From: Hrvoje Turkovic <hrvoje.turkovic@zg.tel.

hr>
To: film-philosophy@mailbase <film-philosophy@mailbase>
Subject: On theory and interpretation
Date: 24. November 1998. 21:37

Hrvoje Turkovic

On theory and on interpretation

In Buckland's review of Carroll, and more explicitly in

MacLennan's response, there seems to be hidden an unresolved problem of the
relation between theory and interpretation.

Long time ago, in Ljubljana, Slavoj iek put a question to Stephen Neale that
ran something like this: "What is your theory on this film?"

Surprising aspect of the question was its assumption: that there can be
something like THEORY OF SINGULAR INSTANCE, i.e. of a particular film.
Theories are prototypically about categories of instances, not about any
particular instance. E.g. there may be a theory of continuous cut
(i.e. of conditions that have to be fulfilled over a cut to raise an
impression of observationally continuous follow up of represented event).
Such theory would not be a theory of any particular instance of a cut, but
of a conditions a number of cut instances are required to satisfy in order to
have a continuity. It is a defining feature of a theory to
be general, to be valid over a number of instances.

Can there be a theory of a particular cut in a particular film, a theory

of particular film? E.g. can there be a theory of the Hitchcock's
cut from CU of the lying Sam and Marion to the CU of Marion
going on to sit and later to stand up, in the opening hotel scene of the
PSYCHO? In interpreting this cut we may employ the (theoretic) knowledge we
have about the conditions for continuity cut, but we should ask not only
what makes this cut continuous, but why Hitchcock made this cut at
that particular moment of the scene observation (a question of
particular stylistic choice), what is a wider repertoire of Hitchcock's
scene break-up (what is his stylistic scene-segmentation repertoire), what
governs his choice of particular break-up pattern for this particular scene,
etc.

There can hardly be a single theory to answer all these problems, and the
problems that have to be solved are problems that belong to very different
problem spaces, to very different, not always well integrated, theoretical
disciplines (theory of editing, theory of style, theory of narration,
history of style...). Moreover, some of the faced problems may not have any
theory that usefully deals with them. And, in answering the "why" question,
one cannot rely on just any theoretical generalization, but have to check
every chosen generalization against his intuitions of its relevancy in
explaining the particular experience of the particular cut, of its adequacy, and
its fruitfulness.

An "explanation" of singular instance is less a theoretical problem, but the

problem of "reverse engineering" (cf. Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS, New
York, London: W.W. Norton and Comp. pp. 21-44): having an artifact and
having complex experiences elicited by this artifact, the problem for
interpretation is to work out which aspect of the experience is functionally
correlated with which feature constellations of the artifact.
Any engineering task is basically pre-theoretical: it is not particular
theory that produces the questions (the problems), but an immediate
situation: a reception of an artifact (a film) and just a general curiosity
about how it was made to function as it does. A good engineering is by
necessity intuitive and theoretically eclectic: one uses ones intuitions in
discerning the aspects of one's experiences of particular film, and one's
intuitions in singling out the constructional aspects of the particular
artifact, particular film, and apply any theory that seems helpful, any
knowledge (no matter whether it is theoretically substantiated) that helps
answering particular difficulties one faces in the process of solving one's
"engineering" problem.

Interpretations are by definitions "explanations of singular instances" - a

singular film, singular film opus (a filmmaker's opus e.g.), a particular
national cinema, particular trend, etc. But, being explanations, are they -
theoretical explanations? According to the above presentation, interpretation
is a kind of "reverse engineering", a kind of explanation. To interpret a
particular film is not a theoretical but an "engineering" job, eclectic with
regard to theories, employing those academic theories, those folk theories,
those established or ad hoc ideas that seem to answer particular complex
"reverse engineering" task.

This is the reason why I am deeply suspicious toward any doctrinaire

interpretation of a particular film, namely, toward systematic and
exclusive "application" of some particular theory in interpretation of
particular film. If the "reverse engineering" job of interpretation is
constricted by specific theory it is bound to be partially blind, to fail to
take into account many important "engineering" features that are not relevant
from the point of view of particular theory.

The point is we should not expect a cognitivist (a theoretician) like Noel

Carroll to be "a cognitivist" in interpreting particular films. I may be a
convinced and doctrinaire cognitivist in my theoretical work, but I
sincerely do not know "what" am I when interpreting particular film, or the
work of particular filmmaker. In "reverse engineering" a particular film, an
opus of particular filmmaker, of particular place in film... I am using whatever
knowledge there is at hand that fits the basic intuitions of the
particularity/individuality of the faced phenomenon.

But, there is an unavoidable assumption of the reverse engineering: the

phenomenon that is to be reverse-engineered is perceived as unitary, as a
GESTALT, otherwise we would not have anything PARTICULAR (CONCRETE) to
reverse-engineer. The interpretation is constrained by the
IDENTIFICATION of particular film, by its perceived/cognized configuration.
Identification of a film implies that its internal coherence is such as to
discern (a) the particular film from its non-filmic environment (e.g. to
discern the film-image on the TV screen from the TV set to whom TV screen
belong, and from the room where the film-image on the TV-screen is placed),
(b) that its internal coherence is such as to discern elements that
structurally belong to the particular film from those elements that belong to
the inserted commercials or to the TV programs preceding and following the
broadcasting of particular film on TV, and (c) that its internal structure
is discriminative enough to enable us to identify particular film among
other coexisting films, already seen or going to be seen. (I am taking about the
screening of the film on TV just for the convenience).

It is quite misleading to characterize this assumed structural coherence as

"organic whole". The coherence principles may be widely different in
different kinds of film: principles of coherence are of one kind in a poetic
documentary, TV jingles, TV commercials and in music clips, quite different
in an expository scientific film, still different in descriptive
instructional film, and very different in a narrative film. And, further
more, principles of coherence in different kinds of narrative film are quite
different: e.g. the Hitchcock's PSYCHO type of film (classic narrative film)
is governed by quite different coherence principles then silent slapstick
comedy type of film (of episodic narration type), and still more different
from Paradjanov's ASHIK-KERIB (an "associative" narration type). And
principles of coherence in a casually collected discarded shots in editing
room made for the amusement of a crew are quite different from the principles
of coherence of a film made for broadcast (or public distribution). Whether
any of these kinds of coherence fits the "organic whole" metaphor is a very
moot question, hardly worth answering.

But also, any assertion of "inherent contradictions", "disruptions",

"subversions" in particular film, of "inherent incoherence" of any "filmic text"
obviously cannot imply that films are not to be taken as identifiable
particulars. Even the wildest symptomatic approach imply that the object of
interpretation is of sufficient "object permanency" and internal coherency to
sustain its repeated and socially shared identification. Detected "internal
incoherencies" in particular film may be just due to the failure of filmmaker to
maintain a coherency, or a intended deviation, a "symptom" of particular
experiential "flavor" of the film (a mark of its "specificity", its weird
"identity"), or they may be "symptoms" of its "candidacy" for a membership in a
more general category of films with similar "internal incoherencies" (e.g. for a
subversive narrative film; postmodernist hybrid construction, or the
reorientation from predominant narrative to e.g. poetic film, etc.). But
obviously, these "internal incoherencies" may not be "read" as symptoms of the
breakdown of the film into several separate shorter films.

The problem with the most of "symptomatic interpretations" (cf. David Bordwell,
1998, Making Meaning)is that they are less interpretations of particular film
(or particular places in film) but more "interpretations" of a particular
classes of films defined by the presence of particular symptoms. Their approach
to particular film is frequently very alike to the approach of the narrow-minded
atomic physicist to the "average" object. As the later may boldly assert that
the table is nothing more than a lot of empty spaces among the swarm of atoms,
and that there is only a structure of the atom to be seriously investigated, not
a structure of a "human fiction" of a table, so the symptomatic analyst can say
that a film is nothing more than an accidental agglomeration of symptoms which
has their own (hidden) "meaning" irrespective of their place/role within the
particular film's "identity configuration".

But the particular identity of a film is anything but trivial to explain:

"reverse engineering" of the identity of even the most "stereotyped" film often
presents a far tougher challenge to the interpretive abilities then the
unconstrained symptomatic interpretation: symptoms can be chosen according to
the abilities of the interpreter, and according to the premeditated "theory" of
the "symptom class", therefore successful in advance, but the "reverse
engineering" may easily fail short in not being able to give a coherent account
of all the film features that obviously contributes to the film's "identity-
coherency".

WARNING NOTE: English is not my native language, it was late acquired, so be

tolerant to the grammatical and idiomatic mistakes and stylistic clumsiness.