Prospects for Revisiting Film Theory From Unconscious Obscurity to Conscious Expansion

Abstract

Film theory tries to examine how cinema builds up its identity since it aims at discovering the nature of the relationship between cinema and reality on one hand and between cinema and other fields on another hand. This is why, film theory is strongly interrelated with linguistics, philosophy, cultural studies and many other fields such as psychology, gender, and anthropology. Gilles Deleuze, for example, in his Cinema I, the Movement Image and Cinema II, the Time Image, revisits Heneri Bergson’s Matter and Memory by involving philosophy and semiotics to accentuate a more efficient method allowing theorists and practitioners to understand whether cinema should be analogous to reality, the stand supported by Bazin, or it should transcend this reality to reach psychological, absurd, or at least innovative modes that challenge the narrative and reinforce subjective ways of cinematic representation. This avant- gardist tendency becomes salient after the World War II, the era when philosophy of existentialism was so influential. Be that as it may, cinema in the recent era that is marked with a postmodernist trajectory assumes form of saturation since it stops providing any innovative styles. It rather repeats previous styles from classical and modernist cinema. Pastiche, Parody, and Irony are some genres used by postmodernist cinema to render these repetitions into practical modes. This marks the death of cinema, the notion that exists side by side with the death of theory, the concept that is related to academic works of Jacque Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Aijaz Ahmad. This dissertation aims at understanding the reason behind the mentioned cinematic saturation. It examines first the common mechanism operating within the contexts of the three main tendencies, namely classicism, modernism, and postmodernism to figure out the possibility of the saturation of this mechanism rather than the saturation of cinema per see, seeing that there are some recent film experiences that do not reflect any exhaustion. They rather suggest

new promising configuration. On doing so, the researcher points out how material modes such as Marxism and existentialism have strongly been shaping the film theory throughout the three main cinematic trends though these trends apparently are described by film theorists such as Gilles Deleuze as contradicting each other. If we take into consideration the transcend mode of the newly born cinematic experience that is trying now hard to detach itself from the mentioned mechanism, the reason behind this saturation remains merely at the level of the tenacious mechanism constructing film theory. Cinema, however, can mark a fourth stage. It is in fact still in its embryonic phase if it is compared to literature for example. This dissertation works towards deconstructing the nature of this postmodernist cinematic saturation embodied in repetitions and a certain inability to create original styles. The researcher in the course of this dissertation examines the common factor of contradicted styles to find out whether this saturation is stemmed from the repetitive theory of materialism itself or is it a salient and an ultimate death to film theory and cinematic genres. Is it the end of cinema or rather a shift from agency of unconscious obscurity caught between racist ideologies and nihilist modes to a more promising formula liberating cinema from its rigid regulations and limitations? This generic amalgamation characterizing the new cinematic experience blurs the boundaries between conventional Avant-garde modes. The samples that the researcher uses to prove the birth of a newly born method construe to what extent cinema can benefit from the mixing-up of different aesthetics. This will allow cineastes to abandon the breaks and boundaries imposed by rigorous theories that continue operating within liberal theories such as feminism and post colonialism. If the reason behind this saturation is Marxism and materialism, can cinema do without them? Can it live longer? Can it construct an effective paradigm based on freedom and liberation from narrow limitations and grand narratives? Do we have the right to dream again of a multidimensional cultural construction?

To conduct this dissertation, the researcher applies textual and stylistic analyses. The researcher opts for the content analysis since it is effective in dealing with the contents constructed by media, arts, communication, visual texts, and cinema. It allows the researcher to decode the coded filmic elements in the selected samples to understand and deconstruct the nature and the meaning of symbols behind the studied imagesand other suggested nuances. On understanding the specific characteristics in visual texts, the textual analysis accentuates tempo- spatial, linguistic, iconic, and thematic tools, which are all of a great importance to deconstruct meanings of these samples. Concerning the stylistic analysis, it allows the researcher to construct an idea about how these visual texts are constructed in terms of the style. The aim behind the stylistic approach is to interpret the form in relationto aesthetic filmic elements such as the camera movements, colors, costume, editing, acting methods, sound track, etc. Respecting the theoretical framework, the researcher has opted for an eclectic m ethod. Since cinema is open to so differentideas, themes, arts, methods, and aesthetics, the researcher bases his analyses to various philosophical, and aesthetic approaches such as existentialism, nihilism, Marxism, themes and principles related to film theory, cultural studies, film studies, and semiotics. All these trends help the researcher understand the nature of themes related to films under study. They also reveal various significations with reference to acting method, montage, colors, music, sound track, screenplay, etc. In regard to the findings of this dissertation, the researcher has come to the conclusion that the saturation that has recently marked film experience occurs at the level of the theory, namely Marxism and other materialist trends rather than at the level of the cinematic experience itself. On analyzing the samples, the researcher has noticed that the six films under study try to go beyond postmodernist hybridity in an attempt to consciously embrace the notion of multiplicity. This filmic tendency believes in a kind of interdisciplinary mode or rather an eclectic choice that interweaves classical principles with modernist and postmodernist

characteristics. For instance, it overlaps conventional ability with avant-garde inability, objectivity with subjectivity, history with interpretation, narrative with fragmentation, material existence with energetic mode, etc. In the same vein, it turns the two contradicted trends around each other in an ascendant manner to prove that existence is neither nihilistic nor perfect.It is rather relative by nature. The researcher finds the DNA metaphor to describe this formula. The two contradictory trends are just like the DNA strands or helices that are continuously overlapped around each other. On the basis of this conclusion, the researcher coins three main expressions. The first neologism is paraoptic im ages that suggest the use of non-material existence such as energetic mode. Yimo’s Hero is a salient example that the researcher uses to show how the film director goes beyond m agical realism and Freudian psychoanalytic dreams to express the role of energy in controlling the matter. The researcher also proves this notion by referring to Einstein’s equation (E = MC2), which explains the interactivity between energy and matter. This declares the death for the pure linearity as well as for the absolute fragmentation. It rather opts for a helical vision that suggests a multiple existence with both sides: energy and matter. These multiple elements reciprocally manifest to give a kind of sparkling faces. Whenever an element gets apparent, it quickly disappears to leave the floor for the contradictory element and vise-versa. The researcher uses within this context his second neologism, that is the Fusaifisic im age. He exchange the word mosaic for fusaifisic since the first suggests the center and the margin of the image, while the second stands for interrelated and dynamic shapes that function in a reciprocal way to escape the center. The whole method is referred to as helical because it suggests this ascending overlapped movements of contradictory modes.