered with them ubiquitous. And like a drug, the consumption is increasing with time, while the pace of these images will increase inexorably. Soon, the average time a plan will be only a fraction of a second, we can not content ourselves with a mere 24 frames per second. The mock

leads us to see a world that is false, which is precisely the simulacrum, which is the rational abstraction, so the structure that enabled its emergence. At rub those paltry force visual look heavier and becomes lazy, he does not need to look to see. But while the picture becomes increasingly pervasive, there is a parallel deterioration of language, as if the opportunities offered by a picture reproducing perfectly the reality supplanted the language as a means of communication or even way of thinking . However, thought needs to be articulated abstraction allowed by the words and in any case these images fail to connect that with the words that accompany them. All Languages poorer, that words like image; how do we communicate then, or rather, what is communicated by these juxtapositions audio-visual?

It is often said that today we learn to read an image faster than before. We see so many images, so young that we can easily capture and decode them, so that we can include a series of images that are only a few seconds. Nonsense, of course. Decode these images we so easily do not ask to be decoded, they give us, through this banality that I blame them, by their total detachment from the real deal. Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown purports to show the genius of Da Vinci highlighting the structural elements of the Mona Lisa, some of which are fairly obvious to anyone who stopped for more than three or four seconds on the canvas. The Mona Lisa is probably the most famous painting in the history of art, how is it that we can still be surprised by a detail of an image that we have been overexposed, especially if as is so often said, we are now masters in understanding images?

Film critics often say that Learn to read an image, once done this learning with the tools needed to better appreciate and ultimately criticize. Some knowledge of art history is therefore necessary to appreciate a work. What is true and false: true, insofar as being able to locate a work in context that allows us to better bring out the features. But also false since we work resonates in a personal way, without the context in which they were created intervenes: my favorite movies are movies that have a unique place in history art, but films that have a special place in my story. I would say that this taming of the image is necessary because of our context of overflow and abundance, but we should say, more precisely, that we must not learn to read an image, but to distinguish a living representation of a sham.

Read an image means to learn more technical concepts related to image creation, including the principles of composition, which can be useful but not essential, or even useless. It is possible to understand the content of an image without having to describe more Technically, mentioning only the ideas it raises. We do not need to know how many gold film appreciate Greenaway, or any other conventional notion of proportion, yet its almost always use the frames (especially done in its embedded images). They are not these concepts to be learned, but rather an intuition, emotion may be a sensitivity in any case that is only acquired through a detox, that is to say by prolonged contact with strong images, or simply with real images rather than mock.


I wanted to talk about the abyss-critical audience, I'm still far away ... These paragraphs seem to mean "the critic, however, knows differentiate the image of the dummy so that the public does not know" but frankly I doubt it. First, because some films have a particularly immoral relationship with the image and they are generally acclaimed ( Downfall, Schindler's List more recently here Polytechnic even to this subject text by Andre Habib on Hors Champ ) but also, more Simply because this idea is more theoretical than pragmatic, the difference between the sham and the image "real" is far from being so obvious. In addition, most films produced today have cut almost all ties with reality, they inhabit a fantasy world of cinema. In fact, the cinema has always been a world alongside the reality, but it was attached, the transition is made from one to another (I think this image to fly in Serge Daney Perseverance , but the memory is vague ...) and now the bridges are cut. It seems impossible now talk about reality without a genre: American films of the moment are more politically District 9, which reworks the codes of science fiction to deal with xenophobia, or Inglourious Basterds , which I mentioned here labor image. The reality is dealt with only through the kind of allegory or even a speech on the image, as in these two films. This is especially true in Hollywood, for sure, who hurries to integrate all issues of the day in a known structure, the kind of like State of Play, Thriller ordinary erecting a portrait very lazy journalism paper in decline. To address the world today, this film through references to the cinema of the 70s, he remains in his imagination and referential bubble, confined in the film world, but never dared approach the reality he claims to criticize. I dare

this theory: the public and the critic both appreciate this imaginary world unattached to reality, but in different ways, hence the disagreement. The public feasts on entertainment So fictions away as possible from reality, whose ultimate goal is to have forgotten. The use of a structure reassuring and rational (genus) permits. The criticism, he likes this imaginary world he knows very well, it explores a long time, he is the expert. Him, he treats instead of those films that play in this imaginary world, which construct or deconstruct. State of Play in , what interests him is not the suspense that boast the public, but the fact that it recognizes the codes of the films of Alan J. Pakula. One way or another, we are in both sham and attitudes recognize and appreciate it as such: the public will say frankly that he does not think going to the views that he wants to forget the depressing reality for a while, and it penalizes the simulacrum. The critical way in fun games repositories or continually comparing its securities-games-to-work analyzed the words to those that precede it, acknowledges that the film exists only in his fantasy world, that of cinema - I've never read a newspaper critic who runs a discourse on the image, that is to say who would question the relationship between image and reality. By cons, there is almost always questions about the relationship between image and image, between this film and others. We must believe that whatever the critic knows, the movies, and more.

"The ability of cinema to testify, to be-there-in-the-present, having nearly disappeared, he found himself obliged to invent imaginary worlds to explore the mind. "Said Daney Perseverance in . The cinema, after witnessing the real image, does not testify more than the image by image. Does this mean, like Godard, the film is dead? Or is that Bazin and all others are in the field, it was overvalued the ontology of the image, is what cinema is an art of imagination than of reality? Still following Godard, there is rather pass from one to another, after his failure to testify in history (eg the Holocaust), the image was permanently removed from reality, she sank in the imagination after being unable to represent the Unimaginable. Hence Today the ubiquity of sham ...