Literary Theory Today

Notes on the Obvious

NOτES ON THE OBVIOUS John El1is Cinema poses a series of acute problems for aesthetic theory, and particularly for textual analysis. Meaning in cinema is obvious: the average cinema fi1m appears straightforward, and can be understood immediately (with subtitles) by virtually everyone on the planet. This obviousness of meaning has meant that film h的 resisted textual analysis: there is aJways something that seems to evade the analysis. If orthodox literary criticism is appJied, the fiJm becomes a content (usu到ly the emmanation of an expressive subject), which is conveyed by a series of technical proc的ses which can be commented upon (lIsmooth camerawork," "sombre colour," etc.). Yet the fi1in remains, exact勻， an i11us如何 to be spoken of as if it were reality convenientJy packaged. A semiotic anaJysis provides an advance on this literary-critical approach: narrative structure can be examined, textual productivity can be out1ined, even forms of textual organisation specific to cinema (patterns of editing, the constructìon of the i∞k， regimes. of verisimUjtude) can be identified. Nevertheless, even a semiotic textuaJ analysis of a fiJ m misses something. It misses not only that which inevitably disappears in the movement from image/sound to the written .word; semiotic textual analysis of a fi1m misses 位竺豆豆.1 And in missing cinema, Ú: misses the obvious. For the semiotic textual analysis is left with a paradox. It is capabJe of reveal1ng the extremely compJicated forms of organ泌的ion of the fi1mic text, the difficult procedures of deciphering of the cinematic image/sound complex, but it cannot explain why it appears so simple and obvious, such an easy task to understand a film. It shows the simple-in-appearance to be com pJex寸n-rea1ity, Þ… M:t carlOot 金主wain 心 thesimplicity. The answer does not 1ie in textual analysis, but iri the context for the text, or rather in the co-text, in the cinema that produces the text and the spectator alike. Perhaps here lies the reJevance of a paper on cinema 15 for a conference on literary theory. Literary theory has hardly ever posed the question of the imbrication of the texts under analysis within a whole industry of pub1icat如何 of taste-makin章， of uses of writing andjor printing. Or of course of the position of its critical work in relation to the "institution of Jiterature." I say "hardly ever" because some work has been and ls being done; and 1 hope there are those at this conference rightly offended by the sweeping generalisation just made. Yet it remains true that the question of the institution of 1iterature is not as pressing for Jiterary analysis as the question of the institution of cinema is for fi1mic analysis. This undoubtedly has much to do with the ease of access to writing for the critic (compared to fi1m-making for the critic) and the similarity of activities involved in writing about writing (both the object and the analysis of the object will tend to have the same blind-spots). 50 perhaps from the disparity of activities (writingjfi1mmaking), from the radical impossibility of written analysis of the filmic text beyond a certain point, comes the possibility of a particular critical insi皂ht: the interdependence of text and institution, fi1m and cinema, which might have consequences for literary theory. • There's one thing that's always astonished me, that's how you get from one shot to another? And that actual1y _means why do you put shots one after another.L τo begin, then, at the beginning: major theories 為nd aesthetics of the cinema have tended to privi1ege the cut as the constitutive moment of cinema: indeed, the cut is perhaps the 垣盟主~radicaJ 騁。mel}t 伽_oJ.J:J姆拉III、_the cinema. Across a cUi，些句 difJ~!ence of Jmage and sound can m盟主L輕型'YtJ:üng js J~l …sta.ke" tbe .foUowing image (andjor sound[s]) need hãve no relation with those whìch precede. The risk, then, is disorientation a"nd panìc, or their obverse, disinterest, boredom. The cut is privileged in many 16 theories of cinema for this reason, it is the most momentous event in the cinematic spectacle, the rnoment Qf deprivation and yet promise of everything for the 三pe_ctator. Hence we can argue that the economy of the cinema rests to a large degree on the modulation of the risk involved in the cut, to present a baJancing of repetition and novelty, of the fami1iar and the...