31 août 2010

Décadence 1929 (Soupault)

Premier article (5 octobre 1929, n° 608, pp. 1328-1139) de la chronique « Le Cinéma » donnée par Philippe Soupault à l'hebdomadaire l'Europe Nouvelle, de 1929 à 1934. Considérations d'ordre général autour du film Un Chien Andalou (1928/Buñuel/Dali/France).


LES PARADOXES DU CINEMA
Philippe Soupault
5 octobre 1929
Personne ne s'étonnera, je crois, de l'affirmation que je veux placer en tête de cette chronique : le cinéma est en complète décadence. Et cependant nous ne devons pas désespérer. Il me semble que depuis le premier film, l'Arroseur arrosé, les "cinéastes" n'ont fait pour ainsi dire aucune découverte digne de ce nom. Il ne me paraît pas injuste de déclarer que personne encore n'a vraiment compris le cinéma. Demandons à ceux qui ont pour profession de "mettre en scène", ils répondront par des phrases creuses et des mots ronflants. Les critiques eux-mêmes, penchés sur l'actualité, n'ont guère le temps ni le goût de regarder en avant et en arrière. Bref, la culture cinématographique n'existe pas. A-t-on songé un instant à faire un film très simple qui aurait pour but de mettre en valeur toutes les ressources actuellement connues du cinéma ? On agît au hasard et pour excuser cette paresse, on affirme que le public "aime" ou "déteste" telle ou telle méthode. Le public ? Quel est le public du cinéma ? On peut répondre aujourd'hui que c'est tout le monde. Il ne s'agit donc pas de se plier aux désirs d'une élite, mais de dominer une foule, de lui imposer son goût. Toutes ces considérations bien banales ne sont que des précautions oratoires qui me permettent d'avertir le lecteur que ces chroniques ne seront jamais des résumés de films seulement. Chaque fois que je verrai un film qui me semblera contenir un peu de nouveauté, une minuscule étincelle, je n'hésiterai pas à l'annoncer avec le plus grand plaisir. C'est pour ces raisons sans doute que je parlerai souvent des films documentaires. Observons le public d'une salle de cinéma lorsqu'on projette un film dit documentaire, le plus banal, la visite faite cent fois d'une usine. Les spectateurs ne s'amusent peut-être pas comme des fous, mais ils ne manifestent aucun mécontentement. Ils sont venus dans ce cinéma pour voir. Ils voient et sont satisfaits. Imaginons un instant l'attitude des spectateurs d'un théâtre à qui l'on présenterait de la façon la plus aride la vie d'une usine ou tout autre sujet de ce genre, plus théâtral, si l'on veut. Ils se révolteraient. L'important au cinéma est de voir. J'insiste. Il importe de voir et de voir mieux, plus nettement et plus profondément que "dans la vie".
Or, la plupart du temps, on ne nous montre rien et nous ne voyons rien. Je dois cependant citer une exception : un jeune metteur en scène catalan. Buñuel, s'est efforcé de nous montrer quelque chose dans son film. Un Chien andalou, que l'on projette actuellement au Studio 28. L'émotion que provoquent certaines scènes de ce film (celle, par exemple, du rasoir et de l'œil) est purement cinématographique. La meilleure preuve en est qu'il est impossible de raconter cette scène. It faut la voir.
Dans toute celle bande (très courte d'ailleurs puisqu'elle n'a que 450 mètres [16 minutes]), nous constatons que chaque fois que Louis Buñuel essaie de dépasser le domaine de la vision pure, il obtient des effets, mais qui sont soit littéraires, soit théâtraux.
Il faudrait peut-être souligner avec plus de force l'importance de ce film qui parait trop court, mais on risquerait en agissant de la sorte de déformer l'intention de Buñuel qui a voulu s'évader de la routine inconsciente (par là-même extrêmement dangereuse) du cinéma.
Si paradoxale que puisse paraître une observation de ce genre, il faut bien vite reconnaître que le cinéma est un "art" qui a vieilli rapidement. Aucune activité intellectuelle n'est accablée d'autant de béquilles et d'appareils orthopédiques.
* La salle de cinéma Studio 28 fût ouverte à Paris en 1928 par Jean-Placide Mauclaire et est toujours en activité à ce jour, au 10, rue Tholozé, 18e arrondissement, au pied de la butte Montmartre.

Lire aussi d'autres articles de Philippe Soupault sur ce blog :

Balbutiements en 1929 (Soupault)

LE MALAISE DU CINEMA
Philippe Soupault
L'EclairJournal quotidien du Midi»), 25 décembre 1929
Je ne suis pas de ceux qui nient l'évidence. Qu'on le déplore ou non, il faut avouer que le cinéma traverse une crise qui peut être mortelle. Cette mort, d'ailleurs, serait comparable à celle du Phœnix : le cinéma renaîtra de ses cendres.
Il n'en est pas moins vrai qu'en 1929, ce qu'on appelle le septième art est en complète décadence. Et ce phénomène est d'autant plus étrange que le public est devenu plus souple et plus attentif. Il se montre d'une indulgence qui stupéfie ! La raison en est que le cinéma est entré définitivement dans les mœurs, je veux dire qu'il n'est plus considéré comme un plaisir, mais qu'il correspond à un besoin.
On pourrait penser que, certains d'un accueil empressé, les dirigeants de cet art devenu industriel s'efforceraient de fournir des productions qui satisfassent à la fois la critique et le public. En vérité, ils ne satisfont personne, ils ne savent plus ce qu'ils veulent. Les uns déclarent que le film muet est la seule forme vraiment et purement cinématographique, les autres que le film parlant correspond à une réalité nouvelle. Bref, personne ne s'entend. Il faut reprendre les choses d'un peu haut.
Le cinéma, à ses débuts, n'était qu'un instrument qui permettait d'étudier le mouvement, autrement dit un appareil photographique perfectionné. Puis il est devenu un jouet. Enfin quelques-uns se sont aperçus qu'il pouvait être une source de plaisirs esthétiques. Mais, mauvais prophètes, ils ont cru qu'il fallait imiter le théâtre. Il m'a été donné, récemment, d'assister à la projection — à titre rétrospectif — d'un de ces films prétendus artistiques, qu'on offrait, aux environs de 1912, à l'avidité des foules. Il s'agissait d'un Werther [1910/Henri Pouctal].

Peu d'œuvres, à coup sûr, prêtent mieux que l'émouvant et dramatique « roman » de Goethe à la composition d'un scénario. Eh ! bien, négligeant le chef d'œuvre, l'auteur du film avait préféré suivre pas à pas le livret de l'Opéra-Comique... Le comble est qu'il avait confié le rôle principal à un ténor!
Peu à peu cependant, sous l'influence des Américains, moins traditionnellement dominés par le théâtre, le film parvenait à dégager confusément sa personnalité. Toujours attaché à quelque scénario romanesque, c'était encore de ta littérature projetée sur un écran, enfin, par saccades, comme à l'aveuglette, et sous la poussée des circonstances, des progrès s'accomplissaient. Et puis la demande de films était si forte que l'on avait à peine le temps de produire. Le cinéma était devenu une industrie — "la septième", au dire des statistiques, par l'importance des capitaux engagés. Une lueur d'espoir, somme toute, s'apercevait à l'horizon...
Quand naquit le cinéma dit parlant !
Et tout fut à recommencer.

Le cinéma parlant a fait reculer de dix ans l'art cinématographique. Nous assistons à tous les piétinements de l'enfance ; nous entendons les balbutiements de l'âge tendre. Connaissant à peu près tous les films sonores que l'on a projetés depuis dix mois à Paris, je ne crains pas de déclarer qu'il y a beaucoup de chemin à faire avant d'atteindre le stade du film muet en 1928.
Cette reculade causée par une nouvelle invention qui, au point de vue technique, mais au seul point de vue technique, est un progrès, nous permet d'être pessimiste. Admettons que, dans quelques années, on découvre le film en couleur, puis le film en relief... Faudra-t-il que chaque nouvelle invention paralyse pendant un certain nombre d'années l'art cinématographique ?

Pour nous en tenir à la situation actuelle, n'y a-t-il pas lieu de penser que cette "défaillance", cette crise, lient à ceci : que les hommes qui ont pour mission ou pour profession de s'occuper de l'établissement et de l'élaboration des films sont "aveugles"?
Tous les grands artistes, que ce soit Léonard de Vinci pour la peinture, Bach pour la musique, Baudelaire pour la poésie, se sont efforcés de connaître ou de rechercher les éléments essentiels ou particuliers de leur art.

Pressés par le temps, débordés par les circonstances, il est permis de douter que les "professionnels du film" aient le loisir de réfléchir. Aucun d'entre eux s'est-il jamais posé cette simple question : « Qu'est-ce que le cinéma ? »
Qui donc, d'ailleurs, songe qu'en vulgarisant leur invention, les frères Lumière ont véritablement doté l'homme d'un sens nouveau, d'un œil prodigieusement perçant, pour qui ni le temps ni l'espace ne sont des obstacles ! Le spectateur devant l'écran peut désormais tout voir, et en un clin d'œil. Il passe en quelques minutes de Buenos Aires à Londres, de Vancouver à Vladivostok. Il regarde vivre des microbes ou bien des fauves, éclore instantanément une nuée de poussins, ou s'épanouir, comme fabuleusement, une rosé... Bref, c'est le vaste monde, le monde inconnu, que le cinéma, sur quelques mètres carrés de toile blanche, met à notre portée. C'est la surprise sans cesse renouvelée de ta découverte qui trouble et passionne l'homme de la rue. C'est le sentiment de sa nouvelle et prodigieuse puissance qui l'enchante.
Le cinéma se développera dans la mesure où il se rapprochera de la vie, et répondra ainsi au besoin qu'il a créé. Le réduire à l'abstraction, ce serait proprement le tuer. Aux mains des meilleurs techniciens, il n'est encore qu'un art d'illustration, il commente, expose des idées ou des récits, mais n'exprime jamais assez, par les moyens qui lui sont propres, une réalité vivante.
Il ne m'appartient pas d'entrer ici dans le détail des choses. Au reste, je puis bien, en terminant, confesser mon peu d'illusions : je doute que le conseil du "spectateur"soit jamais entendu. Les "producteurs" de film ont beau jeu pour me répondre : « Vous n'avez jamais fait de film, vous ne savez ce que vous dites... » Mais eux, savent-ils ce qu'ils font ?
Philippe Soupault (1897-1990) est poête français, co-fondateur du mouvement surréaliste avec André Breton.

Lire aussi d'autres articles de Philippe Soupault sur ce blog :

26 août 2010

American Isolationism 1 (Rosenbaum)

Movie Wars. How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See, Jonathan Rosenbaum, 2000

excerpt Chapt. 7 : Isolationism as a Control System

"This chapter and the next explore complementary and mutually alienating attitudes: the desire to keep out foreign influences in order to preserve American "purity," and the fact that what we consider American "purity" is often composed of foreign influences. [..]
Precisely for this reason, even bad or mediocre foreign movies have important things to teach us. Consider them cultural CARE packages, precious news bulletins, breaths of air (fresh or stale) from diverse corners of the globe; however you look at them, they're proof positive that Americans aren't the only human beings and that the decisions we make about how to live our lives aren't the only options available - at least not yet. [..]"
Critics forgot that there is more than prescription in "film criticism", that to determine whether a given weekly-batch movie (approved by the distribution system) is worth spending the admission fee for a pleasant night-out is NOT the end-all argument of the conversation.
When the specialized press wastes time and space dismissing festivals and "foreign cinema" just because they allegedly repeat "mannerism" (while these incriminated films are precisely the MOST POTENT VISIONS in our current film landscape!!!), I really question the motive of their bitter boredom... The fact is that they only know how to ride the coattail of popular (or rather populist) "blockbusters". Yeah, everyone has something to say about Avatar or Inception! But give them ART and they yawn, begging for mercy, skipping to the next "big sensation".
I thought Cinema had achieved a true cultural binding in the world, because it is mainly based on visual language. Translation in local idioms doesn't suffer as much as in Literature or Poetry (and if it does, it's more a script than a film!)
I thought that, at least amongst cinéphiles, we could talk about films regardless for their language and country of origin, that every filmmaker was accepted on equal footing, as long as his/her mise en scène had something significant to say... But the cultural barrier is high and thick.
When non-domestic films are rejected on other ground than for being subtitled, critics find fancy ways to paint them in negative light... They won't say that they prefer Entertainment (cause it's not politically correct amongst cinéphiles) They say the competition for Hollywood is "déjà-vu", that they aren't on par with the slick (and dull) professionalism of studio movies, they believe a slow pace is a misunderstanding of the Hollywood sense of timing, they purport that going for a plan sequence is a proof they can't cut... How far are they willing to go to tarnish the appeal of creation, over the "comfort food" of Customary patterns, Classic screenwriting, Traditional narrative, Standardized timing, Conventional blocking, Pre-formated editing : everything that defines AMERICAN moving pictures... 80 years ago!
Some people will never learn from overseas...

[David Denby said "One of the extraordinary advantages of growing up French is that you can be absurd without ever quite knowing it"]
Rosenbaum replies : "If a French critic made the same statement about growing up American, I wager that most of us would find the remark stupid. But too many Americans feel licensed to define the rest of the world, cheerfully and without shame, in terms of their own limitations. [..]"

"That a good many Americans are interesed in seeing foreign movies, including some that exist only overseas, isn't really a matter of dispute. [..] But people can only be interested in films that they know about, and given the lack of interest in the mass media in anything that isn't already omnipresent, the range of what people are likely to know about is shrinking rapidly. That's why the themes of innocence and ignorance strike a chord in young audiences despite the supposed cynicism that the press keeps attributing to them. On some level Americans are aware of their own isolation from the rest of the world as well as their crippling lack of information [..]"
Well that one is a bit far-fetched... I wouldn't have dared to make that connection. Aware of insularity on a conscious level? Probably not. Americans wouldn't even conceive the idea that neglecting non-American culture could be considered as a negative. The world needs Hollywood, sure, but America doesn't need to care for underlings of their commercial imperialism. That's more what the overwhelming majority of Americans are thinking. And the American intelligentsia who knows better, isn't vocal enough to change this mentality. Thus fatalism. Thus Isolationism.

"Another reason might be the industry truism that in order for a film or series to be commercially successful, it has to have the status of an "event" - meaning, I suppose, that a retrospective with new prints qualifies as an event and that the prior commercial release of a single Bresson masterpiece (say, Au Hasard Balthazar) apparently doesn't. [..]"
I believe even Rosenbaum himself revised his support for the big screen (DVDs A New Form of Collective Cinephilia). Nowadays he'd rather boost the DVD economy and forget about the ever-shrinking peau de chagrin of artfilm screenings in his homeland. But who cares for the original format films were meant for, if the floors are sticky in movie theatres? I guess not being invited to free screenings since he retired can change a man's belief system...

"Given our extreme isolationism - arguably even greater today than it was half a century ago - it's logical that we should think of foreigners in stereotypical terms because we have so little informations and experience to draw upon; similarily, we often think of non-Americans as wannabe Americans. So, out of necessity, we wind up thinking about much of the rest of the world in shorthand: Communists are nonreligious, the French worship Jerry Lewis, Iranians are subject to heavy censorship in the arts, the Chinese produce fortune cookies. That there are plenty of religious Communists, that most contemporary French viewers prefer Woody Allen to Jerry Lewis, that Iranians tend to revere artists more than we do, and that Chinese fortune cookies are strictly for export are lesser-known facts because they interfere with our ready-made formulas. At most such data offers fleeting clues about what usually escapes our radar, and unless we can combine them with additional information, they're likely to be helpful only as counter-stereotypes, not as understandings of these foreign cultures. [..]
The assumed desire might be expressed in infantile and emotional terms: "I don't like the world, take it away" In other words, the virtual-reality thriller seems to solve the puzzle of how to address an audience assumed to be interested only in escaping without reminding them of what they're supposed to be escaping from. [..]"
see also National stereotypes and Expatriates (2008) (which Rosenbaum published in Spain instead of preaching his own parish!)


* * *

Where are the anti-isolationism activists in the American specialized film press? People who DO NOT believe that foreign festivals are the latest hype target to bash. Where are the bloggers who care for a nationwide distribution of films they indulge with ease in the elitist quarters of NYC? Where are the critics who disagree that "foreign" artfilm auteurs had a free ride (too many screenings? too much BO money? too many DVD sales? too much air time on TV?) for too long? Where are the Jonathan Rosenbaums of 2010? Where are the readers of this book who thought it was OK to move on and stop worrying about it?

When Isolationism reaches the breaking point, the moral responsibility of film critics is to fight it with words EVERY SINGLE WEEK until it improves, or else there is no point continuing to mindlessly promote the market-approved releases of the industrial system! There is no film commentary possible under these circumstances.
How could cultural intellectuals be consumed by an apathetic fatalism? It makes no sense. But it explains the abysmal level of approximate film discourse, confused priorities and questionable responsibilities in what we read these days...

Apparently in some places, culture can do without any sense of collective responsibility... but could we still call that "culture"?


Related:

21 août 2010

Ethics according to FIPRESCI

"The Ethics of Film Criticism" by Chris Fujiwara, 28 Feb 2010, published at Undercurrent #6, April 2010


DICTIONARY DEFINITION
"Chris Fujiwara didn't choose the topic, it was thrust on him." (FIPRESCI website)
Chris Fujiwara : "I guess in a way I am a little afraid of the word ethics"
I don't think he attempted at any point to engage with issues on an ethical level. And most of the so-called responsibilities he comes up with deal with either the pragmatic modus operandi of film journalism, or film appreciation, neither of which have to do with ethics... It takes 15 seconds to pick up an erudit book from your bookshelf, or to type in the word "ethic" in Wikipedia on your computer. This little "waste of time", ultimately pays off. But then again, if you need to do that, maybe you shouldn't patronize your audience with a phony lecture on "ethics"...
"Although the terms ethics and morality may sometimes be used interchangeably, philosophical ethicists often distinguish them, using ethics to refer to theories and conceptual studies relating to good and evil and right and wrong, and using morality and its related terms to refer to actual, real-world beliefs and practices concerning proper conduct." (Wikitionary)
Life and Death matters, Human Rights, Justice or Universal Truth are above individual particularities, above professional rules, above social conventions, above the human law.
Cinema is a trivial activity, as far as ethical philosophy is concerned. We don't judge the ethical standard of spectators for watching a crime scene, or critics for praising a "bad" film.

Deontology is the branch of philosophy that will examine the moral obligations, the moral rules, the moral consequences at stake within a given profession (film criticism).

Fujiwara delineates the responsibilities of film criticism on a philosophical plane (so says he...), with a vocabulary barely clear enough for psychology (as symptoms!) or folksonomy ("enthusiasm", "favorable", "absence", "ambiguity", "unfamiliar", "strangeness", "power", "badness", "experience"...), just like Adrian Martin leaves ethics up to "intuition" (see below). This is no philosophical lecture.


CRITICAL RESPONSIBILITY

In 2006, doctor in Philosophy, Professor Adrian Martin discussed the same question, under a title best suited to the subject : "responsibility" [PDF]. Although he does drop the E word a few times.
Adrian Martin : "[..] I realized that everyone working on such a publication must be able to draw a line - a line over which they will not cross. An ethical line. In concrete terms, that means being able to say, absolutely, what kind of thing you are not willing to publish, under any circumstances. [..] one must strive for an ethical standard in on-line publishing, and not let the moral slippery slide begin.
That slippery slide is usually inaugurated, in the film magazine business, by one thing: money. And most particularly: advertising. [..]"
he continues:
"This is the ethical responsibility of a film magazine: to seek an alternative, and then to communicate it, understand it, transmit it. [..]
But once, again, an ethical orientation is possible: a direction, an intuition towards the future."
He begins with "conflict of interest" which is one of the main issue within criticism deontology. So this passes as ethics just fine. Then somehow he slides in distant territories where giving attention to non-commercial films, counter-culture, intuitions become ethical problems... Covering the "wrong" films (define "wrong" in philosophical terms please!), ignoring whole areas of cinema, refusing to be pedagogical is not "immoral", it's just being partial, short-sighted and plain stupid for an educator. But nevermind. The word "responsibility" is definitely more adequate for this topic.
Fujiwara doesn't even acknowledge the possibility of a conflict of interest in his article...

And that's a text that the guy wrote once for an oral speech and then REVISED it (really?) for a publication in Undercurrent.
The fact that a doctor in philosophy let his Undercurrent co-editor publish such mumbo-jumbo is itself a case of unethical complacency. But I guess if he approved, he must have found traces of philosophy in there, or he's a bad friend to let Chris embarrass himself and do nothing about it.


THE "ETHICAL" FILM CRITIC

According to Fujiwara there are two ways for a critic to be "ethical" responsible:
1. to be pro a certain cinema and con another kind of cinema (responsibility to ALL cinema)
2. (responsibility to ONE film)
And obviously you have the choice to pick one or the other : Text OR Context. He suggests that a critic could do one without the other. For someone uncomfortable with dogmatic categories, he's pretty binary on this one.

Apparently the critic lives in a manichaean world devided between good cinema and bad cinema (existing or hypothetical films). He doesn't define which is which, but it's about "past" (?) and "future" (?), about "validity" (?), about honesty (we could maybe relate to this one at least in abstract terms), about "personal vision" (?) and about "society" (?). Wait, he defines his own breed of vision by a word list : "absence", "ambiguity", "space for reading"... get whatever you can from that, cause he aint gonna explicit what they correspond to in terms of "cinema validity". I suppose he believes this word dropping was self-explanatory.
I don't know if all "ethical critics" are meant to share the same dichotomies, good v. bad (thus defining THE only single correct cinema), or if every "personal" visions are each ethical in their own way (thus subverting ethics to individual subjectivity)
Chris Fujiwara : "So the ethical question of someone in this position becomes: what justifies my judgment? Am I merely recording what I like and what I don't like?"
Again, being emotional, subjective, summary, random is not immoral. Even for a critic. It's just bad (or incomplete) practice. You don't need to characterize it as "unethical" to rule out such flimsy attitudes from cinema literature. It's wrong, not in ethical terms, but in practical terms : it's against the very professional PURPOSE of art criticism, on a basic level (before any philosophical levels).


STRANGENESS
"[..] remain alive to the possibility of the new and unfamiliar.
That possibility always exists. In any important work, there is a strangeness that is irreducible. If it lacks this strangeness, it is not a work that we can seriously discuss in aesthetic terms.
The strangeness is something that sticks, that resists being easily described, much less made into a formula [..]"
The word is vague enough to change its definition however suits you, and make your favourite films "strange", and films you dislike "not strange enough" to dismiss everybody else's favourite films. Clearly this is not helping film criticism to subordonate the "seriousness" or "worthiness" of a film to such an intangible concept. The examples cited didn't enlighten me.
Besides it doesn't mean anything. Even if you defined "strangeness" in unequivocal aesthetic terms, it's always in the eye of the beholder. And to assume that "familiarity" is automatically disqualifying is pointless. As much as I prefer "strange films" (probably my own idiosyncratic definition of "strangeness"), it's not because a film is inexplicable that it will be great, and vice versa. Actually this contradicts the goal of film theory to EXPLICIT film language.
I'm pretty sure the everyday layman will call "strangeness" what they can't quite pinpoint in art, but art critics need to go a little bit deeper, I think.


CATEGORIES
"[..] But isn't there something purely outside category that we fail to respond to when we meet the film in such a way? Something that might even be a challenge to our categories?
Yet how else is it possible to "account for" a "power" other than by using the categories we already have? And if we must grant to every work that comes along the potential to transcend or tear down our categories, what are bringing to the work, what does criticism do? Is there even criticism where there are no categories?
The best answer I can see is that we don't bring just our categories, but our ability to pay attention, and, in fact, we are better off pretending we have no categories, throwing them away at the moment we approach a film as critics (but keeping them close by for when we need them as historians and theorists). "
I would say that throwing away what he refers to as "categories" is the first irresponsible attitude a critic could have... Tabula rasa criticism, theory-less impressions, guesstimations and speculations. Are you trying to persuade yourself that you are allowed to talk about cinema without knowledge, or are you actually trying to define the criticism praxis through empiricism? Either way it's no ethics, and passing THAT (which is your personal interpretation of what Film Theory should be) as a philosophical rightness for everyone else is kinda wrong... I mean, you may argue that categories are sometimes invalid or self-limited or failing us; but you shall not define this controversial opinion into a universal truth, and that's for sure.


NEUTRALITY
"We also have a responsibility not to surrender to the overwhelming power of the film in a kind of ecstatic fusion, but to remain neutral before it. Not neutral in the manner of a judge who evaluates from a great height, applying invariable standards."
Yes neutral, in the sense of NEUTRAL. Don't be afraid of the word. Embrace the fact that claiming to deserve the right to judge somebody else's work puts you in an elitist spot, de facto! Or do something else than film criticism.
Keeping our subjectivity in check (which is different from erasing subjective impressions) means maintaining an objective mind.


SELF-CONTRADICTION

One of the advantages of being immune to ethics is that self-contradiction doesn't really distract your train of thoughts.
"the critic has to figure out how to guard against too-easy assimilations and comparisons "
like to mix up ethics with professional duty maybe?

"[..] these days I usually write only on things I want to write about, and these are usually films that for one reason or another I feel close to."
"The danger of love is that it seems to relieve us of the responsibility to speak. Not just the ability, which can also happen, but the responsibility. And the critic can never be without the responsibility to speak."


"ETHICAL" URGENCY

Responsibility to : (from less urgent to most urgent)
1. the reader
2. the filmmaker
3. the (film) community
4. myself

I'm confused by his reverse urgency order... the most urgent comes last on his list? Is it a suspense effect? If it is a list of priorities, then "myself" should be first. And not because it's the most important, but because it's the necessary pre-condition to engage with anything else onward. It's a matter of knowing yourself, in order to gauge what is your relation to others, to objects, to the world. It is primordial, but it's the less important, it doesn't mean you're egotical if you cite yourself first (in case there was a doubt here).
Adrian Martin : "[..] no matter what critics think they are saying or not saying in their writing, they are betraying themselves, giving away their deepest selves, their full system of beliefs and values, at every single moment. It is important for every critic to come to a realisation of this truth. What you think about music and art, what you think about sex, what you think about family and friendship, what you think about politics and history: it's all there, plainly there, for everyone to read in what you write, in your slightest expression, your smallest turn of phrase. Any critic's biases are always going to become apparent - so it is better to master those biases, use them, include them, be up front about it them. Or else, those biases will rule you, like nasty unconscious impulses, and you will end up looking like someone who has a sinister agenda, an axe to grind."
Being objective doesn't mean to erase your Self, to become insipid and interchangeable... it means being aware of your own limitations and your predilections, therefore most adapted to calibrate your personal vision, your apprehension of somebody else's art, your place in the world.

As for the reader, it is merely a rhetorical commitment to your readership, in case you expect to become popular or famous. There is absolutely no imperative to please a hypothetical reader when writing about film, other than to sell copies of the journal you work for (which is an entirely different logic!) Just like there is no imperative, a priori, for an artist to fulfill the desire of a potential/hypothetical audience of his/her films. You may make films, or write articles for "Your Public" (whatever that is), but it doesn't fall under responsibilities, much less ethical ones...
If there was no readers, Cinema would still need a critical literature, for the sake of history records. The presence/absence, support/discord of readers (no more than the employers in the film press) are not a limiting factor. It's not readers who decide whether film criticism shall be or not. So I would completely evacuate this item in the list.

For the "film community", I don't get it well... It's not what people say/think today that matters, but how critical texts will sustain a historical legacy, with the critical distance of time.
I would prefer the idea of "Cinema" as a timeless, impersonal, transnational family, like the notion of "Literature", or "Painting", in general, abstract terms, for other arts. Cinema as an Art, as an entity. Yes, the critic has a responsibility towards the art of Cinema, in regard to the history of film criticism and film theory. To fit in the tracks of the revered elders, or to reassess a questionable legacy... but always with solid arguments.


ACTUAL MORAL RESPONSIBILITIES FOR FILM CRITICS
  • Don't lie to yourself, consciously or unconsciously (see point above)
  • Be educated, knowledgeable, insightful; only claim authority on what you master, admit to your blind-spots
  • Be pedagogical, contribute to improve and reinforce film culture. Be attentive to its corruption and its shortcomings.
  • Only criticize and evaluate films you've watch (entirely) in decent conditions, and you feel comfortable dealing with, to do them justice
  • Be fair, open-minded, tolerant, adaptable
  • Be impartial, objective, rational, clear-sighted
  • Be CRITICAL, which means weighing the value of each arguments, your own and those of the artists, the audience or your peers. Not only critical of films, but critical of yourself, of your peers, of the system allowing you to do your job, of society as a whole and of the world we live in. No one, no publication, no film is beyond cross-examination... but the most aesthetically important they are, the deepest your counter-argument ought to be to question them.
  • Be irreproachable : if you want to point to other's mistakes, don't be guilty of making them yourself. One easy way is to contain yourself to your domain of competency.
  • If you're not 100% behind the words of your article, if you're going to blame someone else (your editor, your publication, your sponsor, your readers...) when the content of your article is questioned, think twice and DO NOT let it get published in the first place. Nobody can force you to write anything against your will (unless you live in a dictatorship). So if you get yourself in trouble, blame yourself. That's part of the responsibility tied to exposing your views in public.

N.B. loving cinema, having emotions, having opinions is not a RESPONSIBILITY, it is natural and inherent to EVERY human beings. We don't need a deontological rule to enforce THAT! (Deficient Subjectivity)

If you don't like any or all of these responsibilities, you're not really in a position to judge people and people's artwork. Because it's not just a fun game to show off your taste, it's a privilege granted to those who deserve it. Else, no credibility, no authority, no tribune for your opinions.


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I welcome the publication of educational articles on critical responsibilities, of course. If you take out the word "ethics" from this article, the advice he gives there are all good to improve film culture and the practice of a respectable discipline.
But when you give referential moral standards it's better to get it right, isn't it? Or else people who really need a solid moral framework will be further confused and misdirected. The fact FIPRESCI got their ethics wrong is proof that film culture is badly in need of better education on this subject.

I wonder if everything is all clear in his mind (not surprising he wants to discard big concepts and intellectual categories). It is so deceiving to sell these talking points under the label "ethics". It is not helping. Morality is no business to toy with, it's already complicated enough for philosophers who master it, no need to mash it all up to pieces. What kind of audience would benefit from such lecture??? Even a high-school class would deserve better than this type of "philosophy" vulgarisation... Who reads Undercurrent? Philosophy-illiterates?

Who is it again who said : "There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear." ;)

Oh I get it. The only possible explanation is that I'm wrong, and I was unable to understand this deep treatise in Philosophy. And that all the happy bloggers did understand it before linking to it. So keep spreading misinformation to dumb down film culture in guise of "fixing" it with grandiloquent patronizing lectures about pseudo-philosophy. Why not?

Related :

10 août 2010

Junket Wars (Rosenbaum) (1)

Movie Wars. How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit what Films We Can See, Jonathan Rosenbaum, 2000

I wish America had read this book. I wish American film critics hadn't forgotten they have read this book. I wish this book had a lasting impact in American film culture, and hopefully had caused an introspection of the Hollywood industry (if not the collapse of its house of cards). I wish this book was, in the USA, the same turning point that caused, in France, a revolution in 1968 (in the milieu of cinema). I wish Jonathan Rosenbaum hadn't forgotten he's written this book and hadn't gotten back to his business routine, living off of the system.

excerpt (Chapt. 3) Some Vagaries of Promotion and Criticism

"A much more common and systematic method of obfuscating business practices in the film industry, especially in blurring the lines between journalism and publicity, is the movie junket. [..]
The stories that result are obviously meant to be read and enjoyed as news rather than as promotion, and most newspaper editors seem to have few qualms about fostering this false impression. It's often standard procedure, in fact, for publicists to work directly with editors and get particular journalists assigned to write particular pieces, which means in effect that the articles are commissioned by the studios (or distributors) and then whipped into the desired shape by the editors and writers. [..]
And for all the unusual amount of freedom I enjoy at the Chicago Reader, how long could I keep my job if I had nothing to recommend week after week? For just as Communist film critics were "free" to write whatever they wanted as long as they supported the Communist State, most capitalist film critics today are "free" to write anything as long as it promotes the products of multicorps; the minute they decide to step beyond this agreed-upon canon of "correct" items, they're likely to get in trouble with their editors and publishers.
This isn't to say that critics aren't free to express their dislike for certain expensive studio productions; what they aren't free to do, in most cases, is to ignore these releases entirely or focuse too much of their attention on films whose advertising budget automatically make them marginal in relation to the mainstream media.
I wonder if Daniel Kasman and Karina Longworth had forgotten having read this book (or did they ever?), when they hopped on the plane taking them to the Abu Dhabi junket (I'm anticipating a repeat this year)...
Did you see the budget Hollywood has to bribe film critics? How can you resist the temptation if you don't have strong resolve, if you deny responsibility, if you ignore what ethics are?
If they can pull the strings of the institutional press, we can easily imagine how young ambitious job-less bloggers would fall for the same specs that took down the seasoned critics with a stable job. The voice of blogs might have become as coveted by Hollywood studios as the one of the traditional media (because their target audience is shifting attention to the internet) but they are less prepared (or willing) to decline the invitation to share the bed.
What are the consequences of such connivance? Bad movies get an undeserved favorable buzz... Fine. It just destroys the film culture of a generation, before being re-evaluated and corrected in a better future. History corrects itself eventually, in the best case scenario... It happened in the past, and we laugh, now in retrospect, with 20/20 hindsight, at the deluded critics who got it all wrong in their time.
But that everyone (the writers, the readers, the young, the veterans, the creators and the consumers) would gladly endorse this "standard procedure" and proudly build their culture on shifting sands is really disturbing.

It's not me saying it, it's Jonathan Rosenbaum !
[..] The whole notion of expertise in film criticism is cripplingly tautological : according to current practice in the U.S., a 'film expert' is someone who writes or broadcasts about film, full stop, yet most 'film experts' are hired not on the basis of their knowledge about film but because of their capacity to reflect the existing tastes of the public. The late Serge Daney understood this phenomenon perfectly - and made it clear that it was far from exclusively American - when he remarked that the media 'ask those who know nothing to represent the ignorance of the public and, in so doing, to legitimize it'. [..]
Rosenbaum wrote that in 2000, before the recent lays-off, before the 2008 "identity-crisis"! Did anyone take a hint back then? Did the situation of editors and "commissioned writers" change since then? Did the industry try to mask its agenda better or to fix up its work ethics? Nah. It got worse, on the contrary... and his grimmest prediction came to be : "no film critics at all" left. I don't know if nobody listened, or if the powers-that-be didn't care, but the fact is that this book wasn't the spark to trigger a much needed cleansing revolution, wasn't the wake up call to focus the concerns of the film intelligentsia...
excerpt (last Chapt.) Conclusion

[..] We need to redefine film criticism. Limiting it to the evaluation of features that turn up in multiplexes is self-defeating for reasons I don't need to enumerate. What would our literary criticism be if it were restricted to paperbacks carried by K-Mart? If anything, the massive advertising campaigns of the multinationals need to be countered, not merely supplemented, and countered by a lot more than skeptical reviews. the waking assumption of the press now - that all interesting and important movies are uniformly available - is that the public is too stupid and impotent to think for itself about such matters, so that it becomes the job of publicists and reviewers to shoulder that responsibility. For that reason, I've argued elsewhere, in my collection Placing Movies, that we'd be much better off if we had no film critics at all. Banning that possibility, we could certainly use a few who respect the people who read them."
How could the institutional press keep standing on its feet after such self-contradiction being exposed in daylight, and continue to fake "criticism" for the self-conservation of an hegemonic industry that needs no aid.
I don't know how publicists, editors, writers, readers could continue to swallow these critical fallacies (deception, complacency, conflict of interest) every week, knowingly, without complaining, without asking for higher standards, without flinching... If spelling it out in front of your eyes can't do it, what will ever?

Maybe it's because only the prosperity of the American-centric movie industry matters, maybe because Film Criticism doesn't exist wherever you wave bank notes, maybe because movies are commodities that only need consumer guides. And that all is well in the best possible world... American fatalism. Or is it blindness at this point?

Related:

07 août 2010

Burlesque (ironic)


film d'auteur

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Hollywood dramatisation