I've been talking with a friend about the history of ideas of authorship, how at different times in history, the author and his intentions and self-expression mattered or didn't matter to the public at large.

The Romantics cared most about the author & his expression; the Post-Modernists care the least.

One interesting aspect in talking about authors is the idea of a code or system that individual authorship adapts to. What happens when the author isn't creating for himself to to express his ideas to the public but to carry on an already established code the public receives unaltered??

For example, in ancient Egypt, one man, the designer Imhotep, established or atleast solidified the code that Egyptian art would follow for 3000 years. No matter who the artist was, the finished work had to follow the code as set down: for example, relief figures have heads shown in profile but torsos shown straight on and hips and legs in profile again. For 3000 years, no relief artist was permitted to carve figures in any other way.

There are other examples of established codes. Classical and neo-classical music all follows forms the artist uses and doesn't deviate from like the ABA sonata form. Modern anime all looks the same despite different artists because there is an established code working there as well.

Geoffrey O'Brien in his book THE PHANTOM EMPIRE discusses what he calls "The Italian System" which is essentially the idea that Italian cinema has an established code, although a broad one. His chapter attempts to isolate the elements of the code to discover the things Italian cinema keeps revolving around.

I've been fascinated by this idea ever since I read it and I've mentioned it a number of times in different posts to illustrate other points, but I recently watched an Italian film, AFRICA ADDIO, and gained a better idea that the code indeed operates and how.

For a long time now, people have made the demarcation between 50s Italian film music and 60s Italian film music as the difference between Nino Rota's jazz and Ennio Morricone's avant-garde operatics. What's fascinating about the Morricone sound is that it was picked up by every other Italian composer. Lavagnino who sounded like Lavagnino in the 50s, sounds like Morricone by the 70s. Someone played me a Lavagnino main title and I thought, that's a great Morricone main title, except that it was by Lavagnino. Nicolai sounded like Morricone. Bacalov sounded like Morricone. DeMasi sounded like Morricone. In fact, in later years, when Nicolai Piovani showed up, people thought he was Morricone! I still can't play Lenin-The Train and not think this is a score by Morricone.

Ok, why did this Morricone sound take over all Italian cinema? Well, you also have to ask why did Westerns and Horror films become crucial to Italian cinema for a period of time as well? The answer may be found in the system, the code, underlying how Italian cinema operates. Simply in that the Italian cinema has such a code and so films and their formal elements homogenize under it.

Ok. So I'm watching AFRICA ADDIO, with its score by Riz Ortolani composed in 1966. An amazing score I might add. And I'm hearing the same Morricone sound again. Now I realize that Morricone showed up on the scene in 1963-64 and had done a fair number of films by 1966, but I also wondered if Morricone had had the time to establish his sound in a few years and if his copiers had had the time by 1966 to master and reproduce that sound by the time AFRICA ADDIO emerges.

It made me wonder. It was like Morricone wrote his few first notes and that became the entire system to follow. But why Morricone's sound and approach? And AFRICA ADDIO is so much like Morricone is it possible the reverse is true, that Morricone is just so much like Ortolani and that what we consider the Morricone sound was actually authored by Ortolani first??

God, what confusion! How could a sound just emerge and take over and not have a sound provenance? Or is that what indeed happened? In the course of a year or so, Italian composers hit on the approach that set up the code/system and everyone followed it from then on until it took a solid shape that we assume is Morricone's.

Cinema in Italy itself was making great strides: Antonioni, the post-Neo-Realist Fellini, Leone.

AFRICA ADDIO, directed by Jacopetti & Prosperi, was also part of the new take on things. Along with a 3rd director, J&P had made MONDO CANE in 1962. Besides being an international hit, MONDO CANE established the following new ground: 1) it's score by Nino Oliviero & Riz Ortolani, while still in the Rota-jazz mode, also had moments pointing to the Morricone-mode which would soon take over, and 2) it took an extremely cynical and ironic viewpoint towards objective news-reporting that would eventually become mirrored by the jaded viewpoint of most 60s Italian cinema.

So, maybe moreso than by Fellini or Antonioni, the 60s Italian system/code was formulated by J&P with MONDO CANE.

Now J&P had a very distinct style. They liked contrast so that a scene of violence was often juxtaposed against its opposite. They also liked to have sequences set only to music. The music would come in, the images or montage would predominate, and there'd be no narration, very few sound effects. Only when the music ended did the natural return. By the time Ortolani scores AFRICA ADDIO for J&P, he's also giving scenes a Western and operatic sound with choirs and galops.

I can't say the J&P style of using music became the established code for how all Italian directors used music, but there are similar moments in Leone where the music predominates over everything going on in the scene that probably originate with J&P.

In any case, for a documentary set in Africa, it is amazing how Italian in image, viewpoint, and sound AFRICA ADDIO is, so much so, that it seems like it establishes the whole 60s Italian system in and of itself.

Hey, sorry for rambling here. I really don't know anything about
the "code" you refer to. I did find on a compilation the most
gorgeous Ortolani composed melody that I've ever heard, and
that was the music to A Reason to Live, A Reason To Die.
I hope I get to see that movie sometime. Now
you make me want to see Africa Addio.

I'm not sure that what we call the Morricone sound isn't by Morricone. Ortolani may just be copying it. However, there are signs that Ortolani was going in a very similar direction earlier than any of the other copycats. Hence my confusion and my questioning just who started what and when. The thing to note is that while Ortolani was writing twists and shakes in the Rota mode in the early 60s, he was also writing closer to the Morricone mode too before Morricone even shows up!

One thing for sure, Morricone's first westerns, the ones which open the budget BMG Morricone Legendary Westerns album, things like Gunfight at Red Sands, are already prime Morricone. That sets the style.

But why the style should be so copied by other composers is a mystery. Why all Westerns should be given the same sound or why the Morricone stylistics for gangster films or domestic dramas or sex comedies should become the same for other composers doing the same films is a mystery.

Obviously, it's not such a mystery in that some producers said this is what it will be like. But why they said that is the mystery.

Also, as an aside, even though Morricone was scoring sex films by the late 60s, it's possible that he was walking into a sound for them already established by Umiliani and others. Though here too he brought his own stylistics, the panting and orgasming female vocalist, for example, that then became par for the course.

As for the code. I thought I made it clear but will try again. This is the idea that in Italian cinema, instead of there being a wide variety of individual author/directors with unique viewpoints, the cinema as a whole tends towards a product that remains similar in many formal details from film to film. Each new author/director adapts to the overriding hegemony of the established form.

This is why I used anime as an example. No matter who writes or directs or what the storyline is, all the characters basically look the same as does the overall look. Anime has an established visual code and supposedly Italian cinema has its own code that works around homogenized practices and expressions, the Morricone sound spreading out to become the sound of Italian cinema being one example of how a code establishes itself in Italian film production.

As for AFRICA ADDIO, it is a beautiful-looking film, very important to see today, even if it's content is topical to the 60s, but it is a very harsh, dark, disturbing film. There are some very graphic images of animals being killed, very graphic images of people being killed, and it shows the aftermaths of both animal and human massacres. Indeed, the equasion between animal death and human death in the film is probably deliberate. A few times the narration says the most dangerous animal in Africa is man. And that is the Italian viewpoint in a nutshell. Man is an animal. He will kill all other animals with brutal violence. He will kill all other men with brutal violence. The pain & death we see around us is the result. If that's how the Italians view the regular news, it's just a step away from this to the dark nihilistic humor of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

And this viewpoint is somehow at the center of the Italian system when it comes to their films. It reflects a culture looking at itself and other cultures, coming up with a dark consensus, and expressing this out to all cultures at large.

As Italian cinema reaches the 60s, it's had the most amazing run under DeSica, Fellini, Rossellini, and Visconti, and is about to open up to Antonioni and a different kind of Fellini film. But it's difficult to say if these greats were part of the code or if the code became supressed for lack of budgets to fulfill it. O'Brien seems to suggest that it's the exploitative B films of Italian cinema that best represent & demonstrate the code.

This isn't to dispute Ryan who is probably right that Italian cinema at the time operated as a grind house making exploitation cinema.

I would say that the idea of a code goes beyond the idea of remakes or copying a good formula until it wears out. It's a spoken (as in ancient Egyptian & anime) or unspoken (as in Italian cinema practice) set of design rules to follow that is more rigid than flexible. That a whole country's cinema might adopt this seems ludicrous but then if someone told me an entire country's animation output would look alike I wouldn't believe that either. The problem is that (if there is indeed an Italian code as O'Brien believes) it's not so noticeable as blank faces with giant eyes and giant smiles and a tiny nose and no specific features as we find in Japanese anime.

Pulling my O'Brien off the shelf to look at what he calls the Italian system, perhaps I shouldn't have called it a code (since it has no formal rules and isn't an established form rigorously followed) so much as a mode of production.

According to O'Brien, the idea is not to create anything new, but to reshuffle familiar and stock images, situations, and characters into new dramatic patterns. Then to film things quick and cheaply and have lots of death. Not the ideal for a high quality cinema to be sure but one which satisfies whatever it is an audience is looking for to a certain degree.

Ancient Rome/blackmail/poisoned letter/strangulation/slaves/leopards

Vikings/rape/posioned letter/drowning/amnesia/leopards

Jungle/cannibals/rape/amnesia/strangulation/slaves/leopards

Modern/blackmail/rape/amnesia/drowning/posioned letter/no leopards though

Pirates/rape/drowning/cannibals/strangulation/slaves/the leopards are back! But Shhh don't ask how they got on that Carribean island

So, the Italian system is less a code as it is an overall appraoch at recycling and homogenzing certain elements of story and recombining them in different ways. It's a kind of cinema genetics but no matter what the recombinations are, they're given the same soundtrack!

However...while Bollywood isn't the entire Indian cinema, it's the predominant and largest model in Indian cinema. Hollywood isn't the entire American cinema either, but it certainly is the largest factor in terms of what we see in most theaters and on television. Anime isn't the entire Japanese cinema, it isn't even the entire animation being done in Japan, but there is little animation being done in Japan that isn't in the anime style. The same goes for Cinecitta and the Italian producers, they aren't the entire Italian cinema, but they are the predominant factor in it.

I think the only way you can talk about a whole nation in relation to any given film aestethic is to do so in a sociological context, i.e. trying to find any particular Italian CULTURAL traits and how those are mirrored in a film (thematically, for example). Even that is difficult, though, because of all the influences from other cultures. It's the flaw of retro-active method, which we talked about earlier, in another thread.

When Cabiria showed up in 1914, Griffith was so impressed that much of the Babylon sequence of Intolerance was inspired by it.

Most Bollywood films are re-makes of US & British films but that doesn't make them any less Bollywood films. The same could be said for some Hong Kong & Japanese films. And Hollywood will remake a foreign film if it thinks it has the potential to be a hit. It's how the countries convert the basic content into their national style that makes them Italian or Chinese or Indian or Swedish what have you.

If Bollywood style has crossed borders to become part of film styles from other nations, this does not necessarily mean Bollywood isn't still strictly Indian (certainly in origin if not for the most part in practice).

quote:

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
I don't want to go back & forth over this. /.../ But we're making fine-tuned academic distinctions here that I don't even think are required.

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I disagree. It's pretty crucial to the whole debate. Using nationalities in your argumentation is part of the premise, after all.

Geoffrey O'Brien saw a pattern in the production mode of Italian films enough to posit an "Italian system". Maybe this was a metaphor or maybe he really saw an "unconscious" manner in which the totality of commercial Italian cinema formed itself. In any case, it's not a non-existant. You won't find it written anywhere like a manifesto or law of dos & don't for all Italian filmmakers but that doesn't mean you can't see it and find examples to defend the thing's "existance".

I can see coding and production norms in many subsets of a national cinema. A certain studio will produce a certain kind of film by subject & production values. And this is just one of a variety of codes working in international cinemas. So why not a set of codes working at the national level? Especially in a small country with only a few major studios & production companies.

At the Domitor early cinema conference that I mentioned in more detail in another topic (On Hearing the First Film Score), they talked about ideas of the national in relation to early film.

And even though the films were silent and all it took was a change of title cards for a Swedish film to play in Spanish theaters, there were very different modes of production and distribution from country to country & even region to region (big cities as opposed to rural areas for example). So, if they made & showed films in Germany in a different way than they did in England, and if Germans wanted to see certain kinds of subjects over other ones, this set up the conditions for a national code.

Norway (I think it's Norway) established very early on the idea of the cities themselves owning the local movie theaters. They pushed the private cinema owners out. This is still on-going in the country even now. And in early years this actually worked against national production of films though for a while. So most cinema in Norway (or Finland or whichever country up there has this set-up) is conditioned to a certain degree by this form of distribution.

All I'm saying is that the idea of a national cinema is a defendable idea. You can dissect it by studio or director or time period and you can find all sorts of exceptions to question consistent codes for a national cinema, but just as you can do that, you can also build the case for common characteristics and codes that take place within a country's borders.

But even I'm willing to walk away from the idea because I do see that it's a somewhat artificial way of catagorizing and organizing films.

One could say that there are narrative films and non-narrative films and such catagories cross all national boundaries. So what the positing of a national cinema or a code or system of production choices is really is just a narrowing of the characteristics that you use to divide films into groups. It's a thumbnail sketch I like, but if you rearrange the parameters, you can group films by anything: films with chickens in them or without chickens, for example.

Saying the Italians use certain practices to make their films might be true but it also reflects the model you are using to view things through. Change the model and you will change the results of what you find.

All that said, I just saw Ecco (yet another mondo film) with a score by Riz Ortolani. Slightly Morricone-esque but far from being a copycat from Morricone to Ortolani or from Ortolani to Morricone yet.

If there is an Italian system, it takes two or three years to catch on to the material it's going to recycle and integrate into how things are done.

Subsets, yes. But not an allencompassing system, especially not if you're talking style and form.

***A certain studio will produce a certain kind of film by subject & production values. And this is just one of a variety of codes working in international cinemas. So why not a set of codes working at the national level?***

Because a studio is not a country.

***And even though the films were silent and all it took was a change of title cards for a Swedish film to play in Spanish theaters, there were very different modes of production and distribution from country to country & even region to region (big cities as opposed to rural areas for example).***

Initially, films were pretty much the same everywhere. It took a while before you could find a national identity, and even when they did, that was only ONE part of the total output (the rural dramas in Norway, for example) and often limited to one period in time.

***Norway (I think it's Norway) established very early on the idea of the cities themselves owning the local movie theaters.***

Yes, but this happened in the teens. There were movies before this, and after (with the emergence of private owners in competition). In any case, this is a NON-AESTETHIC limitation, and I would agree that you could talk about a national system in this case. But as soon as you get down to style and form, you HAVE TO specify...you HAVE TO contextualize beyond a national tag.

All I'm asking for here is NUANCE, Lou. The same goes for all your trashing of contemporary Cinema. Nuance, nuance, nuance.

I think when you have one or two major studios and a lesser number of producers & directors (who use them) and a national distribution set up gatekeeping what shows, you come close to being able to equate a studio with a country.

"Initially, films were pretty much the same everywhere." You would have been kicked out of the Domitor conference. That bunch of academics made it pretty clear that from the start you could see differences from country to country. Many feel that Bristish films from before 1905 are very distinctive compared with films by their neighbors in Europe but even there there are noticeable differences.

"This is an non-aesthetic limitation." But don't you see that if goverments get involved in distribution as they did in Norway and still do in Norway, it has some effect on what will be shown. And it doesn't have to be goverments. Sure in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany or Communist China you had propaganda cinema, but the same could be said for the Capitalist western cinemas too.

Try to see the cinema as more than just a film's style & form. See it as a system, a whole totality that starts with a drama, involves talent & money, production & then distribution on a national & international scale. The individual shots of the film are still the main part of the overall communication but they are only a part of the total design.

Let me illustrate. I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the US. It's a college town, there are high-tech industries, Pfizer has a corporate headquarters here, Philips did for a while, now Google is moving here. Between the university and the town there are 120,000 people.

There are only two first-run theaters showing the same 10 films: The Showcase Cinema and the Quality 16. Both are multiplexes with some large screens stadium-seating style.

There are two downtown art theaters: The Michigan Theater & The State. There is one 2nd-run theater, another multiplex type.

Then there are a number of video stores, the annual 16mm (and video) film festival, a variety of films shown publically on the university campus by various departments and centers. I suppose we could also add cable & regular TV to the mix as places where people can see film.

Ok, for the most part the 2 first-run theaters are all English-language Hollywood studio productions. The 2nd run theater is just showing the slightly older or more failed versions of the above.

The two art theaters are showing current foreign and independent films but only those that have been picked up by US distributors willing to invest in film prints.

Those less willing to pay high costs distribute straight to DVD and those films can be found in video stores. Experimental film is covered once a year by the festival and more art & foreign films are brought to campus by different groups.

Now you can map this picture onto just about any city in the US. It's going to have much more film options than smaller towns, especially non-university towns, and less options than any large metropolis.

Ok, so what's the point of this picture? Well, be it Ann Arbor or Lawrence, Kansas or Madison, Wisconsin or Morning Sun, Iowa, the film choices are pretty much 10-30 films at any given time. The distribution mode of films in the US determines what people will have option to see in the US.

There is a circle where films condition expectations which create demand. People want to see a certain kind of film and that's what producers & distributors respond to. Most people want to see Hollywood films with sex & violence (screw form & style, we want nude women and things exploding). They are the majority, the hegemony. "The same 10 films." And if you read Peter Watkins, most media share the same monoform style anyway. This goes for films, foreign films, and all TV shows. They share the same continuity rules and enforce the same ways of looking and responding.

The smaller numbers who like & want different films can get them but only on the perifery of the larger system and even here economic factors determine availability. Someone is always gatekeeping. This film will sell, this one will not. This one is good but too similar to this other one so we have to ditch it. It's foreign but not arty enough. It's just a Polish version of similar American mainstream films so we can't show it. We can issue this one but that one we can't.

So, do you see, that independent of any film's individual form & style, the distribution mode can, even in a country of 300 million people, determine what the cinema of that country is to a large extent, that it determines form & style too, because if you don't match the film to what the audience expects to see, the film is pushed to the side.

That's why I can posit a national (even an international) system of doing things like O'Brien does. He looks at Italy. He sees a few major film studios. He sees how they make films. He discounts the minor exceptions because they are just that, minor exceptions, and he comes up with a system, a routine standardized code of practices. He says, this is what and how the Italian cinema produces films. This is what the Italian audience wants & accepts & pays for & watches. It is a system and a national one.

The studio is the country and the country is the studio. And what goes for Italy, a small country, can even be mapped to a certain extent to a large country of more diverse media because even there the larger system & its modes take up the larger % of the screens.

Hardly. 1) How the film industry in one particular country is organized varies throughout history and 2) there is filmmaking going on OUTSIDE the studios.

***"Initially, films were pretty much the same everywhere." You would have been kicked out of the Domitor conference.***

Nope. I'm talking about early pioneer cinema here (like the one we talked about in that other thread of yours)...even Gunning and Bordwell admit that the earliest films have more of a INTERNnational character than a strictly national one. National idiosyncracies seeped in about a decade or so into the artform's existance.

***"This is an non-aesthetic limitation." But don't you see that if goverments get involved in distribution as they did in Norway and still do in Norway, it has some effect on what will be shown.***

Yes, on that I agree. To quote Bordwell again, modes of production and film styles are obviously related. But modes of production vary within a country and across borders. Bordwell talks about the Hollywood mode of production, for example, which isn't only American (although it originated there).

***So, do you see, that independent of any film's individual form & style, the distribution mode can, even in a country of 300 million people, determine what the cinema of that country is to a large extent, that it determines form & style too, because if you don't match the film to what the audience expects to see, the film is pushed to the side.***

Yes, of course, but I can't see the relevance to my particular qualm in this thread. I should also note that when I say "style", I'm not talking about the film's individuality, but it's part of a given paradigm (some call it "direction", but that doesn't cut it) that isn't strictly NATIONAL.

***The studio is the country and the country is the studio.***

Sorry, man, that's too broad. Again, I just want a little nuance in here. Then your quest for codes would be really interesting.

P.S. At least you put your "Italian System" in quotes.

Ok, "How the film industry in one particular country is organized varies throughout history." Did you mean varies from its beginnings or varies from that industry in other countries?

"There is filmmaking going on outside the studios." It's marginal and so it just doesn't count and indie films only get seen if the existing distribution system allows them an outlet and it mostly doesn't.

Since a good deal of this last conference dealt with the National in early cinema, there were many voices and examples and research to go against the idea that early film had an international character.

Sure between 1895 & 1905 things are fairly primitive and a film shot in one place kinda-sorta looks like it could come from anywhere but since film was not disconnected from existing theatrical entertainments and cultural, social, and political concerns, national "idiosybcracies" are there from the beginning. But even if they aren't & don't show until 1905-1910, that doesn't argue against the later establishment of a national way of making films for a national audience.

Varies from its beginnings. A "system" of any kind may be long-lasting, but there are different versions of it throughout history (Microsoft Windows, anyone? ). Also, there are always things going on OUTSIDE the system that is worth noting.

***"There is filmmaking going on outside the studios." It's marginal and so it just doesn't count and indie films only get seen if the existing distribution system allows them an outlet and it mostly doesn't.***

Ehm....I'd call that the under-estimation of the year. If it hadn't been for the independent scene, we would never have the New Hollywood in the 70's. We wouldn't have a Quentin Tarantino. And we sure as hell wouldn't have the French New Wave.

***Since a good deal of this last conference dealt with the National in early cinema, there were many voices and examples and research to go against the idea that early film had an international character.***

Well, it's good to know that research is being done on the area.

***But even if they aren't & don't show until 1905-1910, that doesn't argue against the later establishment of a national way of making films for a national audience.***

Of course not. As I said, certain national traits developed in most countries eventually. But they were never homogenous, and they could easily be charted to certain periods or even geographical locations.

***Maybe saying the country is the studio is broad (though not in the totalitarian nations I named earlier). But if Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the others set up the rules in those countries, why is it hard to see that Ponti, DeLaurentis, and the US movie moguls sit in similar positions.***

Because Ponti and DeLaurentis didn't run the country.

First of all, systems (not in quotes) exist in art. The 3000 year long system of Imhotep in Ancient Egypt is the classic example of an all-prevarding system that all artisans took up for a very long time. There was only one break, when the Pharoah Akhnatan started his Sun-worshipping religion and moved the state capital, because he also broke with the art system.

When we look at periods or schools in art, whether short-lived or long, all the artisans adapt to a certain code or form. The code may be rigid or it may be fluid (and eventually evolve out from itself) but it tends to be consistent for the period it is in operation.

Art may be produced outside of any code even in those times & regions where a single code predominates.

As you say the outside exceptions are worth noting. HOWEVER...they do not predominate.

And, considering film in the 20th Century in most smaller countries, certainly Italy, there was for a period say 1945-1985, where a small number of groups controlled the majority of the studios, production houses, and even directors (under contract). What's more even those on the margins often were following the practices of the majority in order to fit their films into the system of production & distribution.

Read accounts of Robbe-Grillet making his first films & how he had to fight with his crew to have them do things the way he wanted as opposed to the way they had been taught. At one point his cinematographer said, if I do it that way, they'll say it was lit badly and I'll lose my union card!

The code of story & style that was accepted by the Italians had earlier roots in the Silent period and may be going on post-1985 today but I don't see enough Italian films from the period to know, all I see are films like Life is Beautiful or Cinema Paradiso which don't seem to fit into the earlier coded practices.

Even so, let's look at the examples you raised as non-code independent movie trends. New Hollywood. Tarantino and all the major directors who entered the industry from indie films rather than from TV or starting to work at studios. And let's look at the French New Wave.

New Hollywood came out of film schools. The directors made their first shorts & films on no budgets, some worked for grindhouse schlockmeisters like Roger Corman, but again, only the best survived, the rest are unknown, and that goes for those who made enigmatic or experiemental films as well. The names who were New Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Friedkin, Bogdanovich, Spielberg may have started in apprenticeships but became the hegemony.

Guys like Cassevetes, who is probably the most mainstream US director to make personal enigmatic films, is known but would have had a much harder time making his films if he hadn't been an actor in mainstream films & TV first. But he did make the films, they were shown, even nominated for Oscars, and can't be said to be really conventional. He was able to make these films because he had access to actors who were stars who were willing to be in them. Maybe Peter Falk and Ben Gazzarra and Gena Rowlands weren't big names but they'd been in enough TV & movies to be marquee items enough to raise production capital and distribution.

Again, New Hollywood couldn't have prospered without audiences willing to support it and after a while it was a trend that was losing steam. When Star Wars emerged many people said, wow, at last, a movie that makes going to the movies fun again. And they had already made that clear by going to Jaws and the Irwin Allen films. Only The Godfather films seemed to be both popular and New Hollywood. By 1977, audiences were sick of New Hollywood.

I was around then and you should have heard the debate over what should win the best Picture Oscar, Star Wars or Annie Hall, the new view vs the older one. Allen won that year but he didn't win long term. And because Cassavetes (or Mazursky & the others) didn't adapt, they never had the careers that the popcorn movie moguls did and, unless you are specifically looking to see Opening Night or Love Streams today, you'll never run into them or hear about them.

Even Altman had a period where he plugged away on low-budget films before re-emerging as a Hollywood director. But note his films today don't really resemble his 70s & 80s ones.

If you think about it, ultimately, there really is no such thing as independent cinema. If you have any talent and you can get an audience to watch your films, eventually you get taken up by a distributor and a producer and are then a part of the mainstream. A truly independent cinema would be outside the normal channels of distribution and that would make it very marginal indeed.

YouTube is one example. It gets a lot of hits, maybe millions, which is no small number, it is an alternative to conventional distribution, but what makes it work is that just about anyone can post just about anything. The problem with that (and internet distribution in general) is that you can post all you want but will other people look for it and watch it if they don't know much about it. To find your footage, they have to watch a lot of different things at random, or like the description your footgae is filed under. True, these won't effect content the way normal distribution channels go. This will work to break down any dominating system.

But again, at least for a while, some internet posted film isn't going to be distributed in theaters, not unless it follows the style of what a theater-going audience will accept and for that to happen it has to already be following the code & system of acceptance.

Tarantino had a script that enticed a producer and was able to make his first film. If it hadn't been of interest distributors would have dumped it and QT would be back working in a video store.

And the French New Wave had a number of years as critics watching films, interviewing industry people, and even working as assistants to directors. They made early shorts which were a portfolio to entice producers. But if it wasn't for producers like Braunberger & Beauregard who liked these films and thought these films might go over, there would be no French New Wave. Period.

And if the producers were wrong and Breathless & The 400 Blows had both tanked there'd be no French New Wave either.

Again we keep coming back to the validity of the same ideas I've been promoting here, the filmmakers have to have talent, if they can't finance on their own they have to find producers and a distributor and the end result has to be something the public will go for. These are the determinants in any cinema. And they are very narrowly and rigidly defined in many cases. And if your film is too experimental, too engimatic, it will more likely disappear or remain on the margins. So, the system being an industry it will operate with the tendency to streamline production into a series of formulas and common practices that extend from production to actual content of story and film style & form. Hence, the Italian System (not in quotes).

Lastly, Ponti & DeLaurentis & Cinecitta don't run the country but they were the dominators in the Italian film industry, they were the hegemony. So they're a part of the idea of an Italian System. Of course, from O'Brien's viewpoint the system refers to their grindhouse cinema and expands out from there. It's difficult to say if his views of it can be found in the works of Visconti, DeSica, Rossellini, Antonioni, and Fellini and yet somehow they must fit into the system too. As Tarantino himself said, all films are genre films, even Ingmar Bergman films belong to the "Ingmar Bergman genre" so any film you are likely to ever see except home movies and student projects fits into an overall system of production & distribution.

In any case, I've heard nothing yet to dissuade me from agreeing with O'Brien that for a certain period in time the Italians made films along certain unstated rules and that those rules constitute a system that operated in the industry as a whole (except for those marginal films discussed previously). This tended to reshuffle story elements and to homogenize things like the sound of film music.

I started this topic because I could see this code in operation watching AFRICA ADDIO and that's just one Italian film of many where the code seems to operate.

quote:

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
In any case, I've heard nothing yet to dissuade me from agreeing with O'Brien that for a certain period in time the Italians made films along certain unstated rules and that those rules constitute a system that operated in the industry as a whole (except for those marginal films discussed previously).

---

A-ha! We're finally seeing some specification here. You're now talking about a specific period of time! That's something, at least. It's still a way to go to, though. If someone went up to me and began talking about an "Italian System", I would go "what?", and then he would have to specify exactly WHICH period the system was in place and what type of films it spawned, for example.

Italian Cinema is multi-faceted, Lou.

Even 3000 years of the Egyptian system is "just a period of time".

A-ha! MAJOR PLAYERS! That's further specification right there.

I'm sorry for being so sarcastic about this, but I'm sure you know what I'm getting at. You now have "The Italian System as manifested in the biggest studios in a given period of time". Still not specific enough, IMO, but in the right direction.

Incidentally, if someone went up to me and began talking about "The American System", I would again go "Huh?". If he had said the "Hollywood System of the 30's and 40's", on the other hand, I'd be in synch.

Wow....I had actually hoped to discuss the interesting "authorship" idea more thouroughly in this thread, since that is really the core of your subject, but then we ended up discussing one of your sub-premises instead. Oh well, that's the way things go...

NP: ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE (Howard)

Films made in a certain country using the language of that country constitute a national cinema.

In many countries, there are but a few major studios that come to dominate (through production & distribution) the majority of films seen by audiences within and outside the country.

If the few studios that dominate the whole market take on specific approaches to filmmaking and those approaches seem to differ from approaches found in other countries, it is viable to talk about a national code or system.

And when you see films from the country, you should be able to discern elements that are part of the code/system such as film music that takes on a similar sound/style no matter who is composing or who is filmmaking.

Surely, the dominant mode of filmmaking doesn't include the entirety of filmmaking made within the country over time. You will be able to find some examples that contradict the idea of a code/system but you will find them in the margins, in small numbers, in independent "home-brew" films that can rarely find distribution and are seen by a few, especially in smaller countries that have a reduced output to begin with. [Of course, India has the largest output and while their marginal cinema is large enough to question the idea of an "Indian system", the majority of Indian cinema is still a Hindu-Mumbia-Bollywood-based cinema.] The existence of marginal Italian films isn't strong enough to counter the overall concept that Italy's film output can be equated with a single code/system.

Now I've restated the durn thing yet again and we're still not making progress. If I wasn't so tired of even looking at this topic, I'd ask you just what it was about the authorship idea you wanted to discuss.

I guess I'm a glutton for punishment because I'm going to ask anyway.

Authorship wasn't the main premise though just a way of introducing the topic. However, it is true that literary critics, philosophers, and social commentators have had very different views on what authorship is and means over time.

For example, the idea that art should be about self-expression and that the artist should be free to create whatever he/she pleases without constraints would not be the same view people held of art in a previous era where reproducing nature as closely as possible was the criterion people used to rate artists & artworks by.

I think the auteur theory was a way of looking at film and trying to join it to the other fine arts that existed before it.

And film might not really be an art. The screenplay may be the art and the film just another performance of the text.

However, because a film is also a series of images & their arrangement, critics tried to posit direction & montage as seats of art and authorship, especially if you think that you can have a film without a story or screenwriter.

But when it comes to what we think of as mainstream cinema, actors reading lines in a drama set to music, then it may be that the key person is really the screenwriter and not the director. Yet, the auteur theory made the director the star mainly based on what the director did with form and style.

Looking at the director's intentions is one way to read auteur cinema. The statements that "Tracking shots express morality" or "How a director angles an image tells us what he thinks about it" are a part of this viewpoint. You're supposed to see the form & style as the authors commentary on the text and read that into the mix to get the full picture of the story & message. And I can follow that. Story + approach to form = what the director wants you to get from the whole.

The Frankfurt school (a frankfurter is a hot dog!) is one aspect of a larger post-modern take on authorship that goes beyond Adorno & Horkheimer to include Barthes and all the post-structuralists. In one sense I agree with them that the text is what matters and not the author of the text. After all we look at works and interpret them and gain meaning from them and just who created them and what their biographies are is superfluous. Of course, a lot of their disparaging of the author is an attack on the cult of the individual which they think of as a barrier to socialism, so it stems in part from a political agenda that may put dogma in front of what is.

I find it hard to get away from the idea of authorship. Because even if you find an anonymous work and deconstruct it into "cells" or parts that can be re-shuffled & re-worked to the point where no author exists (who thought the Italian system was really post-modernism in disguise?!), I think the hand of the author can still be seen in the work even in partially-decimated work.

Lets take any of the broken Greek statues that still exist whose sculptor's names are long lost. All we have are the statues or parts of them themselves. So we look at them. And even if we can deconstruct them, we can also see the workmanship, the signs of creation on the stone itself. We can look at a work and know or atleast guess and imagine from it what its author was like, what he thought about things, whether he liked life, was kind or gentle, mean and ironic, etc. These qualities are embedded in the very form of how the stone was worked and what the finished work makes you feel and can't be excised so easily. Like the film frame mentioned earlier. We can remove a single shot from a whole film but so many elements in the shot itself (like the angle) still tell us what the author of the shot thought about the subject matter. Barthes in S/Z starts breaking up individual words. Well, sure if you atomize a work into dust, the author disappears but so does the work too! All you're left with is dust, seperate lego blocks but no construction. And what good is that to anybody? And how do you get construction? You have to call back the author. Because you can have a dictionary of words but you can't have a sentence or communication wthout someone to put the words together. And through his choices of how to re-shuffle the elements, put the lego blocks into a figure, the words into a sentence, he's going to put his personal, authorial mark back on things.

But I have sympathy for the idea that once an work is created it doesn't just belong to the author alone. Once you encounter a work, it's also yours, what you get out of it, read into it, feel about it, interpret it. You might totally misinterpret a work or miss a lot of its nuance (there's that word again!) and still like it. Or, you might find things in a work that the author never intended or thought about that were merely in the author's unconscous that made it into the work through its creation that you can pick up on and others can't. I'm writing this text sober but someone stoned or on LSD might read it and find all sorts of hidden messages in it I'm unaware I'm making and that's a valid interpretation as well.

The auteurists make good points. The Frankfurt-ers make good points too. And we can find fault with them both as well. I think we need to look at works as created by people and also encountered by people with both author & audience being important to the whole communication.

All this theory is helpful but in the end, bottom-line, what matters is the works come from somewhere and are good enough to give pleasure or instruction. However, works don't just materialize, people make them either themselves or by proxy (chance music, robot work, computer-programs, etc.). Robby the Robot may re-shuffle a lot of decontructed tropes but even there the hand of the soulless & less-than-human creator may be apparent in the end result.

Oh yes, definitely. Every paradigm (filmic or otherwise) has lots of them. I just happen to sympathize more with the interpretative strategies that go BEYOND them.

***I think the auteur theory was a way of looking at film and trying to join it to the other fine arts that existed before it.***

Yes, that's right. You probably know the origin of the term, right? French critics (in Cahiers de Cinema and elsewhere) used the label on certain post-WW2 Hollywood directors, like John Ford or Howard Hawks, and then it expanded from there. Although the term may confusingly mean "author", it was more intended as a ressurection of the all-controlling Genuis of late-19th century romanticism (in literature, music etc.) - directors who truly confronted both the "system" (although still being dependent upon it) and who relied more on the audiovisual capability of the medium than its storytelling aspects.

***However, because a film is also a series of images & their arrangement, critics tried to posit direction & montage as seats of art and authorship, especially if you think that you can have a film without a story or screenwriter.***

Yup, that's what I like about it.

***Looking at the director's intentions is one way to read auteur cinema. The statements that "Tracking shots express morality" or "How a director angles an image tells us what he thinks about it" are a part of this viewpoint. You're supposed to see the form & style as the authors commentary on the text and read that into the mix to get the full picture of the story & message.***

Not only form. There are also THEMATIC ideas that are recurrent in a director's filmography.

***The Frankfurt school (a frankfurter is a hot dog!)****

LOL! Sorry about that. Faulty translation. In Norway, we use the -er ending.

***Barthes in S/Z starts breaking up individual words. Well, sure if you atomize a work into dust, the author disappears but so does the work too! All you're left with is dust, seperate lego blocks but no construction. And what good is that to anybody? And how do you get construction?***

Actually, that is over-simplifying Barthes a bit. He's first of all a SEMIOLOGIST. He's concerned with our interpretation of SIGNS in everyday life and S/Z is really built around the distinctive features of linguistic signs; around the differences between signifier and signified. If you haven't read it already, I recommend the anthology "Image Music Text" and the classic article "Rhetoric of the Image". While not dealing with authorship directly, it nonetheless posits the dialectic by which the text and the reader exchange information and meaning AND - importantly - the visual codes at play. The point is that there's more than deconstruction going on here.

NP: "Magic" (The Cars)

And yes, you can trace themes & concerns in a director's work if he feels them strongly and is able to express them through the medium. It's easier for directors to do if they have a hand in writing or reworking the content of the scripts. However, even directors who always work from scripts that are not their own can be said to have thematic interests that can be found in the films if you go looking for them.

The autuerists hoped that by spotting all of this stuff they could make a claim for the director as artist. And it's a convincing argument. However, those who question the whole role of authorship have taken this approach to task. then there are those like Pauline Kael who thought this was the wrong way to look at film and who also thought that giving directors free reign as artists could lead to a lot of bad unwatchable films. But even if she didn't agree with auteurism, she did like the films of Godard and others.

Yes, I'm aware that Barthes is a semiologist and is concerned mainly with signs, signifiers, meaning, and language.

If I over-simplify Barthes it's only to make a clear point: in S/Z he deconstructs a text and does so to the point of breaking up individual words. Whatever other reasons he has for doing this (showing the shifting meaning between signs & signifiers), he is still trying to eliminate the author and in the process winds up eliminating the text too.

That's the real point (maybe the example to illustrate wasn't the best to use), that those who want to eliminate authorship can do so but only by damaging the wholeness of a given work. If you have a work, you can find signs of its authorship. If I draw a line on paper, even that small thing can still tell the initiated volumes about me as a person.

I'm less familiar with what the Frankfurt school has to say about authorship as I am their theories on how mainstream music (including film music which they thought was dribble) works against awareness. They were against self-contained works that didn't allow space in them for the receiver to think & interpret them. They boiled most rock and jazz down to repetitive beats which they found mind-numbing. Instead, music is Berg & Schonberg where there are moment to moment changes to keep you from drifting. It's an almost Zen take on things actually. I'm familiar with a number of ideas regarding the loss of authorship in modern thinking but haven't specifically read "the Frankfurters" on authorship. Though I presume their take is similar, that the only works that really count are those where the author receeds and the reader is stimulated to bring his own interpretation of the text to the fore.

That said, I'm not totally in agreement with what I do know already. I think Camille Paglia is correct that this entire trend in looking at culture is a detour that has unfortunately taken hold in academic circles. She hates Foucault. She hates Lacan. She hates Benjamin. She hates Adorno. I don't totally agree with her. They have a lot of things to say actually but I still posit Western Civilization & culture over most of their ideas. When you get to a neo-primitive like Baudrillard, who thinks all of civilization has been a detour and we're meant to live in caves, who is complaining that reality is "unreal" just because we can make plastics and paint the walls unnatural colors, I have to part ways with these guys. I like linoleum. I like central air. Man was not meant to live up in a tree. Despite the problems and even violence inherent in language as a system, we're not telepathic enough to drop its use. I do not consider Western culture to be 5000 years of oppression that has to be swept away or deconstructed apart. But I'm sure that's just one more thing we probably disagree about.

Yes, Kael was an odd one (I like what she wrote about our fascination for "trash" films in Going Steady, though)...

***If I over-simplify Barthes it's only to make a clear point: in S/Z he deconstructs a text and does so to the point of breaking up individual words. Whatever other reasons he has for doing this (showing the shifting meaning between signs & signifiers), he is still trying to eliminate the author and in the process winds up eliminating the text too.***

You're talking about Honoré de Balsac's novella Sarrasine, of course, in case there are people reading this and wondering what text Barthes "deconstructed", as you put it. But you have to remember that the point of dismantlig this piece was not simply to dismantle it, but to uncover "hidden" meanings and connotations that may even go beyond the author's own world. That's what's so interesting. It's almost like a socio-anthropological experiment, only within the realm of semiology and linguistics.

***I'm less familiar with what the Frankfurt school has to say about authorship as I am their theories on how mainstream music (including film music which they thought was dribble)***

Actually, they didn't think it was dribble. Adorno and Eisler's seminal Composing for the Films from - I believe - 1947, just underlines that they found the Classical Hollywood paradigm dribble ("Birdie sings, music sings"). They wanted to turn film music into something more experimental, tieing it to the sound effects to a higher degree. Of course, that's an interesting idea that is quite prophetic in a way, but Eisler never seemed to make it work in praxis (except maybe his Brecht work).

Brecht had similar ideas in his writings on film music.

The "alienation" effect that such a composition process would create would inevitably make the READER of the text the more active part, thus unmasking any veiled purposes from the author (who should only reflect reality). Their main goal was to break down the hegemonial cultural codes, after all.

***I do not consider Western culture to be 5000 years of oppression that has to be swept away or deconstructed apart. But I'm sure that's just one more thing we probably disagree about.***

Actually, no. We pretty much agree there. Traditional deconstructivist theory went too far. But in terms of interpretative strategies, I find it CRUCIAL to analyze cultural products as much as possible (in the purest biological sense of the word). I'd love to see more of it. For example, I hate most of contemporary film reviews that spend the entire space talking about the narrative of the film and then blotting down two or three sentences of superficial value judgements at the end. MORE IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS, DAMMIT! Find them codes...

NP: LAST FLIGHT OUT (Young)

Even while Barthes was looking for meanings that go beyond the author, I didn't bring up the example to talk about what motivations and plans Barthes has in deconstructing the text. You said you liked strategies that were about the autonomy of the text and the reader's interpretations and I felt, whether it was the best example to choose or not, that Barthes process was an example of reclaiming the text from the author which also leaves the text in ruins in the process, irregardless of what Barthes is able to discern from the rubble. I caution the attempt to eliminate authors from their works. However, I do believe that works "belong to us" as well once we encounter them, digest them through our own systems, and make of them what we can.

I'm sure if composers came forward to compose for film in the manner of Berg and Schoenberg, then sure, Adorno would be more for it. Obviously, the Hot Dogs didn't give up on the possibilities of film. Many avant-garde filmmakers still see film as an art form as long as we don't consider any typical commercial films in the mix. But it wasn't just the paradigm but the music the paradigm created even apart from the images they felt wasn't alienating enough for their rules.

I don't know if it is crucial to analyze cultural products as much as possible, but it helps keep you on your toes if you are wary of them. Of course, the real die-hards here avoid movies, television, and music altogether except for works which follow the party line.

He, he....oh, the irony.

***Barthes process was an example of reclaiming the text from the author which also leaves the text in ruins in the process, irregardless of what Barthes is able to discern from the rubble.***

Yes, but the point was never to maintain the integrity of Sarassine. That's not the purpose of S/Z, so I can't see how you can fault it for that. The point is to EXTRAPOLATE meanings BETWEEN THE LINES of a text. If I were writing a book on apples, I shouldn't be criticized for omitting oranges.

***But it wasn't just the paradigm but the music the paradigm created even apart from the images they felt wasn't alienating enough for their rules.***

That's what I said, yes.

***More in-depth analysis dammit is for Cineaste and other serious magazines & film journals & books. The newspaper review is for the Average Joe who wants to know what a movie is about so he can decide to go see it.***

I know, and I do not expect academic lingo in mainstream press, but I still think reviews should have more VALUE JUDGEMENTS. There's nothing academic about that. Leave the synopsis to a brief paragraph and get down to business as soon as possible.

NP: DR. ZHIVAGO (Jarre)

Somehow, we keep missing each other on this.

I know Barthes wasn't trying to keep the integrity of the text. What I'm saying is that if you lose the integrity of the text what is the good of it? Oh, maybe you might find "meanings between the lines" in the system of signs but I'd rather have the original author and the original text instead. I think there is more to gain there. Of course, I suppose you can have both, the deconstructed set of signs that Barthes finds and the original text too.

But again, this wasn't the best example to pick since the discussion is about the autonomy of the text and the interpretation of the reader. I mean, sure Barthes's deconstruction might be seen as the way he interprets the text for himself (with a sledge hammer!), but when I interpret a text, I still leave its integrity intact. And I have no desire to get rid of the author. I don't need the author to appreciate a text and take it to my own but I get more out of a text when I search for the author's stamp than I do by breaking up the text and looking for the "unconscious" patterning of signs and hidden meanings behind word choices.

The same could be said for films. Let's say I'm watching a film by a director I admire. I could reduce the film to its mainstream continuity, it's simple notions of montage and sound, the signs provided visually even within individual shots. I could go on to dice & slice the thing to where the story and the direction are hanging by a thread. But if I see symbolism or a system of signs, I like to think that (following auteurism as a theory) they wouldn't be there unless put there by a director either deliberately or unconsciously and that without that director the system of signs would be completely different.

Even if you want to debate that and say that the pattern of signs isn't being created but just being re-circulated, I still don't see a lot of value in analyzing communication signs to death. Instead of finding new channels of message I think the process just adds noise to the original channel confusing communication instead of clarifying it. Now the original communication may be dense & complex, a forest of signs used in a system of symbolism that a viewer might not be able to take in all at once, but it is still coming in on one channel, even the subtext is clearly there just as a tympany is in any concert work that uses one.

In the end, I think the real value comes with working with what a work is on the surface rather than decimating it and looking for new channels & structures in the ruins.

Signs & systems of signs are all communication really is. The sign is not the real that we hold. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." All cultural texts are false in this regard. We could dispense with all of it, except....it's narratives and myths, even when distorted and irrational, that the unconscious uses as a language "to speak" to us. Dreams are narratives but so are the day to day events of our lives. Before there was semiology there were myths and oral tradition. The story comes before deconstruction. The human race isn't interested or moved or inspired or horrified by systems of signs but by narration, by What Happens Next? That's the whole point of all communication and the signs and their baggage are just secondary tools. The unconscious has guided man through his entire time in civilized life and it operates in the structure of a narrative. To destroy the narrative is like an attack on all society & civilization, a desire to destroy everything there is around us, to change reality itself. But it's a hopeless revolt. The unconscious will not allow for this "progress" it will re-assert itself and its control over human destiny. The unconscious laughs at Barthes.

I agree with you about press reviews but once again I'm sure there are readers who only want a synopsis and no value judgments or analysis whatsoever. They want to know what the narrative story of a film is about and they'll decide if they like it or if the film was made well if and when they see it themselves.

But you should be avoiding reviews in the mainstream press, they are only going to disappoint you.

NP: LA CONDANNA (Carlo Crivelli)

[Hmmm. This must be the first time I've done the NP thing in several years. It used to be a pretty steady habit as I still listen to a lot of music while typing these posts but I got out of it. You do it a lot so I thought to do it myself.]

The good of it is to NUANCE (oops!) the 'author' concept, among other things. I don't know if you're familiar with basic phenomenology, but you've probably heard about Iser's 'implied author' as distinct from the 'REAL author'. The 'implied author' constitutes all the values and ideas on which the REAL author bases his narrative; these are time-specific and may not even be consciously available to the REAL author, but they're nonetheless important in the shaping of the finished product. Does this undermine auterism, then? Not really. It just helps to explain the MOTIVATION behind the auteur's decisions and "selection" of signs in a book or film or whatever. Barthes is charting this terrain.

***Instead of finding new channels of message I think the process just adds noise to the original channel confusing communication instead of clarifying it.***

Interesting that you should bring up "noise" here. Most communication models since the naïve stimulus-response theory adds a "noise" element to the message between sender and receiver. Some of them have LAYERS of complex noise sources relating both to the message and the medium in which the message is presented (the 1963 Maletzke model comes to mind). Noise should not be under-estimated. Yet what I find interesting - and we probably agree here - is what comes through DESPITE noise.

***Before there was semiology there were myths and oral tradition. The story comes before deconstruction.***

And yet, before there were myths and oral traditions, there was RITUAL. Some people claim that ritual contains or even IS narrative, but I disagree strongly with that. Those are two different forms of performance. I've always been interested in the NON-narrative aspects of all artforms, especially film. I also think non-narrative elements may co-operate with MYTHS in the shaping of auteur director's style. For example, Spielberg's recurrent themes of "strong mother", "non-verbal communication", "childhood innocence" etc. are not only communicated through the story, but also through form and style (autonmous, non-narrative symbols and signs). I love that.

***But you should be avoiding reviews in the mainstream press, they are only going to disappoint you.***

Oh believe me, I avoid them.

NP: "On an Island" (David Gilmour)

The author "concept" does not need to be nuanced. There are no extras and facets that need to be added to what is already evidently there for all to see. I'm not even sure how a real author would feel being told he's just a concept and not a real live boy. The author is not a concept he's an author. Geesh!

I tried to read through a book called The Aims of Phenomenology about Husserl once but I became afraid my ego would expand like the computer in Dark Star so I stopped--I figured my ego was large enough as it is.

But my basic gut-level response is that Iser is full of it.

A lot of people describe authorship as being "open to the unconscious" or even that divine inspiration put the words/notes/paint down and I as the artist just got out of the way.

Yeah, right. Whatever. But when I write or do anything, I'm the one doing the work. Right now, I'm the one writing what I'm thinking in response to what you wrote earlier and I'm the one doing it not the implied author, but me the real author.

You say the implied author constitutes all the values & ideas on which I base my narrative. I say sure, I rely on the dictionary or the classic book 36 Dramatic Situations, but after that, the narrative is my own. Just because I use language or signs doesn't mean that they write or place themselves or that it's a meaningless activity that I or someone should structure & arrange elements into communication.

Or put another way, when I "select" the signs to put in a book or film, I select them without the quotes.

Words are just words until an author selects them to use in a sentence. Ok, sure, he doesn't create the words or the letters in the words, he relies on the system of established words and what they refer to, but the ideas are his, how the author arranges the words & signs is not necessarily plucked out from the thin air of the implied author. Why? Because the implied author doesn't have these things ready-made to be pulled off the shelf. There are cliches and formulas and even grammar but real composition doesn't rely on these for content. Take Haiku. 5-7-5 or whatever the form dictates the syllable count should be. But the form that all haiku rely on cannot create the text that makes up the poems. Nor are there ready-made interpretations for the images expressed in haiku.

There are a lot of communication models. Shannon (1949) is a classic and he's the one who posits noise as the stuff that gets in the way of clear transmission.

Noise, feedback and the like, can sometimes add to rather than subtract/detract from a message in an artistic sort of way, but it general it's bad news. The idea is to have as little noise as possible garbling the message, not to go looking for it.

Think of it this way. You've got a beat up 16mm print of a movie. The print is choppy with splices and has emulsion rips and lines through it. All of this gets in the way of enjoying the film. It does not add some nuance that needs to be examined for meaning under the microscope. And that's what deconstruction is like, forgoing the film to examine the scratches on the emulsion.

"Nuancing the author" or considering him a concept or saying he is only the shadow of "the implied author" is like deliberately looking for a noise channel to screw up the message that is coming in fine & clear from the real author in the first place. There is no point in doing this. It's like looking at the ash in the ashtray and considering that more pleasurable than smoking the cigar.

I'm not a big expert on early man. Art starts with cave paintings. But what came before? I'm not sure when ritual starts or how it would even be defined. And I'm not sure when narrative or even spoken language begins either. Though my guess is that two minutes after men began to talk, conversation was like "Did you hear the one about the traveling stone tool salesman and the caveman's daughter?"

Actually, the Sumerians developed writing. And they wrote on clay tablets that you can hold in your hand. And the writing on the tablets in most cases is very small so they could put a lot of correspondance on a tablet. The tablets are also thick because they have to be fired or dried and had to hold up. And yet, from Sumer, we have tablets that read, "Son, I'm leaving for a week. Make sure you do your homework while I'm gone or you will never amount to anything." I'm totally serious. We have real tablets that read like this. 5000 years and some things never change.

So, even if ritual came before story and grunts came before language, and clay came before paper, formulation still comes before deconstruction.

A band of people hunting would pass grunts around and the hunters knew they meant "Circle around to the side of the bison." If one of the academic hunters stopped everyone to express "I wonder if there is some extra meaning in the choice of signs the leader just picked out from the implied author," there wouldn't be much food in the BBQ pit that night let me tell you. Unless it was the academic hunter himself.

So I feel you are making a mistake. It's the nature of the beast that form is part of content. If I'm a cave painter, my audience sees an 11 foot long bison on the wall, but I as an artist have to also think in terms of line and shading and mass and coloring and how light hits the cave wall and all those formal "non-narrative" elements that go into making the bison. But the bison is the thing I'm working for, not line or color or shading, these are just the means, the bison is the end.

I put non-narrative in quotes because the form is still crucial to the narrative, the cave painter isn't playing with form removing it from content the way an abstract painter would in the 19th-20th Century.

Form is at the service of the narrative/image. And if you abstract it, you can play with it and even admire some artistic uses of that play, but it seems incomplete, it can express little. What is a line or color or shading just as line or color or shading? What can it tell us?

Or put another way, what you call themes in Spielberg, what you call non-verbal communication, what you call form & style, and what you call autonomous symbols and signs, when he uses them, they are all still PART of the narrative, they are not non-narrative. They may be non-verbal, they might not be dialogue, but they are all narrative, because they refer to a story.

And the same goes for any system of symbols or artifacts used to send meanings. The symbols may provide more information in a way that is different from just speaking or acting but that doesn't mean the symbols aren't part of the whole channel of narration. Also, stories are what interest and educate people not symbols. The story has to engage before you can talk about symbolism or morals. A weak story may be filled with extras but if the basics don't resonate to a human population, the extras will fall flat.

And what if you filter these extras out, what do you have? What is non-verbal communication without a story to attach itself to? Just a series of looks or arm-crossings by an actor in an empty room. And what do they mean if they don't refer to a story about people that is going on somewhere? They become free-floating & abstract, like the line/color/shading mentioned before, so they mean little or nothing, play without statement.

So, turning away from the whole soup of academic BS, Thor, please stop nuancing, stop deconstructing, stop worshipping noise, stop abstracting form from content, and please return to the real world of concretes instead of living in the pipe dream world of signs.

Quit your university job, stop reading academic texts, and go walk the land "like Cain in Kung Fu". Get back in touch with the real. In fact, just go touch something real without saying, our culture has made this into a sign and looking at it with the intent of analyzing it to death.

Also, stop playing Zimmer or your teeth will rot out. And when was the last time you called your mother you ungrateful so & so......

***The author "concept" does not need to be nuanced. There are no extras and facets that need to be added to what is already evidently there for all to see. I'm not even sure how a real author would feel being told he's just a concept and not a real live boy. The author is not a concept he's an author. Geesh!***

Your latest post is full of misunderstandings, I'm afraid, and the above paragraph is one of them. I'm not saying that the real author is just a concept. He's REAL, for crying out loud. But in a communication process, there may also be an implied author at play. Iser's chain - severely simplified - looks like this:

Real author -> [implied author - implied reader] -> real reader

What is inside the brackets is the text itself (the same text Barthes and others are investigating).

***Yeah, right. Whatever. But when I write or do anything, I'm the one doing the work. Right now, I'm the one writing what I'm thinking in response to what you wrote earlier and I'm the one doing it not the implied author, but me the real author.***

Of course. But there are latent value systems in your writing that relates to the whole society that you are part of and that (unconsciously) colours your writing, like it or not.

***Words are just words until an author selects them to use in a sentence.***

Sorry, man, but every word carries with it an already-established connotation (a signified) that we simply contextualize in colloquial speech. But as I said before, I am fascinated by how "auteurs" take signifiers and make them their own, so to speak (that may not correspond to common use). That's the whole semiological circle right there, the constant expansion of signifiers and their related signifieds.

***There are a lot of communication models. Shannon (1949) is a classic and he's the one who posits noise as the stuff that gets in the way of clear transmission.***

Yes, Shannon AND WEAVER'S model is a classic that establishes the core sequences (beginning with a source which selects a message, which is then transmitted in the form of a signal, over a communication channel, to a receiver, who transforms the signal back into a message for a destination - and the noise or "interference" in all levels). It was never directly concerned with mass communication, though, but has been "imported" to human sciences since. Today, it is seen as lacking some....ehm....nuance (hides as Lou runs for the nearest airport).

***Noise, feedback and the like, can sometimes add to rather than subtract/detract from a message in an artistic sort of way, but it general it's bad news. The idea is to have as little noise as possible garbling the message, not to go looking for it.***

I agree, but you have to take it into account.

***"Nuancing the author" or considering him a concept or saying he is only the shadow of "the implied author" is like deliberately looking for a noise channel to screw up the message that is coming in fine & clear from the real author in the first place.***

The point is that it's not always coming through fine and clear, and that's where you have to ask WHY it doesn't. Sometimes, that means going into the text and finding meanings that the author himself may not have intended. Some people call this to over-analyze (and I agree that one sometimes goes overboard), but with a little perspective I'd call it a healthy enterprise.

***Form is at the service of the narrative/image.***

Here is another misunderstanding, IMO. You equate narrative with image, and that is wrong. The image is capable of doing FAR more than tell a story. Not everything is centered around a narrative.

*** What is a line or color or shading just as line or color or shading? What can it tell us?***

It can SYMBOLIZE something, which need to be narrative in nature.

***Or put another way, what you call themes in Spielberg, what you call non-verbal communication, what you call form & style, and what you call autonomous symbols and signs, when he uses them, they are all still PART of the narrative, they are not non-narrative.***

Actually, here I agree with you. In the case of neo-classical films like those of Spielberg, the autonomous audiovisual segments are never fully NON-narrative. However, the priority lies MORE with various audiovisual aspects than the story in many scenes. Many of these large themes are underlined by a certain constellation of images and sound (such as the "moon shot" in E.T., for example). In more experimental directions, however, non-narrative segments are easy to find.

***They become free-floating & abstract, like the line/color/shading mentioned before, so they mean little or nothing, play without statement.***

I'm surprised that YOU of all people, Lou, with your apparent love for non-Hollywood fare, can say something like this. But then again, I get the feeling you're being a little contrary here at the cost of consistency.

***Quit your university job, stop reading academic texts, and go walk the land "like Cain in Kung Fu". Get back in touch with the real. In fact, just go touch something real without saying, our culture has made this into a sign and looking at it with the intent of analyzing it to death.***

LOL! Thanks for your concern, Lou, but I'm doing fine, thank you very much.

NP: MICHAEL COLLINS (Goldenthal)

1) I'm not an academic & I'm somewhat biased against the academic ways of looking at things. A lot of academic thinking seems to run counter common sense to me. Even Freud never seemed like much of a scientist to me yet he's accepted everywhere for what seems like a lot of guesswork & speculation.

I have had some exposure to a lot of key texts that are basic ground in academic circles and I live in a college town so it's hard to meet & talk with people without absorbing some of these ideas. Nevertheless, I'm not as well-versed in all of the authors you quote as you are.

So between my aversion and incomplete knowledge, I'm bound to misunderstand some of what you are describing.

2) I'm only working off of what you are telling me yourself. You are the one who wrote "The implied author constitutes all the values & ideas on which the real author bases his narrative." And that's the phrase I used to work from. If I presented a bunch of misunderstandings, it was partly because you didn't give a complete enough picture of what you're talking about yourself. Now I suppose I can go read Iser on my own and figure him out for myself, but somehow I suspect I'd get more out of reading a good crime novel

In any case, now you say that the implied author inside the brackets is the text itself??

Sometimes an author will say "I'm writing for the average reader." Well, I'm not sure there is an average reader, he's more a stereotype, a supposition. And I suppose you can talk of average authors too. But all I see are real authors and real readers.

If I write a text and someone else reads that text, just where is the implied author and implied reader? In the text? Ok. But where in the text? How about defining the terms and the process. I mean, I'm not the only one reading this topic (I hope). Clarify this for the "average" MM.com reader.

It's true I am part of a culture & society. And human societies have a number of value systems that they try to indoctrinate and socialize people into. If I grew up in another place & time, different systems and freedoms would be a part of what I was taught and could do. So I follow (I think/I hope) what you are saying here. And I'm sure you could look back at this paragraph and say, the author belongs to a culture where logical thinking, understanding reality, and fears of looking like an idiot were strongly prevalent. Ok. But this is only a part of the story and I think you yourself know that too. The value systems may color the writing whether I like it or not, but it's not like I haven't most of the control over how I put my own communication across.

"Every word carries with it an already-established connotation" Well, I didn't say otherwise. I couldn't use words to communicate if they didn't carry an established connection. I want them to have an established connection and a very clear and narrowly-defined connection at that. Sometimes the word isn't so clearly defined. So "cat" becomes "black cat" becomes "black persian cat" becomes "black persian cat named George with a white marking on his paw and a rather snooty dispostion around most folks unless its feeding time at which point he shows up and is awfully friendly".

Even this last sentence is only an approximation of the real reality of the actual cat. But the point is that "cat" is immobilized until the author puts "cat" into the context of sentences he creates.

It's the author that creates the communication using the terms not the terms that create the communication just because they have pre-established connotations.

Now we have to make a distinction between reality and artistic creation in books, films, and imagery. Words, langauge, refer to reality but can also be used to create fiction that resembles reality but is self-contained and "unreal".

Although langauge can only approximate reality, it's what we have to use to communicate and so I don't want to foul it up. However, in the context of art, it's ok if the play I don't want to see in real life communication is allowed into the realm of fictional communication.

So in real life, I don't really want anyone to take signifiers and make them their own in ways that don't correspond to common use. I don't want signifiers to expand. That loosens language and makes it harder to communicate. I want "cat" to mean "cat" not "dog".

But in the artistic realm, I can see that authors/artists might want to use "cat" as a symbol so that "cat" takes on additional meanings.

Still, there is over-doing something to the point of over-kill.

There are certain words that if you look them up in the dictionary, they have more than one definition and usage. Some words mean 5 or 6 or even more than 10 different things. Same word but 10 different signifieds. That's confusing enough.

So imagine an artistic world where every author created his own new signified out of the same signifier? "Cat" suddenly has 40,000 different symbolic meanings as each auteur makes it his own. But do we really need all this symbolism in art. I mean we already have 40,000 perfectly good signifiers artists could use directly. We don't need to cram 40,000 symbolic signifieds into one poor signifier. Just be clear about the durn thing, not cryptic.

But I suppose that takes the mental fun out of it, it takes the play out of the art which is why people encounter art in the first place. Well, I wouldn't want to lose that either. But I'm not a language anarchist. Art is one thing and reality another and I don't want them to slide into each other just because language is a fixture of both. I do draw the line somewhere on the this side of the line of clear thought & good grammar.

Even if Shannon & Weaver (poor Weaver, he should have fought to be first because everyone drops him) intended their model for interpersonal communication and not mass communication that doesn't weaken their basics.

Meanwhile, rather than fly to Norway, just what is S&W lacking in nuance? What extra facets do you think need to be added & considered to the model that it is lacking in depth?

As for noise, I do take it into account. But I brought up the whole thing as a metaphor (thereby taking one term and making it my own in a way that didn't expand the signifier but just made the communication confusing!!).

What I said was that in the process of Real Author>Real Text>Real Reader, deconstructing the text and looking for play in the signifiers or unconscious cultural value systems or whatever extras you are going to look for, is like looking for the noise which garbles the transmission. Why go looking for extras that make things unclear?

I like the integrity of Author>Text>Reader. I don't need to dismiss the author, break up the text, or assume the reader's interpretation is all that counts.

But as you say, sometimes the message gets garbled, has noise, doesn't come through fine and clear anyway. And so you ask why. I don't mind going overboard and analyzing something to death if it solves the mystery. But I think "finding meanings that the author himself may not have intended" is projection in a lot of cases, what the detective reads into the clues, but not what the clues really mean. [I'm a paradox--I doubt Freud but use his ideas & terminology.]

I figure that if the message isn't coming through clearly that either the author screwed up or it's over my head. In other words, he didn't write it well or he did but I just don't have the smarts for it.

But if the noise is coming from the language itself, isn't that an argument against expanded signifieds (at least in non-artistic communication) and not for them?

I want you to tell me what you mean when you write "The image is capable of doing far more than tell a story. Not everything is centered around a narrative." So just what else can an image communicate besides narrative information?

Let's take a film shot of a room/set. There is a window, curtains, a clock, a desk, etc. You are in somebody's home perhaps, you get a feeling of the time period from the decor, say 1888 or 1966 or 2006. Let's add some more details, it doesn't matter what. Well, even though no one has entered the shot, even though there is no story going on in the set, we already know a great deal of the background and all of this becomes part of the narrative, the narrative of a specific story or the narrative of history. Because if I see a set that says 1888, I know some of what was going on in the world in 1888 and this set becomes part of that story/narrative.

So, as far as I can tell, every image and every detail within an image situates it in time which situates it in the story of world history which is a narrative. And this works even for images that aren't so earthbound, like shots from THX-1138, all blank white interiors peopled with characters dressed in all white. I might not know where I am, but I know I'm not in 1888 or 1966 or 2006 as I know them, so I'm in an abstract space or the future or another planet or dead or what have you. And....wherever I am, there's a surrounding narrative that the image is a part of.

Well, it's true, abstracted forms can always become signifiers, that's the nature of modern art.

I do love the enigmatic and the modern. I often find Hollywood cinema is too bound to reality. But art is one thing and reality another. I want my language and my world to be clear but my art to be a bit fantastic. And I do love it when people play with form. However, there is a point where I would say you can overdose on style over substance or all style and no substance. I mean I like ice cream but if I ate nothing but ice cream, I'd die of it eventually. So even if I find abstracted forms aesthetically pleasing at times, they are less than whole, not completely nutritious, they can be artistic junk food.

Or put another way, sometimes I want to look at line and let it symbolize and send me on flights of fancy but at most times I just want to see the cave bison. I may love a lot of non-mainstream art but that doesn't mean I prefer the abstract to the concrete in day to day life, that I prefer "cat" to real cats. And there are times when I want art to be more concrete and representational than abstract as well.

Meanwhile, I want clear language outside of art and more or less clear language within art too. Art has space to expand reality which is its joy in a way but I'm not so sure I'd like to wake up one day and find that reality has become no different from the movie I saw the night before!

Then again, that could be interesting......

Sorry to hear that. It's really nothing to be afraid or biased of, though. It's "just" research, and most of it has some relevance for the society we're living in.

***If I presented a bunch of misunderstandings, it was partly because you didn't give a complete enough picture of what you're talking about yourself.***

Sorry about that too. It's not often that I get to use my academic background on these film music messageboards, so when I do I may take things for granted and express myself as if you're already in the know. I'll try to be more clear.

***In any case, now you say that the implied author inside the brackets is the text itself??***

Yes, you can find it in the text. It's what you can read between the lines about any contextual meaning that may not even be consciously available to the author himself (the value systems of the time, for example).

*** How about defining the terms and the process. I mean, I'm not the only one reading this topic (I hope). Clarify this for the "average" MM.com reader.***

Oh, I seriously doubt there is anyone else reading this thread at this point. Anyways, I'll try to clarify. The 'real author' is what it is - the physical person and his conscious decisions. The 'implied author' is the guiding "instance" that colours the real author's writing, be it the value systems of the society at the time or factors in the real author's life that he is not aware of himself. The 'implied reader' is the reader that the real author wants to address; he's expecting the 'implied reader' to possess certain traits, and he's basing his own writing on that. The 'real reader' is the physical person reading the text (or seeing the film or whatever) and who may or may NOT correspond to the 'implied reader'.

***Even this last sentence is only an approximation of the real reality of the actual cat. But the point is that "cat" is immobilized until the author puts "cat" into the context of sentences he creates.***

We agree there, then.

***It's the author that creates the communication using the terms not the terms that create the communication just because they have pre-established connotations.***

Not a matter of either/or, I think. It goes both ways.

***So in real life, I don't really want anyone to take signifiers and make them their own in ways that don't correspond to common use. I don't want signifiers to expand. That loosens language and makes it harder to communicate. I want "cat" to mean "cat" not "dog".***

We can't really control it, though. It happens all the time. For example, recently in Norway, the word "nerd" has become somewhat more positive in tone (due to various TV appearances) and lost some of its "lack of social intelligence" connotation. What has happened is that the alternative word "geek" has taken over some of the lost connotations. Words are not static entities. But they're thankfully static enough for a certain period of time to make them useful in colloquial speech.

*** We don't need to cram 40,000 symbolic signifieds into one poor signifier. Just be clear about the durn thing, not cryptic.***

The point is that a filmmaker, for example, has various meaning tools at his disposal, so he may create the signifed "cat" or whatever by various audiovisual means that is not very common. He's making his own signifier. That's cool. Another Spielberg example that comes to mind is the dinner scene from A.I. - the first shot of David is filmed through the ceiling lamp so it looks like he's sitting inside a UFO, underlining his "alien" status in the family at this point.

***Meanwhile, rather than fly to Norway, just what is S&W lacking in nuance? What extra facets do you think need to be added & considered to the model that it is lacking in depth?***

While the S&W model looks like this...
http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/gfx/people/shwe1.gif

...the previously-mentioned Maletzke model looks like this:
http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/gfx/models/8malc.gif

(you have to click the links, since one obviously cannot paste in pictures on this board)

The problem with the S&W model is that it's a pure TRANSMISSION model, not really dealing with meaning, context, intentions etc. (a consequence of its "non-human" origin) The Maletzke model, however, is specifically designed for mass media communication.

***Why go looking for extras that make things unclear?***

Because they make things clear in their own way. If you take "noise" into account while communicating (like most of us do all the time), it shapes your intentions as well.

***But if the noise is coming from the language itself, isn't that an argument against expanded signifieds (at least in non-artistic communication) and not for them?***

I'm not only talking about linguistic noise here. See the Maletzke model again.

*** So just what else can an image communicate besides narrative information?***

Anything. Symbols, emotion, mood.

***So, as far as I can tell, every image and every detail within an image situates it in time which situates it in the story of world history which is a narrative.***

Then you're using one WIDE defintion of what a narrative is. Like communication models, there are also many definitions around of what a narrative is. I happen to like Claude Bremond's version: "All narrative consists of a discourse which integrates a sequence of events of human interest into the unity of a single plot” (Bremond [1966] 1980: 390). The image can do more than this.

NP: "Nightingales and Bombers" (Manfred Mann's Earthband)

That said, I'm a little bit more in the know than people who have had no exposure to academic circles & thinking, but I wouldn't say I've done all the reading & research to talk academese like a pro.

I think I follow you on what you are saying regarding the implied author within the text. The author writes and in writing he tells us "between the lines" in other words, implicitly, about the time he's writing in and the common ideas floating around that time.

Still, it's guesswork to a certain degree and it seems secondary to the overt message the author is communicating.

You are probably right than no one else but you & I are still contributing a look at this topic.

Ok, I see the model but still presage the real author. The implied author almost seems like annoying stuff the real author can't control, noise that can garble the message. I understand what the implied (or really the intended) reader is and how he may or may not differ from actual readers.

Again, I have a problem with the idea that the connotations in signs can determine the communication. Why? Because words don't place themselves into a sentence. An author chooses the signs the way a painter would choose a color. The signs and the color are expressive on their own but incomplete. They require direction and context in order to become communication. They require an author and it's HIS communication, not the sign's, that is the message. You could say the sign uses the author to express itself but that's kind of mystic. Really, the author uses the expressive qualities of the sign to communicate. If the sign isn't consistent with the message, he drops it for another one or surrounds it with more signs until the message becomes more clear.

I do follow what you have to say about nerds & geeks

Yes, language evolves, it doesn't stay static. Though some terms are less likely to become fluid than others. But, if there are shifts, we all try to keep up on the new connotations if they do change.

I think the S&W model took into some of the considerations that the Maletzke model does but which aren't part of the diagram. For instance, S&W were well aware that there were many differences on the receiving end of a message.

Still, the Maletzke model makes sure it covers all this ground and seems a more complete model for the complexities involved.

Score points for you. The S&W model needed to be nuanced and I'm convinced.

As an author I might take noise into account but the implied author is so unconscious & implicit that how can I alter my message to make the noise more explicit? It's unconscious. That means I'm not aware of it!

Ironically, you're for the implied author but less for the implied narrative. Narrative is narrowly-defined so that imagery can contain aspects which are non-narrative. Ok, I'll bite. But then you turn around and say it's how authors use these non-narrative elements and make them symbolic or narrative that interests you. Why didn't you just say that they were narrative elements to begin with and have done with it?