Philosophical understandings of cinema - 5

In my last four columns I discussed a number of important philosophical approaches to cinema, and many of the theorists I focused on were Europeans, In this concluding column on the philosophical understandings of cinema I wish to focus on a recent theoretical movement - cognitive theory in cinema studies. It is largely an American-driven phenomenon in the sense that many of its leading practitioners such as David Bordwell, Noel Carroll, Joseph Anderson, Murray Smith, Paisley Livingston, Edward Branigan, Carl Plantinga are North American. Although I have had no personal dealings with the European theorists that I alluded to in my earlier columns, I have indeed interacted on various occasions with the theorists associated with cognitivism in film studies; some like Paisley Livingston, I know quite well and Mette Hjort was my colleague in the Department of cultural studies and film studies.

Those theorists associated with cognitivism in film analysis are united by one central aspiration: to demolish the mountainous authority of the then (1980s) dominant paradigm of film studies. It is referred to as General Theory by these writers. This paradigm was based on a commingling of the thinking of Jacques Lacan (psychoanalysis), Lois Althusser ( structural Marxism_ and Christian Metz (semiotics). Journals such as 'Screen' played a major role in gaining legitimacy for, and disseminating the views attached to, this regnant paradigm of cinematic analysis. Hundreds of doctoral dissertations have been written in North America and elsewhere, based on this model. I myself have served as a few Ph.D thesis advisor for numerous candidates who were deeply influenced by the Lacanian / Althusserian brew.

The cognitive theory in film studies began to gather momentum, and inflect film analysis in the 1990s. One can, for purposes of analytical convenience, identify three intersecting stages in the evolution of cognitivism in cinema studies. The first stage, which came to light in the 1980s focused attention on what was termed 'historical poetics.' An influential work like David Bordwell's 'Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in theInterpretation of Cinema', exemplifies this approach. In this first stage one observes a movement towards cognitivism, and the desire to introduce some aspects of Russian formalism.

The second stage begins somewhere in the mid 1990s. The book, 'Post-theory: Reconstructing film Studies', edited by Bordwell and Carroll reflects the predominant features of this stage. Here we find an attempt to fashion a new film studies based on cognitivist science, historical poetics, and modes of reasoning drawn from logics of the natural sciences. Clearly, one witnesses a determination on the part of these film theorists to return theory to a paradigm of scientific inquiry and explanation and ground it in a form of empirical rationality. There was evident a longing to re-discover the viewer as a rational agent endowed with cognitive capabilities.

In the third stage, we see the attempt to subject this approach to film analysis to a keen conceptual investigation; we sense the desire to construct theory on a scientific footing, and open it up to a deep philosophical critique. Richard Allen's and Michael Turvey's work represents the deepest pulse of this stage.

They were influenced by the thinking of the late Wittgenstein as contained in 'Philosophical Investigations' and sought to explore filmic discourses through the optic of the philosophy of humanities adumbrated by Wittgenstein. In the three stages we see the emergence of the discourses of history, science and philosophy as determinative factors.

During the 1980s, Bordwell, who is many ways the leader of this group, wrote a number of works such as 'Narration and the Fiction Film' that underlined the importance of historical poetics; this was indeed a salutary move in that the regnant paradigm of cinema studies in the 1970s and 1980s tended to underplay the salience of history. It was his declared interest to locate theory within the parameters of historical and empirical study. Bordwell was also bent on fashioning a model of 'middle-level research' as a means escaping from the clutches of Grand Theory espoused by the dominant paradigm.

Along with this desire, one can observe in Bordwell's work as well as that of his fellow-cognitive theorists, a predilection to move away from psychological theories of subject-formation towards understanding of the cinematic experience shaped by empirical factors as well as mental and perceptual processes of human beings. The concept of a rational agent responding to the filmic experience is central to the effort of cognitivists as opposed to the unconscious factors that were foregrounded by the dominant theorists.

Noel Carroll, the other influential figure associated with this movement is both a film scholar and philosopher; he has doctorates in both fields. He is the author of such well-known books on cinema as 'Mystifying Movies', 'Philosophical Problems of Film Theory' and 'Engaging the Movie Image'. He brings the dynamism and probing instincts of analytical philosophy to the study of cinema. One of his books is on horror cinema; it is titled, 'Philosophy of Horror.' In this book, the author raises the question, why are certain audiences are attracted to horror film? This is the same kind of question that theorists of 'Rasa' asked in classical India. But their answers are widely divergent.

The Rasa theorists believed that in works of art, raw worldly emotions are transmuted into transcendental aesthetic emotions. The mundane object of reference is sublated into tranquil beauty. Therefore feelings such as 'krodha', 'jugupsa' and 'bhaya' become the aesthetic emotions of 'raudra', 'bibhatsa' and 'bhayanaka'. The approach adopted by Carroll is different. He seems to think it is the cognitive challenge, and the ensuing pleasure that it spawns, that makes audiences turn towards horror films. Here, he is approaching horror films from a decidedly cognitivist frame of intelligibility.

The cognitive theorists associate with film studies were firmly convinced the so-called Grand Theory of film studies had to be demolished. According to them, this Grand Theory manifested two intertwined strands of thinking.

The first strand was vitally connected to the thinking of Lacan, Althusser, Metz and journals such as 'Screen' and 'Camera Obscura' sought to propagate it. Here the focus was on the construction of the textual subject through the film and the apparatus associated with it. The film narrative as well as film technology produce subject-positions for spectators.

However, after a while film scholars began to raise questions about the nature and significance and importance of historical subjects who view films and whether the propagated notion of the textual subject was unacceptably restrictive.

It is at this point, that cultural studies-based film scholarship emerged, and began to gain momentum. Cultural studies inspired film scholars recognized the limitations of the earlier approach; consequently, they were quick to focus on the historical subject. In addition, they chose to encircle not only the intricacies of the text, but also of the myriad ways in which spectators made use of film texts. This approach, understandably, had a great appeal.

How audiences read texts against the grain, thereby generating new, and at times, resistive meanings, became a popular topic of analysis among these theorists.

Cognitive theorists find both strands of Grand Theory equally unconvincing and unproductive. They also see important inter-connections between the two strands. David Bordwell finds deep continuities between the two approaches. He identifies four important themes. One, both accept that human practices and institutions are in all significant respects socially constructed. Two, understanding the ways in which audiences interact with film texts require a theory of the subject. Three, the audience response to cinema is determined by identification. Four, verbal languages serve to furnish productive analogue for films. On the basis of this like of thinking, Bordwell argues the both groups share many features in common and they constitute the Grand Theory.

The cognitive theorists, it needs to be recognized, have succeeded in renewing the discourse of film study. They have rescued film from Grand Theory which served to overwhelm and bury the object if analysis. They sought to remake film analysis by centering the film itself as the point of departure and destination of film study. Their anguished questions about film study underlined the importance of judging films on their own terms. The concern of cognitive theorists for the future of film studies deepened into alarm as reflected in the tone of urgency some of their writings.

The emphasis on cognitive factors is crucial to understanding the intent of these theorists. Certain films lend themselves better to this form of analysis. Let us, as an example, consider Lester James Peries' 'Nidhanaya' (Treasure). This film deals with tangled emotions of a tormented man who was pulled by sinister forces he could not master, towards the brutal murder of his wife. This kind of story has a great attraction for cognitivists, because it allows them to explicate the cognitive pleasure afforded by cinema in piecing together puzzles of challenging conjecture. In addition, this film is notable for the way in which a stern aesthetic modulates the flow of its images. The film's sensitive eyes and ears externalize the inner conflict of the protagonist battling his impulses. This cinematic style, too, is one that the cognitive theorists would find attractive.

David Bordwell, Noel Carroll and other cognitive theorists of cinema have performed a useful function in calling attention to the excesses, and the counter-productive tendencies, of the paradigm of cinema studies that dominated in the 1970s and 1980s. However, I fin there are numerous problems associated with their approach; it is almost as if they are moving to a more 'uncomplicated' age. As my friend, the eminent film theorist Robert Stam cogently points out, 'while cognitivism claims to be the latest thing, it can be viewed as a nostalgic move backwards to a world prior to Saussurean differentiation.'

There are a number of glaring deficiencies in the cognitive theoretical approach to cinema. The inadequate attention paid to the politics of location of spectatorship and, how various investments, ideologies, frames of intelligibility of audiences are shaped by social and ideological forces get short shrift. A central question in film study is why does spectator A find a given film interesting and spectator B find it dull. One is left with the disquieting feeling that the spectator posited by cognitive theory is raceless, classless, genderless. As a consequence, culture, politics and history recede into the background, or worse, disappear. Another, and related deficiency, is that cognitive theorists seem to focus on similarities in cognitive actions and reactions across diverse cultures. This has the unfortunate effect of minimizing, or even ignoring, the antithetical imperatives, the intense conflicts that almost always arise within specific cultures and historical conjunctures and social formations. The cognitive theorists have not faced up to the paradox of seeking to construct universal norms to explain what are most certainly culturally-grounded experience of cinema.

Cognitive theorists accused earlier film scholars who endorsed the Grand Theory of being guided by a limited and limiting vocabulary; however, the same charge can be leveled against cognitive theorists. Their privileged vocabulary consists of words and phrases such as 'image processing;, 'visual data, 'physiology of response', 'schemata', 'neuro-psychological coordinates'. These terms have the consequence of underlining the notion that the experience of cinema could be comprehended and explicated in terms of cognitive structures and processes and psychological reactions. Their circuits of reference point to scientific structures. Unfortunately, the pathway opened up by cognitive film theory seems to be leading us towards the land of reductionism. Despite their attempt to uncover complex shapes of film reading, it seems to me, so far, their efforts have given rise to more questions than answers.

What I have sought to do in these columns is to explore the topic of philosophical understandings of cinema by charting the broad field, and locating the peaks, that invariably should command our interest. It was my intention to uncover the philosophical instincts at work in film studies. Clearly, the names of theorists that I have focused on betray my own predilections as well my investments in cinema. If another film critic were to come up with a very different set of names, I would not be surprised.

The diverse philosophical issues which emerge from and play themselves out, in varieties of film analyses is indeed a topic that continually tends to renew itself.