Andrew Sarris v. Pauline Kael OR Auteurism v. Love

Andrew Sarris v. Pauline Kael OR:
Auteurism v. Love

Alright, I'll concede that my title is unfair. The analogy drawn is not only asymmetrical (person to theory & person to emotion), even further, it is a simplification. Worse, I'm not particularly well-read on either Sarris or Kael (rival heavy-weight champions of American film criticism past). Nonetheless, I hope to propose several questions in my title alone (hopefully questions which are sufficiently endearing; I don't intend to write that much): Does the introduction of theory minimize visceral experience? Does the preference of elastic non-theory minimize extended awareness? How do we watch movies? How should we watch movies?

The auteur theory was at once reinterpreted, translated, and transposed, by Andrew Sarris, from the French periodical Cahiers du cinéma in the 1962 essay "Notes on the Auteur Theory" (Film Culture, Winter 62/63). This development inarguably changed American criticism. Suddenly, the sexiest thing a writer could do, especially a young one, was to celebrate a film as if it were penned by a singular author, or auteur, and that that premise was a critical starting point above any other. However, the celebration was not, according to Sarris, without serious scholastic concern. Sarris 'academianized' film by attempting to make criticism the part of a scientific method: Notes is defined by its many tiers and rankings. This theoretical approach would dominate film journals and magazines all over the nation.

Although, Sarris and his giant swinging mace of an auteur theory could not, for all the violence of it, coerce every person - in specific, the witty, sardonic, and many-other-things-of-marvel (no sarcasm there) Pauline Kael. Sarris' infamously opinionated colleague (of whom I have already quoted) could not be seduced by the mechanized model of Sarris. In the following year, after Sarris had published the notes of his model, Kael printed a biting and absolutely condemning rebuttal entitled "Circles and Squares" (Film Quarterly, Vol. 16, Spring, 1963, pp. 12-26) This entry into the debate would secure what could be the greatest rivalry in all of American film criticism.

As I myself could not do the rivalry justice, nor could I detail either side of the argument comprehensively (both of which, I feel, have proved true and useful), I will, instead, leave you with a recording of a lectured near verbatim reading of "Circles and Squares" by Pauline Kael herself (which I graciously found here, thank you!*). The talk takes place sometime in 1963 at the San Fernando Valley State College in California. Kael delivers the speech with her nose taped up to her forehead, possibly holding a glass of elegant, but not too expensive, wine, and taking each moment of pause as an opportunity to smugly grin. Her snideness most profound when she transparently chastises Sarris, "I do not understand what goes on in the mind of the critic who thinks that a theory is what his colleagues need because they are not great critics." The passive aggressive brutality alone makes this worth lending your ear. Though, a sense of stubbornness and a high note of hypocrisy might have you hearing no evil.


Nonetheless, Kael's movie talk is exciting. It demonstrates a passion and a love, outside of the bounds of theory. Further, it is a beacon of impassioned and intelligent filmic discourse. I mean, there is a reason this woman, who, according to David Lean himself, "kept me from making a movie for 14 years," [1] is so influential, so remembered. Her attack does not leave her frothing at the mouth. Somehow, despite all its nastiness, Kael's argument leaves her saintly and majestic (which is, even from her own admission, far from the truth). And, really, I'm just left wondering why today's popular critics can't (or won't) talk this way.


"Circles and Squares" lecture at San Fernando Valley State College (Pauline Kael, 1963)

---------

*Thanks to all the fantastic contributors at the amazing "Gunslinger." If you haven't checked out this collage of extra-media culture yet, you simply must. (http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/)

Slavoj Žižek, Film Theory, Masturbation, and Casablanca

Slavoj Žižek,
Film Theory,
Masturbation,

and Casablanca

In the stunningly brilliant comic book analysis comic book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud proposed that the "grammar" of sequential-art was the "phenomenon of observing the parts and perceiving the whole" or "closure." What he meant to posit with this slightly obscure additive is that if the visual signs and cues within the panels amount to a comic's "vocabulary", than the way we put all those separate panels together into a single story or narrative stream is a comic's "grammar." McCloud further proposes that the space between each panel - known as "the gutter" - is instrumental to this grammatical structure.

What the gutter does for comics is excite the imagination and the intellect in order to create assumptions, based on what we understand of the world as well as the specific comic book world in question, that help us reach a sort of closure. The gutter is a both a literal and non-literal gap. On the pages, the gutter is an empty space that distinguishes independent panels. However, in the language of comics, the gutter is a spatial, temporal, perspective, and philosophical gap. It challenges us to decide where the narrative is trying to take us, or perhaps, where we would like it to take us [1].

This is why I always felt that "the gutter" was a perfectly ingenious title: the gap between each panel must ultimately be filled with and satisf ied by our imaginations. It's the dark, obstructed pathway of the underground sewage, filth collected by the torrential rains from above, violently churning dead rats mummified in yesterday's headlines. Potentially, we could impose any number or degree of our own fantasies into a comic book world, and that is despite the artist's intended narrative stream. Of course, the artist is aware of our conditioning and realizes that if he wants to express a coherent story of singularity, he must encode his work with instructions.

McCloud briefly acknowledges the similar role of closure in the filmic arts, however he describes the act of connecting the gaps as more or less seamless: "in movies, our minds effortlessly connect each frame to those preceding and fo llowing it." Largely, this is true. The frames of a film are abundant and, at the same time, invisible due to the speed at which they are projected and then discarded (and then projected) onto the same space. Still, the sort of conscious and active engagement involved in reading a comic is not entirely absent in the grammer of cinema (as any movie-goer should realize).

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek presents to us a very specific case of this active engagement: In the Hollywood classic Casablanca, leads Bogart and Bergman are seen in a passionate embrace. The film fades out and into a shot of the Casablanca tower. After about three or so seconds, it cuts back to Bogart and Bergman, apparently continuing their conversation. There are multiple signs which seem to suggest contradictory conclusions. On one hand, it appears obvious that the three second gap was actually a much longer (or not so much longer, circumstantially) period of fucking (or love making). Bogart smokes a cigarette; further, who can argue with the phallic symbology of the Casablanca tower? Yet, on the other hand, the three seconds could be literal in that it appears the same exact conversation is continuing. This is not a simple case of censorship. This is, arguably, a case of the author exciting our repression, while, inversely condemning the idea (by means of already established social institution).

Somehow, there is a perversion here that exceeds even that of explicit fucking. When an author shows two people fucking, the audience is compelled to engage in that specific narrative. So, we think about fucking. Yet, we are imposed upon by the real purveyor of filth, the artist; we have a scapegoat. But, aha! When an author so masterfully censors his piece to make even the nature of implication (of fucking) ambiguous, the audience is compelled by nothing more than their fantasy. This is when, as Žižek would argue, the true fantastical and masturbatory instance of censored cinema occurs. This is when we engage ourselves at a unique ideological level.

According to Žižek, this is a model for the functioning of ideology itself (specifically that of Hollywood censorship). It enforces, by means of symbolical normative language, an ideal. Yet, at the same time, it must, if it cares to be heard, allow a gutter. An audience is a composite of their fantasies and repressions, and they will, inevitably, be attracted to the dual relationship between the streets above and the sewers below. And, when we're given an opportunity, in film, to consciously and ideologically evaluate a gap, our fantasies have an opportunity to communicate with the screen - and, sometimes, the screen will serve as flooding waters, raising the waves of the sewers below, bringing an odor to the surface that is perversely pristine. This is an opportunity worth much introspection, experimentation, and discourse. This is the active fantastical imagination of the pervert's cinema.