The Idea of Identification

Chapter 3: Identification, Celebrity, and the Hollywood Film

Chapter 3 IDENTIFICATION, CELEBRITY, AND THE HOLLYWOOD FILM We master it or appreciate it or enjoy it; it works, hits us hard, carries us away, absorbs or transports us. To me, as to Kenneth Burke, the most nearly adequate metaphors lead here to the notion of identification—I take the work in, or, as phenomenologists say, it enables me to dwell in it. I live in the work; it lives its life in me. Its creator and I become, in a part of our lives, indistinguishable as we live the work together. —Wayne Booth, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it, but to those who need it. —Massimo Troisi, Il Postino Virtually every form of narrative offers the potential to be a mirror of the self. In a process that sometimes defies simple explanations , we establish emotional connections with characters and circumstances that seem to mimic our own. The rewards of narrative include the chance to recognize the familiar in a new setting, and the opportunity to see some of the conditions of our own lives acted upon by others. Storytelling feeds on its own energy as a multiplier of experience. The richer intellectual and emotional life that it makes possible is its own reward. Aaron Copland—the composer-in-residence in these pages—has ironically noted that “not infrequently I have been moved to tears in the theater, [but] never at music.” He seemed to envy drama’s “naked” emotional power, all the more so if Bette Davis happened to have a starring role in a film.1 45 46 THE IDEA OF IDENTIFICATION Arguably, no medium provides more opportunities for identification than film, with its ability to bypass the printed page and arrive to an audience with context and character in full expressive form. It is a cliché to note that film transports us to another place and, with it, another person’s world. But as Bela Balazs has noted, the special capacity for identification is film’s “absolute artistic novelty”: Although we sit in our seats for which we have paid, we do not see Romeo and Juliet from there. We look up to Juliet’s balcony with Romeo’s eyes and look down on Romeo with Juliet’s. Our eye and with it our consciousness is identified with the characters in the film, we look at the world out of their eyes and have no angle of vision of our own.2 In this chapter I will explore film’s ability to construct this intense kind of consciousness. And like most analysts intrigued by its potency, I start with the same basic questions. Why does film draw us in so completely? Why do some film characters and the actors that create them become such powerful icons in popular culture? In the words of one writer, “Why do many of us fall in love so easily with characters onstage and in film?”3 In some ways the answers are no deep mystery. Film saturates the senses with information. A darkened theater intensifies film’s impact and lets us step out of ourselves. No other medium so effortlessly transports us to another world or puts us in tighter proximity to memorable characters. In many other ways the appeal of film runs parallel with the attractions of narrative in general and fiction in particular.4 Storytelling in all of its forms provides a mirror to ourselves and a window from which to view others. Even so, there are significant differences between narratives on the page and those on the screen. Written narratives require effort, imagination and much more active intellectual engagement. The reader must be a more active participant in the process than a filmgoer. In addition, there are intriguing differences that surface in the notorious problems of converting novels into films. Written narratives can dwell on abstract ideas and thoughts. Their characters can more easily describe their doubts and inner feelings. And narrators can observe and comment at length, effortlessly moving between scenes and time frames. But both of these conventions of 47 Identification, Celebrity, and the Hollywood Film written exposition transfer awkwardly to film. With its natural orientation toward action and reaction, film requires its characters to do something. The subtleties and detours of written exposition are traded for the pleasures of living through another character. This representational clarity...