NOEL CARROLL

THE ESSENCE OF CINEMA?

(Accepted 31 July 1997)

Gregory Currie’s Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and CognitiveScience1 is a major event in the study of film. It represents the firstthoroughgoing philosophy of film in the analytic tradition. Coveringsuch topics as the essence of cinema, the nature of representation infilm, the relation of film to language, the nature of the spectator’simaginative involvement in film, and problems of film narrationand interpretation, the book adresses a gamut of classical questionsof film theory and answers them, often in surprising ways, froma perspective richly informed by Currie’s impressive grasp of thephilosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. Even if onedisagrees with Currie’s solutions to various problems, one can onlyappreciate the way in which he has raised the level of analysis andargument in the area of film theory.

I stress the singular importance of this book, since this sessionis called Author meets Critics. However, though I will raise somequestions about the details of Image and Mind, I would not wantto leave anyone with the impression that my admiration for it isanything less than wholehearted.

Like any philosophical achievement, Image and Mind is open todispute. What is perhaps surprising about this book is that on somany topics it seems definitive. This makes the task of an officialcritic somewhat difficult. Nevertheless, I have found one area whereI can quibble with some of Currie’s findings. Thus, for the remainderof this essay I will talk about Currie’s characterization of the essenceof cinema.

Currie begins Image and Mind with a discussion of the essenceof cinema. By essence, Currie seems to mean common featuresthat mark things as films rather than something else (p. 1). But I’mnot sure that I am always following this discussion correctly, since,

Philosophical Studies 89: 323–330, 1998.c 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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at times, it seems to me that Currie says he’s after the essence ofcinema, and at other times, he indicates that his account is stipulative(p. 4). Also, at still other times, Currie appears to take back partsof his account of the essence of cinema. For example, he says thatcinema is an essentially pictorial medium, while also agreeing that italso contains nonpictorial representations, like words. But then whatare we to make of whole films composed of nothing but words ornumbers?

As I understand him, Currie maintains that essentially films arerepresentations, specifically pictorial representations, specificallymoving pictures. I take it that Currie thinks that these are no morethan necessary conditions, since these conditions would not differ-entiate film from much video or even flip books. Because of this, I’ma bit uncertain as to why Currie insists on talking about the essenceof cinema, rather than that of motion pictures. Nevertheless, film ishow he labels his topic.

Currie says: “Film is a representational medium” and that “filmis a pictorial medium; it gives us – exactly – moving pictures” (p. 2).Thus, I surmise that for Currie, x is a film only if it is 1) a moving 2)pictorial 3) representation. However, I question whether any of theseconditions is a necessary condition for film. If one looks at some ofthe standard texts in film history, one can easily find counterexamplesto the assertion that film is necessarily representational as well as tothe claim that it is pictorial.

If we understand by a representation something that is intendedto stand in for something else, then there are many films that are notrepresentational. One entire genre of this sort is the flicker film –films that alternate clear and opaque leader (and/or colored leader)in order to present a stroboscopic effect to audiences. Two famousexamples of this sort of film are Peter Kubelka’s Arnulf Rainer –made between 1958 and 1960 – and Tony Conrad’s The Flicker,made in 1966. These films do not represent anything. Rather, theypresent visual stimulation to audiences with the intention of elicitingcertain perceptual states – like afterimages – from spectators.

Created in the spirit of high modernism, these films were thoughtto reveal certain of the conditions of film viewing. “Flicks” or“Flickers”, you’ll recall, were once generic nicknames for films. So,these films were said to provide opportunities for viewers to come

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to understand something about the generic nature of film. And, in aless exalted vein, in the sixties, people also attempted to use flickerfilms to induce or to accompany hallucinogenic experiences.

The frames in a flicker film need not and most frequently do notcontain representations of anything. The films are generally pure,nonreferential, visual stimulation. They do not represent. Theypresent light at a certain pulse. When I was studying filmmakingat New York University, making flicker films was a standard exer-cise for mastering film rhythm. Moreover, flicker films are printedphotographically for distribution and projection in the same fashionthat The English Patient is.

In some respects, flicker films are analogous to what was calledOp-Art. Both flicker films and Op-Art are predicated upon toyingwith the spectator’s perceptual apparatus directly rather than via“mediated” representations. Furthermore, just as one would expectan analytical characterization of painting not to exclude Op-Artby definition, it seems problematic to me to exclude flicker filmsfrom the corpus of cinema in this manner. An additional problemwith ignoring flicker effects is that they are sometimes incorpo-rated in commercial films, as in the title sequence of A Clock-work Orange, not to mention music videos (which are frequentlyfilmmed). Similarly, the flicker genre is not the only film genre thatis not representational. There are also scratch films which may beprinted photographically for distribution.

A film like Tony Conrad’s The Flicker not only raises problemsfor Currie’s assertion that films are essentially representational, butalso for the claim that they are essentially pictorial. By “picture”,Currie means a visual array whose referent can be recognized simplyby looking. A shot of a horse is pictorial inasmuch as I can recog-nize that it is a representation of a horse simply by looking, sansany subtending processes of reading, inferring or decoding. Curriesays that cinema trades essentially in pictorial representations. But ifthis means that all films are necessarily pictorial, then Currie’s char-acterization excludes the rich history of abstract filmmaking fromthe order of cinema, since such films do not possess recognizablereferents.

Abstract filmmaking emerged as early as the 1920s with workslike Walter Ruttman’s Lichtspiel and Viking Eggeling’s Diagonal

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Symphonie. Since the twenties, abstract films have been made byHarry Smith, Douglas Crockwell, Marie Menken, Mary Ellen Bute,Norman McClaren, John and James Whitney, Dieter Rot, JordanBelson, Stan Brakhage, Derek Jarman, and many others. JohnWhitney’s Permutations and Len Lye’s 1952 Force Radicals aretwo of many examples here.

Admittedly, abstract filmmaking is not the tradition with whichmost people are familiar. But it is a continuous tradition, it has aposition in film history books, it sometimes surfaces in the commer-cial tradition (e.g., the Star Gate sequence in 2001), and it has obviousaffinities with modernist art in other visual media including painting,sculpture and photography. Just as one would not discount Brancusi’sBird in Flight as sculpture on the grounds that it is nonpictorial (non-versimilitudinous) and abstract, it seems equally questionable to meto frame an account of the essence of cinema that fails to includesomething like Brakhage’s Text of Light. Would we accept an analysisof the essence of painting that failed to acknowledge most modernart on the grounds that it was abstract rather than pictorial?

Currie maintains that his characterization of the essence of cinemais descriptive rather than prescriptive. However, since his accountexcludes significant portions of avant-garde filmmaking, it seemsthat his view is inadvertently prescriptive or value-laden, proposingthe common viewer’s preference for moving pictures as a character-ization of the essence of film.

Yet the aims of abstract filmmakers – their concern with visualrhythm and explorations of visual experience – are recognized asessential projects in media other than film. Indeed, like certainabstractionists in other media, many abstract filmmakers can bealso correctly interpreted as raising questions about the essenceof their medium by means of film. We don’t disenfranchise suchabstract/reflexive aspirations in other media. Isn’t it arbitrary to rulethem out of the history of film by definition?

Currie admits that films contain more than pictures. He takes noteof subtitles and intertitles (p. 7). So he concedes that parts of filmsmay be nonpictorial. However, I think that he does not appreciatewhere this concession will lead, since there are whole films that arecomprised of nothing but words and numerals. Michael’s Snow’s SoIs This is a film of sentences; Takahiko Iimura’s 1 in 10 is a film of

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addition and subtraction tables. Nor are such examples only of recentvintage; Len Lye’s A Colour Box was made in 1935. Moreover, itis not the case that we can only find examples here in the avant-garde traditions. There are movie trailers that are all words, as wellas advertizements, filmed for TV, that are made up of nothing butsentences.

Such works are created and projected by means of standardfilmmaking processes. They are photographed and printed. Theavant-garde examples, furthermore, are intelligible contributions toreigning filmworld discussions – about semiotics (and shifters), inthe case of So Is This, and about structural film, in the case of 1 in10. In the tradition of film modernism, these films use the mediumto raise questions reflexively about the nature of the medium. I seeno reason to deny that they are films. What else would they be? Butif films are necessarily pictorial, as Currie maintains, then these arenot films.

Films like these may also raise another problem with Currie’sconception of the essence of film, since these films are static. Theyare not moving pictures because they are not moving anythings, atleast as far as the eye can detect. Nor are these the only examplesof static films. Others include: Oshima’s Band of Ninjas (a film ofa comic strip); Michael Snow’s One Second in Montreal (a filmof photos); Hollis Frampton’s Poetic Justice (a film of tabletop onwhich we see pages of a shooting script); and Godard and Gorin’sinfamous Letter to Jane (another film of photos). These are all filmsin the sense that they were constructed and disseminated by meansof standard film apparatuses. They command a significant place infilm history where the question of “What is film?” is part of anongoing conversation internal to the filmworld – one addressed byfilmmakers and theorists alike.

Moreover, these films use stasis as a stylistic choice. It is the factthat they are films that makes their stillness a pertinent, if not thepertinent, feature of the works in question. Had these films beenslides, one would not remark upon their stillness. Movement is nota stylistic option with slides. But since these works are films, oneis prompted to ask why there is no movement in them. What is thepoint? Any interpretation of these works has to offer an explanationof why the filmmakers under consideration have eschewed the possi-

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bility of movement. But if they were not films but something else,like photos or slides, this question simply wouldn’t arise. Stillnessis an integral stylistic feature of these works, one that is crucial toa correct interpretation and appreciation of them. If they are notcategorized as films, but as de facto slides or photos, this property,as a significant property of the works in question, disappears. Thus,from the perspective of appreciation, it seems to me ill-advised todiscount these works as films.

The point of many still films is reflexive – to point to aspects orelements of film that are often neglected (like narration in the caseof Oshima or scripting in the case of Frampton). Subtracting move-ment from the visual array is a way of leading viewers – or at leastcertain kinds of viewers – to these reflexive observations. A concernwith reflexive questions is part of what Currie elsewhere calls the“heuristic pathway” of such works. These concerns are evident inthe history of filmmaking as early as the nineteen twenties. Like-wise these films are produced and distributed by means of standardfilmmaking processes. So, once again, I see little reason to supposethat these are not part of the history of filmmaking. Indeed, somethough not I, might claim that these are examples of what was oncecalled essential cinema inasmuch as they are experiments towardestablishing the minimal requirements for something to count as afilm.

I must concede that I may be being too hard on Currie in accusinghim of making movement a necessary condition off film. In at leastone place, he may be indicating that it need not be. In his stipulativecharacterization of films, he says “they are produced by photographicmeans and delivered onto a surface so as to produce or be capableof producing, an apparently moving image” (p. 4, emphasis added).If the caveat “or be capable of producing” allows that the imagesmay be static and that entire films can be static, then my precedingobjections are misplaced. But since Currie never clarifies why hehas added this talk about capabilities, I will let my objections standuntil I hear otherwise.

Of course, if Currie does mean this talk of capabilities to accom-modate works like Poetic Justice, then I have no substantive quarrelwith him. This seems the right way to go – to refrain from claimingmovement to be a necessary feature of film, but only to require that

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the relevant imagery be produced in a medium with the capacity todeliver movement.2 Thus my only criticism of Currie here might turnout to be nothing more than a reader’s request that he had been moreforthcoming on this issue. On the other hand, since he doesn’t raisethe issue of static films, I’m not sure he takes it seriously, whereas Ithink he should.

I have interpreted Currie’s view as maintaining that films arenecessarily moving pictorial representations. However, at certainpoints, he indicates that his bottom line is that films are essentiallyvisual. I am not completely certain about what this is meant to signal.But it did at least make me wonder about whether or not Currie wouldcountenance the possibility of invisible films? There are some filmsthat nearly approach this limit – like Brakhage’s Fire of Waters (anight scene occasionally streaked by brief flashes of lightning[?]).And there are parts of films – such as the opening of Frampton’sZorn’s Lemma – without any images. Likewise Guy Debord’s 1952film Screams in Favour of de Sade is almost completely black, savefor a few bursts of white light.3 But, even more radically, I conjecturethat it might even be possible to make a completely invisible film.

Here is one scenario; there could be others. Imagine a modernistfilmmaker who has been impressed by the history of solid blackpaintings. He makes an underexposed film that looks absolutelypitch black in a standard screening room.4 On the soundtrack, hetalks about how half the time we watch any film, the screen is literallydark. His work is meant to draw our attention to this fact. Perhapshe is a bit of an expressionist – he calls his film “The Darkness ofCinema”. Or, he is Duchampian – he calls it “The Ultimate FilmNoir”. Would this be a film? My inclination is to say yes as longas it way made by cinematic means and it is part of an intelligible,ongoing filmworld conversation. Is this a counterexample to Currie’sassertion that films are essentially visual? Maybe in his response, hewill address this question.

By way of conclusion, I must confess that I realize that manylisteners may be of the opinion that I’ve been ragging Currie’saccount of the essence of cinema with marginal and irrelevant exam-ples, drawn primarily from the history of the avant-garde. Perhapssome of you are tempted to say – “That stuff isn’t really film”. Butthat’s the issue, and the point of my comment. Had Currie simply

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said that he meant to be talking about how films typically are, therewould be little merit in disputing with him at such length. But heproposes to speak of the essence of cinema.

Instead, I would argue that he has only talked about certain typesof cinema, albeit the most popular kinds. This belies a certain bias,frequent among film theorists, which compromises their attempts tobe genuinely descriptive. With respect to the philosophy of art, wehave learnt that often proposals concerning the essence of art turnout covertly to “privilege” certain kinds of art at the expense of othersorts. I worry that Currie’s de facto disenfranchisement of much ofthe history of avant-garde film may also have this kind of untowardeffect. And that would be unfortunate given the marvelous job hehas done otherwise in founding an analytic philosophy of film.

NOTES

1 Gregory Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Relevant page references arenoted parenthetically above.2 For further discussion of this issue, see Noel Carroll, “Defining the MovingImage”, in my Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1996).3 Also, the filmmaker Alain Resnais has said that he has always dreamt of makinga film comprised only of a sound track.4 Derek Jarman’s film Blue is just that – the screen is blue, with no images,throughout its duration, accompanied by a soundtrack. What I am imagining is afilm like Jarman’s, only all black.

Department of PhilosophyUniversity of WisconsinMadison, WI 53706-1475U.S.A.