Monty Cantsin
9th September 2004, 03:12
this was posted on http://www.talkphilosophy.org by Subversive Rob. i thought it was quite good and that many here would like to read it.
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A lot of what I'm writing here comes straight from Theodor Adorno's The Culture Industry but this is my take on it.
Watching Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 actually jogged this again in my memory. The first point to note is that everyday events are usually driven by impersonal forces, imperialism, layoffs etc. are essentially results of a specific social system. People may well act this out, but they do not do it in absolute freedom, the capitalist must make profits to remain a capitalist, such is the inexorable logic of capital.
Recent films attempt to critique the existing state of things, but as these are bourgeois they essentially legitimise them instead. This is done in a clever way, individualisation/particularisation. The Marxist understands that pollution, corporate production is a corrolary of the mode of production, thus we understand the underlying economic imperatives.
But bourgeois cinema does not critique the true origin of these phenomena it instead attacks individualised entities. The motives are ascribed to a particular person or chairman etc. of a company who is portrayed as evil. The hero/heroine then combats this person and everything is ok. Now I know what people may think, personifying social forces is necessary, this is film. But the social forces are not personified they are transubstantiated to individuals. This is similar to a process in the workplace Marcuse outlines, in One Dimensional Man:
Another example: a worker B makes the general statement that the piece rates on his job are too low. The interview reveals that “his wife is in the hospital and that he is worried about the doctor's bills he has incurred. In this case the latent content of the complaint consists of the fact that B's present earnings, due to his wife's illness, are insufficient to meet his current financial obligations.” [30]
Such translation changes significantly the meaning of the actual proposition. The untranslated statement formulates a general condition in its generality ("wages are too low"). It goes beyond the particular condition in the particular factory and beyond the worker's particular situation. In this generality, and only in this generality, the statement expresses a sweeping indictment which takes the particular case as a manifestation of a universal state of affairs, and insinuates that the latter might not be changed by the improvement of the former.
Thus the untranslated statement established a concrete relation between the particular case and the whole of which it is a case – and this whole includes the conditions outside the respective job, outside the respective plant, outside the respective personal situation. This whole is eliminated in the translation, and it is this operation which makes the cure possible. The worker may not be aware of it, and for him his complaint may indeed have that particular and personal meaning which the translation brings out as its “latent content.” But then the language he uses asserts its objective validity against his consciousness – it expresses conditions that are, although they are not “for him.” The concreteness of the particular case which the translation achieves is the result of a series of abstractions from its real concreteness, which is in the universal character of the case.
So in bourgeois films problems which are systemic realities of capitalism are wrote off as single phenomena. The "bad guy" is treated as an abomination, who is not playing by the rules of the system. This promotes a feeling of well beng amongst watchers - "the system's fine; it's just a coupla bad guys ruining it".
This is exemplified in Farenheit 9/11. Rather than show that imperialism is a systemic feature of US capitalism, one essential for it. Moore particularises it onto Bush and cabal of neo cons, turning it into a conspiracy.
Now the operation of capitalism (as a totality) may seem like a conspiracy, as was pointed out by Fredric Jameson, but it is not. However bourgeois film ultimately portrays it as such, thus limiting critique to specific phenomena, and never towards the totality.
What are the alternatives. Well two examples are Eisenstein and Brecht. Eisenstein does personalise his villans as capitalists. This is aceptable because social relations are personified in real life (capital = capitalist). However. he never particularises capital into a "bad man" rather the capitalists meeting are seen as symbolic of capital, in abstractia, as an impersonal relation. This is furthered by his montage effect, distancing people from the concrete event and thus transcending to the general critique of the system.
Brecht utilsed his methods of distancing too (although I'm not too familiar with Brecht), buy renching the audience from the play, he causes them to consider the impersonal social relations underlying the events. The fact that his characters are noticeably symbolic of social classes, rather than as individuals furthers this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A lot of what I'm writing here comes straight from Theodor Adorno's The Culture Industry but this is my take on it.
Watching Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 actually jogged this again in my memory. The first point to note is that everyday events are usually driven by impersonal forces, imperialism, layoffs etc. are essentially results of a specific social system. People may well act this out, but they do not do it in absolute freedom, the capitalist must make profits to remain a capitalist, such is the inexorable logic of capital.
Recent films attempt to critique the existing state of things, but as these are bourgeois they essentially legitimise them instead. This is done in a clever way, individualisation/particularisation. The Marxist understands that pollution, corporate production is a corrolary of the mode of production, thus we understand the underlying economic imperatives.
But bourgeois cinema does not critique the true origin of these phenomena it instead attacks individualised entities. The motives are ascribed to a particular person or chairman etc. of a company who is portrayed as evil. The hero/heroine then combats this person and everything is ok. Now I know what people may think, personifying social forces is necessary, this is film. But the social forces are not personified they are transubstantiated to individuals. This is similar to a process in the workplace Marcuse outlines, in One Dimensional Man:
Another example: a worker B makes the general statement that the piece rates on his job are too low. The interview reveals that “his wife is in the hospital and that he is worried about the doctor's bills he has incurred. In this case the latent content of the complaint consists of the fact that B's present earnings, due to his wife's illness, are insufficient to meet his current financial obligations.” [30]
Such translation changes significantly the meaning of the actual proposition. The untranslated statement formulates a general condition in its generality ("wages are too low"). It goes beyond the particular condition in the particular factory and beyond the worker's particular situation. In this generality, and only in this generality, the statement expresses a sweeping indictment which takes the particular case as a manifestation of a universal state of affairs, and insinuates that the latter might not be changed by the improvement of the former.
Thus the untranslated statement established a concrete relation between the particular case and the whole of which it is a case – and this whole includes the conditions outside the respective job, outside the respective plant, outside the respective personal situation. This whole is eliminated in the translation, and it is this operation which makes the cure possible. The worker may not be aware of it, and for him his complaint may indeed have that particular and personal meaning which the translation brings out as its “latent content.” But then the language he uses asserts its objective validity against his consciousness – it expresses conditions that are, although they are not “for him.” The concreteness of the particular case which the translation achieves is the result of a series of abstractions from its real concreteness, which is in the universal character of the case.
So in bourgeois films problems which are systemic realities of capitalism are wrote off as single phenomena. The "bad guy" is treated as an abomination, who is not playing by the rules of the system. This promotes a feeling of well beng amongst watchers - "the system's fine; it's just a coupla bad guys ruining it".
This is exemplified in Farenheit 9/11. Rather than show that imperialism is a systemic feature of US capitalism, one essential for it. Moore particularises it onto Bush and cabal of neo cons, turning it into a conspiracy.
Now the operation of capitalism (as a totality) may seem like a conspiracy, as was pointed out by Fredric Jameson, but it is not. However bourgeois film ultimately portrays it as such, thus limiting critique to specific phenomena, and never towards the totality.
What are the alternatives. Well two examples are Eisenstein and Brecht. Eisenstein does personalise his villans as capitalists. This is aceptable because social relations are personified in real life (capital = capitalist). However. he never particularises capital into a "bad man" rather the capitalists meeting are seen as symbolic of capital, in abstractia, as an impersonal relation. This is furthered by his montage effect, distancing people from the concrete event and thus transcending to the general critique of the system.
Brecht utilsed his methods of distancing too (although I'm not too familiar with Brecht), buy renching the audience from the play, he causes them to consider the impersonal social relations underlying the events. The fact that his characters are noticeably symbolic of social classes, rather than as individuals furthers this.