Hi Jason, and hi all; new member, here.
My name’s Ian, I’m a postgrad research student at Royal Holloway, University of London, and am another one of Jenna’s disciples, who I should thank formally here for pointing me to the site and for the invitation. My research is on the web-connecting of the New Hollywood: this involves, historical dimensions of the super-grossing blockbuster, the reorganisation of the industry through colossal megamergers like AOL-Time-Warner, and the evolution of target-marketing. All of which means that I read much Edward J Epstein, Justin Wyatt, Janet Wasko, Doug Gomery … but no New Lacanian theory. Just fairly straight economics, history and advertising, in my corner.
This said, I thought I’d kick off with a modest note on a film I think we’ve all seen now and would have written about critically. I’ve been engaged in a lengthy dialogue with a friend by email regarding United 93 (which I apologise for repeating in a new thread after Jason’s good post back in May) and I’d like to open it up here for some first impressions from you fine people. This is more about sense-making, you see, and the critical voice. What fuelled the argument was a difference of opinion on the incorporation of a "realism" into the film – by which I mean in this case not a cinematic realism, or the illusion of a perfect realism, but rather the real event and historical truth on which the film is founded, that which exists beyond the film providing its tremendous power. This, in turn, led to questions about the position of the spectator-as-reviewer (the thing bugging me now), and particularly one’s own sense of responsibility in avoiding the temptation in one’s writerly voice to de-emphasise the external reality which informs the movie.
For my part, I’ve been guilty of the latter when penning my reviews; to me, a film text cannot touch the real events of a trauma such as September 11. U-93 invokes the spectre of that day in order to foreground some meanings and affects above others, and consequently, it becomes an ideological text worthy of critical analysis. Importantly, I feel the film shares consistent narrative patterns with the thriller, it performs the simple therapeutic tasks of the conventional disaster film, the same ideological play of the urbanoia and rape-revenge films which Carol Clover speaks of, it marries American self-esteem with a new-militarism in the tradition of the post-Vietnam war movie, and carries some of the political inflections of a Watergate or Chinatown movie: in sum, then, this leads me to a genre-based criticism of the film, from which position I was perhaps happier than I should have been to criticise (though not negatively) the film’s thematic and ideological richness in the context of other ‘straight’ fictions. Whereas my friend felt uncomfortable about making these connections in a film based on real events: the event interfered with the conventions of the film text, effectively erecting a psychological barrier to critical analysis.
My objection to this is simple: once a piece of reality or an event-trauma is presented onscreen in a narrative context, like that of U93, then we the spectator, critic and analyst are no longer dealing with that event, but with that event in terms of its signification: that is, how and why it has been interpreted in a specific way by an artist, and before this, how and why the material was selected by executives within the Hollywood community for commercial purposes. I suppose, and this is where scholars looking into theoretical debates about film and documentary truth will have mastered some form of eloquent response, that all filmed entertainment is hybridised to an extent, so that the finished piece is regularly a fictionalised tale with conventions and tropes we all recognise: Bus 174 and One Day in September, though heavily dependent on their documentary content (interviews, chronological historical fact, live footage), indulge in the same storytelling characteristics as fiction, and to the same ends: if the effect on the viewer is the same, why should the critical response be any more circumspect because we’re reflecting on a cultural work which itself draws on real events? Should one treat Heat any differently to The French Connection and Glory (all fiction films touching in one way or the other on essential documentary ‘truths’), purely in film reality terms? I guess this whole argument is bound up in our ability to co-operate with the text in constructing its meaning; our willingness to lower or raise that barrier between the "real" as a reference point and the text as art.
At any rate, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Many salutes,
Ian
Many salutes,
Ian
9 comments:
Hi, Ian, and welcome,
I cannot speak for the other members of the blog, but I for one don't have a problem with you returning to United 93. Upon reflection this morning, I realized that--to me--this has been the only American movie I've seen all year worth a damn. I don't remember giving a second thought to *any* other movie.
You are absolutely right to highlight how the film "cannot touch the real events of a trauma such as September 11." And, of course, part of the brilliance of the film is that it knows it cannot touch the trauma. In a sense then, the film itself "effectively erect[s] a psychological barrier to critical analysis."
I guess I agree with you, and with your friend, if I'm not mistaking the arguments. As you note, we are dealing with a text and not with the event, except "in terms of its signification." However, at the same time, I think, the "discomfort" of your friend is itself tied up in that signification. Or, put more simply, the film signifies discomfort (and not just rationally, as I argued in a different way earlier), in addition to the other significations you've highlighted.
Either the film does contain a "spectre" of 9/11--or (as I would argue) it awakens the spectre of 9/11 within us. In either case, I'm not sure that all genre films have the same effect. Certainly, one could analyze certain aspects of the film in much the same way (eg. Heat vs. Glory), but that doesn't mean we react rationally or affectively in much the same way.
Of course, United 93 is more complicated because 9/11 was always already such a highly mediated event to begin with, and the film can only intensify even more that pre-existing feeling of mediation (as opposed to a largely unmediated event such as the Civil War, except after the fact). But perhaps that is a different matter.
js
ps--I took the liberty to add the link to your post, since I didn't want to regurgitate things some members have already said. Feel free to edits other posts in time--its not a barred practice.
Also, feel free to invite the "friend by email," to chime in, too.
Ian! Great to see you here. Like Jason, I am glad you returned to United 93, if anything because it now gives me a chance to talk about it too. :-) [A small note to our American friends: new movies usually open in the UK a little later than they do in the States (for eg Superman Returns only opens here next Friday!) so it would be great if we could sometimes re-open discussion (with appropriate linking) on films brought up earlier. The vagaries of global distribution networks......]
This is an extremely interesting post indeed. I agree largely with your and Jason's points. But I also think we shouldn't forget that, for all its documentary feel, United 93 was a re-creation of events. As such, it already commits itself to the problematic of realism - one thus accepts a certain amount of liberty to come with it, be it in narrative, tropes, genre conventions, editing, composition, camera angles etc.
I stress this because I think it's important to differentiate the reception of re-created images from "real", "one-time" images such as documentary or news footage (which you mentioned as inserted in Bus 174 etc), where you know the event is actually happening in front of the Vertovian kinoeye. Remember the Bazinian ontology of the photographic image is ultimately subjective (Rosen) - it is real not because it is real but because we know it is real. Hence, while I agree with you that for various reasons there might be what you termed the "psychological barrier" in relation to re-creation (such as United 93), I would argue strenuously that such a barrier does not exist, or at least is greatly diminished, in relation to the reception of historical footage. To that end, I am in complete agreement with the Barthian view of the photographic image - instead of removing us from the event, it, in Proustian memory (and yes, in epiphany), tips us towards it instead (Camera Lucida, p. 70, or end of Chap. 28).
Albeit this is tangential; I do agree with your main argument. For what I would consider an un-re-created film work on the trauma event of 9/11, have you seen Alejandro González Iñárritu's absolutely exceptional short in 11'09''01 - September 11? Which I hope to blog about some day (time! time!) - I would love to hear what others think abt it. But your post is about United 93, and to that end I think you are right about it.
Jenna
First of all, welcome Ian!
Second of all, I agree that genre is not out of the question when discussing U93. I would argue it more so falls into the realm of "docu-drama" as "disaster film." Through it's striving for ultra-realism, it becomes a hybrid of genres through this attempt. And, as I pointed out earlier, 9-11 was a mediated event in America that seemed like Hollywood. One of the most common sensations when watching the tragic news unfold from afar was, "this feels like a movie."
Through, as everybody has implied, I think U93 is aware of its limitations in capturing the "event." It is aware of its weaknesses as recreation, which, somehow, only makes it work all the more. (I partly agree with Jason on how this film stands out. But I would say, this is the only "challenging" American film so far in ‘06. I've enjoyed others).
In response to Jenna, I'll mention a critic many people quickly dismiss -- Bill Nichols, who I agree has some serious flaws in much of his work, such as Ideology and the Image. At one point in Representing Realities, he theorizes the entire Mulvian/Metzian gaze theory of the 70s to non-fiction film.
Even if you hate that entire school of theory, what is interesting to me is how he adds the concept of barriers to documentary footage, by actually making the filmmaker him/herself tangibly a component within the spectatorship process:
"[style] implicates the documentarist as a human subject directly, what we see, unlike what we see in a fiction, does not offer the conjectual space of metaphor . . . In documentary, we see how filmmakers regard, or look at, their fellow humans directly. The documentary is a record of that regard. The implication is direct." (80)
In this way, he contends that documentaries have an "ethical gaze" based on a moral outlook from the filmmaker. Thus, the viewer sets this as a type of "barrier" when we watch non-fiction footage. (He doesn't really use the word "barrier," but it seems to fit his description to me).
I don't know if I agree with this concept, but it does seem related to Jenna's points. What about the tangible presence of the recorders of the events? Do they serve as a barrier to the viewer?
Thanks for the comments guys,
Re your point, Jenna, about a spectator’s subjective psychological barrier: “such a barrier does not exist/is greatly diminished in relation to the reception of historical footage.” This is interesting with U-93, and forgive if I take this into obvious territory covered by the likes of Bazin. The CNN recording of the second strike on the WTC achieves the mechanical eye of Vertov, which you mention, and I agree that for one intensely powerful moment (and I have to emphasise, the one scene in the film which moved me to tears), we the viewer feel the weight of the event’s presence; it cuts across all of our perceptions and interpretations of “realism” by physically exposing us to a form of direct cinema, right? The event as it occurred before the recording eye ... But the placement of this footage (along with less affecting footage of the Pentagon aftermath) within a fiction film could lead to some difficulties: though I don’t feel this myself, isn’t there a danger that audiences, and this is where I try to bring in my above point about critics/reviewers/analysts reading the film objectively, will be “tipped” not towards the real event but instead away from it?
As you say Jason, 9/11 was a “highly mediated event,” and there is the risk that through repetitive reconstruction across many forms of media the event might have lost some of its reality and meaning. (I’m glad to say this has not happened for me, five years on and, albeit, as a Brit in the UK. Perhaps because I regard America as some kind of brother to this country.) CNN’s historical footage is privileged dramatically in U-93, so that characters freeze, the camera slows, sound is pulled out, etc., and the effect is mesmerising. But I think the focus of our attention could be misplaced here. Unlike a film such as Bus 174 in which an audience is consistently dealing with “real, one-time images,” U-93 calls a momentary halt to its film-making process to run news footage, and then starts back up again. Is the psychological barrier we speak of here, similarly collapsed and then reinstated, or does it carry through the news footage, through the physical portrayal of the real event itself, and thus neutralising it? This is what interests me with regard to the reviewer/critic’s position.
On a similar note, I’d agree of course with the point that “not all genre films have the same effect” of awakening a trauma within us – which I extend beyond 9/11, as a singular event, to cover such universal human experiences as personal loss, the prospect of one’s own death, primal fears regarding the Other in whatever form it manifests. But I do think there are fine examples of genre films that do. JFK (as Jenna demonstrated in one of her talks on epiphany here) certainly awakens the trauma of the Kennedy assassination; Saving Private Ryan is one example I’d give of a film which, in one scene, single-handedly cuts through whatever disciplined detachment from events we may have formed in order to survive the viewing experience itself. (The scene I refer to is the protracted execution of Pvt. Mellish, I think one of the most savage moments in screen history.)
There seems to be some disagreement (not with you, but with critics) about whether or not we are dealing with a movie as text or movie as performance. The problem some critics have, and my friend Steve (sorry dude, but must namedrop you now), is that they do not have the critical confidence to reduce U-93 to the level of a text, where it can be analysed against other, straight fictions; whereas I, in my naivety perhaps, am quite prepared to. In this case, your point Jason about discomfort being “tied up in the signification” of the event is probably spot on. I am quick to tackle through formal analysis, the ways in which the filmmakers attempted to overcome these complexities in order to produce a coherent film; whereas others are more evaluative about the event beyond its signification within the film – this is, from what I can gather talking with others, what leads to the erection of a psychological barrier to critical analysis.
Ciao,
Ian
Ironically, it feels as though this "psychological barrier to critical analysis" is itself a "barrier to critical analysis"--as in, focusing so much on it (even if critically) makes it difficult to argue that it is reducible to formalist and/or genre-based criticisms alone.
Then again, do they have to be mutually exclusive? Can't we accept our traumatic, psychological barriers as part of a formalist critique? That is, acknowledge that the trauma is there (hell, it may be the trauma which has compelled us to write so much), which also comparing United 93 to other thrillers and/or documentaries. Perhaps, what I'm struggling to say is that we don't have to strip out or deny the blot, regardless of what we choose to say specifically about the film.
Interesting for you to use the term “blot,” you closet Lacanian!
We have created a false dichotomy in this discussion between psychological trauma and critique. United 93 is so interesting because it is a ghost of trauma, a facsimile attempting to create a sense memory of a national trauma through being a docu-drama “behind the scenes” genre piece.
There are no two different “takes” on the text here. They are one in the same. All these things don’t serve as barriers to the criticism, but essentially define each other within the text. It is all self-perpetuating. I cannot see discussing one without the other.
But I really believe, the docu-drama/thriller genre elements do not only define the text, but the event itself as “national.”
9-11 was the unimaginable – the massively traumatic real. It was the unimaginably fictional being forced upon our mundane everyday lives. The film is “genre,” yet the event was “genre” too – a mediated tragedy as some sort of cruel postmodern cosmic joke.
I just use blot because it sounds cooler. Like every serviceable Lacanian term, it works better at a distance.
js
. . . . kinda like a firecracker.
js
It is a cool little serviceable word that does work better at a distance (though distance itself from the blot seems to define the blot in a way).
But I am saying the blot is the key to our response to the film AND the event.
I feel Lacan can be useful in discussing trauma and memory, even when somebody might generally avoid his theories in film studies. Seeing the ideas are based upon those of a practicing analyst, this makes sense. Of course, one of the key things to considering him in regard to forms of trauma (which seems to be this “psychological barrier” vaguely referred to here) is to think of how frustrating he would’ve been to visit clinically. To him, the true intension of psychoanalysis was never cure, but analysis itself.
It makes me consider why United 93 works as such a non-cathartic viewing experience. All it does is remind us of the traumatic by examining the “behind the scenes” of what we watched on 9-11 through CNN. That’s why “blot” actually works so well here, since the entire thing resembles those confusing little graphs found throughout Lacan’s lectures. It’s all about a distance, though one that still creates a psychological/emotional effect for the viewer.
OK . . . I’ll stop with the Lacan for now, since I feel like the party guest everybody will start to avoid.
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