by Colin Mcginn
Speaking of the less tasteful aspects of the religious impulse, it would be remiss of me not to mention the corruption and mendacity that infiltrates so much religion and moviemaking. It isn't all virtue and goodness, is it? The public front is not always matched by what happens behind the scenes. The love of power, of manipulation, of privilege, the fake benevolence, the desire for riches, the concupiscence, the casting couch, the backstabbing and betrayals, the rank hypocrisy—all these amply flow in both domains. Human venality seems to thrive in these worlds of uncritical worship and dubious charisma. Certainly there is no shortage of vice behind the silver screen and the burnished altar (as well as a steady trickle of goodness, no doubt).
MENTALISM AND REALISM
Film mentalism is the view that our acquaintance with the screen is significantly like our acquaintance with our own minds; it is as if consciousness itself suffuses the screen. If the moving image is like consciousness transplanted, how can perception of it yield an awareness of things that exist outside consciousness? Shouldn't our awareness find itself restricted to what goes on inside the mind, instead of taking in a whole wide world? How can we be both looking into a mind and also looking into the world? Aren't the mind and the world very distinct things? Either the screen gives us the mind or it gives us the world—it can't give us both, can it? The mind is, of its essence, directed at things beyond itself. When I see or think about an ordinary object—say, a hat stand—there is, on the one hand, the hat stand in the world that is my mental object, and there is my mental act of seeing it or thinking about it, on the other. The mental act by its very nature puts me into mental contact with an object in material reality—this is what philosophers call its intentionality It is the idea of a mental state's being about something out there—having a reference beyond itself. The whole point of consciousness is not to wallow in its own juices, sealing itself up from the external world, but rather to link us to what lies outside ourselves—to make us aware of things. Consciousness is essentially a self/world linkage, a bridge between ourselves and reality. Examine your own consciousness now: you will see that it is perpetually offering up tidbits of reality to your awareness—a chair here, a cat there, a smell from who knows where. You can never catch consciousness idling within itself, taking time off from the labor of acquainting us with the world; it is always externally engaged, always plugged in. To be conscious at all is to be conscious ofsomething.
But now we can see how mentalism and realism combine: the screen has intentionality. Those shifting images on the screen refer to things beyond themselves; and when we become acquainted with them, we simultaneously become acquainted with what they represent. We see the image of Mae West and are thereby introduced to the lady herself; her image conducts our awareness to its cause and original (this is the mechanism of embedded reference, discussed in the previous chapter). So the screen has one of the key characteristics of consciousness: making reference to things outside it—i.e., intentionality. Accordingly, when we perceive the screen, we see in the image what the image depicts. It is not, of course, that we see these objects in an unmediated way, as we do when we see objects in front of us; we see them through the good offices of their cinematic representatives. Yet we do see them. As I noted earlier, you can recognize objects by first recognizing pictures of objects—the picture identifies the object. You can find a particular man in a room full of people by being shown his picture, but being given his name alone gives you no perceptual basis on which to make the identification.
The intentionality of the screen parallels the intentionality of the mind. When I am aware of my own mental states I am thereby aware of their objects (this sensation of red I am having is a sensation of red), just as when I am aware of the screen I am aware of the objects it portrays (this image of a tall man is an image of a tall man). In both cases, we describe the referring item—the sensation or the image—in terms of what it refers to: we specify the nature of the sensation or the image by saying what it is of Thus, when we become acquainted with these items, our acquaintance points through them to what they are about. Seeing the mind on the screen just is seeing what the cinematic image is about. Consciousness embeds the world just as the screen image does, so both bring reality into the picture (literally). Indeed, we might say that the notion of embedded reference has its basic application in the case of consciousness itself— the world of external things is embedded in my consciousness of it—and that the notion applies to the screen by analogy. The applicability of the notion of embedded reference to consciousness shows that film mentalism and film realism are compatible: your consciousness is surely mental, but it has reality firmly within its sights.
Yet the image is indisputably of a different nature than what it is an image of, as I have been at pains to insist. The formal properties of the image are categorically different from the properties of real objects—people are not made of light, for example. The image manifestly contrasts with what it is an image of. Arnheim writes: “By the absence of colors, of three-dimensional depth, by being sharply limited by the margins of the screen, and so forth, film is most satisfactorily denuded of its realism. It is always at one and the same time a flat picture post card and the scene of a living action.”16 The image enables us to see its object, but the two entities are of contrasting natures, and are seen to be so. You see the image and you see its reference, but these two perceptual objects are contrasting entities: one is two-dimensional, the other three-dimensional; one is dematerialized, the other is not; one is fixed in time, the other is not; and so on. We can say that the two entities belong in different ontological categories. We have no tendency to confuse the two things; anyone can see that an image on a screen is not a real person. Yet the two are placed in an intimate relationship, a kind of interweaving: as I said in chapter 2, we see each of them under the aspect of the other.
This coalescence of opposites can be encapsulated under the portentous title contrastive juxtaposition. The image and its object are juxtaposed, placed one upon the other, but they are also contrasting entities. The essence of the cinematic experience is therefore contrastive juxtaposition: the seeing of one thing in another, where the two things are categorically different. The reciprocal seeing that is characteristic of film viewing is a seeing of entities cast in contrastive juxtaposition—a kind of melding or merging of opposites. In a certain sense, then, there is an ontological collision here, as an entity belonging to one category abuts an entity belonging to another; or else a kind of magic trick, in which incongruous partners are made to form an indissoluble unity. The defining paradox of cinema as an artistic medium is that hard reality comes to us in gossamer form.
The flatness of the screen and the depth of the scene are a prime locus of this paradox. When the film titles are showing we are reminded of the two-dimensionality of the screen—it is like paper with writing on it—but once the movie starts the third dimension kicks in and we let the flatness retreat from focal awareness. When, at the close, the words THE END rudely decorate what was lately a locus of seething three-dimensional reality, the viewer is reminded that all along it was just a flat surface—that this was just a movie. But, of course, that flatness was never really forgotten, since it is etched indelibly into the perceptual impression created by the film. The depth is a kind of pretend depth, an imagined depth. We are simultaneously aware of flatness and depth—indeed, depth in flatness—contrastive juxtaposition. We see the image enlarge across the screen in two dimensions, and we see a man approach along the dimension of depth; but these are not separate acts of seeing. We can think of the screen as making a bargain with the audience: “If you ignore the fact that I am merely two-dimensional, then I will create for you a semblance of depth.” Directors sometimes exploit this paradox by making the screen play tricks that advertise its flatness—for example, split-screen images or screens on screens. This jolts the viewer out of his customary acquiescence in the screen's implicit contract— now he is reminded again of the screen's exist
ence as a flat medium. The formal properties of the screen are accented, so that the juxtaposition now highlights the image side of the image/object fusion. Normally, the screen effaces itself, but in these techniques it draws attention to itself. In this moment, the contrast that is always written into the medium is thrust upon the viewer's attention. The viewer is made fully conscious of the fact that a three-dimensional world comes to her in two-dimensional form.
Another technical feature of film that illustrates contrastive juxtaposition is the blur. The viewer hardly notices it, but in most shots the foreground is in sharp focus and the background is blurred (except where deep focus is used, as famously in Citizen Kane). Sometimes directors will intentionally bring a blurred image into focus before the viewer's eyes. But objects themselves are not blurred—an object doesn't really lose its definition if it retreats into the distance. In no way do we interpret cinematic blurring as a real loss of sharpness in objects—this is, we know, just not how physical reality behaves. The image and the object have contrasting properties, despite their co-presence to the viewer. What we know to be a clearly defined object is seen under the aspect of a blurred image, and a blurred image is seen as representing a clearly defined object. The blurring is taken in stride, as a formal property of the medium that coexists with the sharpness of the represented object.
Where there is a conjoining of opposites there is often irony. You say one thing and mean another, at variance with the first. Similarly, the movie image is one way but it conveys something else, contrasting with the way it is. It is as if the screen winks at the viewer when it makes its bargain: “I know, and you know, that I'm only a flat swipe of light, but I can bring to life vistas of substance and solidity.” That it can do so is ironic, given its real intrinsic nature as insubstantial flatness. The uncanny ability of the screen to simulate life—not just inorganic movement—is likewise an ironic achievement. It seems to me that irony is at the heart of the movie-watching experience—the irony of a medium with one kind of nature so successfully conveying a reality whose nature is very different. The feeling of mismatch, of incongruity, is almost comical. Think of an old silent film, black-and-white, no voices, too fast, palpably “unrealistic”: isn't it ironic that it manages to tell us so much about the real world of noisy, colored, speaking, slow-moving people? It ought not to be able to do this, and yet it pulls the trick off. And isn't this irony part of its charm? It is as if one is constantly suppressing a smile while watching a film—a smile of appreciation for the ingenious irony of it all. Nor is this irony lost on filmmakers, who often trade upon it to produce interesting effects, as with the split screens and screens within screens I mentioned earlier. I am surprised that no one has made a film about two-dimensional people that disappear into infinitesimal nonentities as they turn sideways to the viewer, since this is essentially what the figure on the screen is. In this light, then, we could also describe the essence of the movie image as ironic juxtaposition.
I think exactly the same is true of consciousness—its essence is contrastive (or ironic) juxtaposition. Although consciousness incorporates objects from the external world, it is not itself an object like those objects. Consciousness presents itself as immaterial, even as it delivers material things to our awareness. This is most apparent with respect to our awareness of space. Perceptual consciousness, in particular, delivers up a world of spatial entities—solid occupants of physical space. But this very spatial consciousness is not itself spatial: it is not that conscious awareness of a square table is itself square or a table! Conscious states have no size or shape, though they are ofthings with size and shape. So the essence of visual consciousness, say, is to present an objective world of spatial entities, while itself not being objective or spatial. Consciousness therefore contrasts with what it represents, with what is embedded within it. And this is something that self-conscious creatures, such as ourselves, are aware of—we know that our consciousness contrasts with the world it presents to us. Consciousness exhibits contrastive juxtaposition. Thoughts are immaterial (or strike us that way), though they are about material things; and awareness of a thought is always awareness of what the thought is about. So in this important respect consciousness and the screen are alike: the screen resembles consciousness in the way the image contrasts with what it is an image of.
We are condemned to be both confronted by a material world and yet not of that world. The world in which we live and have our being is a world of objects in space, and yet the very thing that makes this evident to us— consciousness—is itself not an object in space. Our nature as conscious beings stands in stark contrast to the reality that consciousness makes available to us. Without this non-spatial attribute we could never become aware of space. The designer of the universe must have smirked at this irony when he made it so. By designing us on the principle of contrastive juxtaposition he inserted a deep irony into the heart of our being. Indeed, our nature as conscious beings contrasts with our nature as animal bodies, since these belong to that spatial world that consciousness seems to negate. The original irony lies within our own being as embodied minds. We are spatial and nonspatial at the same time, as part of our very personhood, and the two are inextricably linked—ironic, is it not?
THE REPRESENTED BODY
I have spoken of the movie image as transforming the human body into a dematerialized medium—flat patches of light—and of the meaning of this transformation. Now I shall compare and contrast this with the way other arts transform the human body, so that we can see what is distinctive of the movie image.
Sculpture, I remarked earlier, is at the opposite extreme to the movie image: it typically represents man in heavier materials, stone and metal, as against a weightless packet of light. And it does not move. It is not the spiritual body that we see in marble but an exaggeration of the material body of flesh and bone. Yet I think sculpture can be seen as making a very similar metaphysical point to the movie image— about the contingency of our physical makeup. The same human form can be bodied forth in different materials, some heavier than others, from the flimsiest to the densest. So sculpture too can be seen as insisting on the distinctness of the human soul from the material that happens to clothe it. It affirms the spirit as something different from the body. It does so ironically, by stressing the materiality of the body, while at the same time showing its irrelevance to the human essence. Consider Rodin's famous Thinker, a solid hunk of metal lost in contemplation: surely the irony here is obvious—that metal might think! This serves to accentuate the point that it is surprising and ironic that flesh might think—that the material brain might be what lies at the base of the human mind.17 Just as the movie image toys with the duality of human beings by dematerializing the body, so sculpture asserts the same duality by underlining our materiality, so indicating its essential irrelevance. In sculpture we see the marks of the human soul amid the heaviest and least mobile of materials, thus illustrating the ability of the soul to make its home in the most unpromising of substrates. It is really just as amazing, ultimately, that we are made of flesh as it would be if we were made of bronze.
