CRITICISM IN MEDIA STUDIES

Realism and naturalism are two rivalling theories in cinematic art, their rivalry arising from the fact that they are the fundamental two alternatives for the artist, in whatever sphere of art, when he is intending to apply art to a treatment of reality.

In this essay, in attempting to provide an interpretation of the similarities and differences between the two theories I shall look at the philosophy concerning the perception of "reality" by the individual, both of nature and the social world; I shall then look at their application to the two theories in the cinema and then go on to an assessment of how the "artist" (the director) in each orthodoxy has his relationship to the world through the medium of his art. Finally I shall look at the application of each to the cinema, and then go on to give a view of both in the existential history of cultures. I shall finish with a fantasy of how the cinema will exist in the (far) future.

Both NATURALISM and REALISM are complex words with a history in the English language in which their senses have gradually developed to present usages.

In Keywords, Raymond Williams defines the modern usage of NATURALISM to be, "a style of accurate external representation."

He adds that in the nineteenth century REALISM was interchangeable with NATURALISM as "new doctrines of the physical world as independent of mind or spirit." However, he concludes that more recently REALISM has been taken to," include or emphasise hidden or underlying forces or movement, which simple ‘naturalistic’ observation could not pick up but which it is the whole purpose of REALISM to discover and express."

In "Art and Objective Truth," Lukacs says this "typicality" in societal forces is one of the fundamental aspects of REALIST art. Peter Berger goes further in "The Social Construction of Reality" to say that typicality is an instrumental force in the socialisation of the individual and his consequent understanding of the world:

"It begins with the individual "taking over" the world in which others live. To be sure, the "taking over" is in itself, in a sense, an original process for every human organism, and the world, once "taken over", may be creatively modified or (less likely) even recreated. In any case, in the complex form of internalisation, I not only ‘understand’ the other’s momentary subjective processes, I understand’ the world in which he lives, and that world becomes my own. . . . . Most importantly, there is now an ongoing mutual identification between us. We not only live in the same world, we participate in each other’s being."

(his italics.)

This world "exists independently of consciousness" insists Lukacs in "Art and Objective Truth." Not all philosophers have agreed.

Descartes (1596-1650) believed that one could never know whether the world exists, and the doubter too exists whilst doubting! According to Bishop Berkeley ((1685-1753), says John Hospers in "An introduction to Philosophical Analysis," Locke (1632-1704), "had no reason for holding to his view about the existence of a physical world: Locke, said Berkeley, is committed to scepticism regarding a physical world: he cannot know that it exists, even if it does; and he is inconsistent because he assumes that it exists and makes claims concerning it yet cuts himself off from the possibility of knowing it-which invalidates the arguments about physical objects and their qualities. Now Berkeley takes this positive step…. He says we have no good reason, and can have none, for saying that a physical world outside our minds exists. . . . no such world exists at all . . . . . He is not denying that there are trees and books and tables, but he is denying that there are any physical tings in the sense of objects that exist independently of minds."

However, nowadays, the ordinary person ascribes to a philosophy of "naïve realism" says Hospers. In this the world exists, our senses tell us that is true, objects exists independently of perception, our senses see the physical world much as it is, and finally, out sense-impressions of physical things are caused by those things themselves.

Essentially, all those who ascribe to both theories of NATURALISM AND REALISM agree on the above points – with the addition that there is a schism between the subjective world of consciousness, and the objective world of society and nature. The consciousness of the artist and its implementation in art (i.e. the external world) is a fundamentally important point in the difference between the two cinematic theories.

However REALIST critic Andre Bazin points out in "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" one essential feature of the camera on which both NATURALISM and REALISM depends:

"For the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man. The Personality of the photographer enters into the proceedings only in his selection of the object to be photographed and by way of the purpose he has in mind. Although the final result may reflect something of his personality, this does not play the same role as is played by that of the painter. All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthy origins are an inseparable part of their beauty."

NATURALISM

The "objectivity " of the medium is taken to extreme lengths in NATURALISM. This theory is nowadays mostly applied to documentaries, and the worship of "REALISM" is carried to an extreme from so that the artist of the work, as represented in the director, attempts to influence reality – especially social reality – as little as possible. The foremost exponent of NATURALISM in Britain, Roger Graef, whilst making a documentary, uses as few workers and equipment as possible in order not to intrude into the drama being reported. They try to capture another kind of "typicality" other than that which Lukacs alludes to- that is, authenticity.

As Richard Collins says in Media, Culture and Society,

Summer 1983:

"These technological and stylistic characteristics. . . . are symptoms of the passive project implicit in the word ‘documentary’ of ‘recording.’ These working practices, the trajectory of technological development and the vocabulary and ideas of information television are manifestations of the ideology of naturalism. The conception of a perfect mimesis, an unstructured recording of an immanent apprehensible reality that is to be achieved by minimising the intervention as and transformations specific to the recording process. This ideology that reality is passively reflective rather than actively constituted in the process of programme making is the ideology that legitimises the constituted reality that is transmitted in informational programmes and the chimera that solves the paradox experienced by Tv workers between their active crafts of programme making- their creation of a spectacle and their conception of their role as one of non-intervention."

This is analogous to the archaic North American Indian tribe the Hopis, and their view of the world and time such that everything is there already in "essence" but only waiting to "make itself apparent." A NATURALIST director like Graef hopes not to intervene in a situation, but wait until the drama is made manifest.

In her book "the Odyssey of Film-maker," Frances Flaherty, wife of the director Robert, says her husband’s art in his documentaries in the early part of this century, was "not to pre-conceive reality", but to "discover" it. He tries to "surrender to the material and surrender to the tool." She adds succinctly:

"Patient as a scientist, he let the camera see everything exhaustively, and then. . . .brought all this to the screen, and screened and screened it, and went out and shot again., for one reason only: to give the camera a chance to find that ‘moment of truth’ that flash of perception, that penetration into the heart of the matter, which he knew the camera left to itself, could find.

The point in this process was that it was purely visible. Words played no part in it; it went beyond words. It was simply a degree of seeing. As ice turns to water to stream, and a degree of temperature becomes a transformation, so a degree of seeing may become a transformation."

Lukacs says Lenin has observed: "Art does not demand recognition as reality". Though like Naturalism, with its acceptance of an objective reality, unlike it, REALISM allows the artist a more direct role in the process of the cinema It allows creation. John Berger says in "Art and Revolution:

"Naturalism is unselective: or rather, is selective only in order to present with maximum credibility the immediate scene. It has no basis for selection outside the present; its ideal aim would be to produce a replica, thus preserving the present. Such a replica is impossible because art can only exist within the limitations of a medium. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Realism is selective and strives towards the typical. Yet what is typical of a situation is only revealed by its development in relation to other developing situations . . . . . The medium becomes the palpable model of the artist’s ordering consciousness."

There-in lies one crux of the matter: where as NATURALISM must tend by its contradictions to recommend the status quo, REALISM can be used to be revolutionary art. In an unmeaning genuflect to Peter Bergers clues on socialisation, mentioned above, Georg Lukacs says of the values of REALISM in "Art and Objective Truth":

"The effect of art, the immersion of the repentant in the action of the work of art, his complete penetration into the special "world" of the work of art, results from the fact that the work by its very nature offers a truer, more complete, more vivid and more dynamic reflection of reality than the reactant otherwise possesses, that it conducts him on the basis of his own experiences and on the basis of the organisation and generalisations of his previous reproduction of reality beyond the bounds of his experiences toward a more concrete insight into reality"

REALISM AND NATURALISM have their literary counterparts in the nineteenth century works of French writers Balzac and Zola respectively. Lukzacs points out in "Narrate of Describe" that Realist writer Balzac used ideas such as representation of societal groups by individuals, narration and relationships in his writing where by content and form provided a dynamic dialectic that made his writing superior to NATURALIST writing of which Emile Role’s was an example.

Bazin, in "The Evolution of the Language of the Cinema", and Christopher Williams in "Realism and the Cinema", point out similar processes working in the films of Jean Renoir and William Wyler which made them superior in the history of the film.

Both Bazin and Williams point out that these films 1) Helped to further the representation of reality with the use of deep focus technique, 2) Allowed the spectator to "choose", firstly, what to look at, and secondly, what meaning to take. Bazin adds that it also allows an ambiguity of meaning that is more akin to real events.

IN NATURALISM the subjectivity of the artist, and the relationship of the artefact to reality has a close analogy to archaic, or pre-capitalist societies.

In these the work of art is directly linked to reality. In his book "The Gift", anthropologist Marcel Mauss looked at the relationship between property and owner in such archaic society, and says, "the bond created by things is in fact a bond between persons, since the thing itself is a person or pertains to a person."

Thus the link between the artefact and nature is the perfect on NATURALISM aspires to: it is non-existent, or existent in the magical/spiritual sphere. The primitive cave wall painter in Gaul believes there actually is a connection between the bison painted on the wall and the actual animals that the artist kills in the eventual hunt. The artist’s role is to reveal what is already there.

Frances Flaherty says just this in her book with the words: "In the Eskimo language there are no real equivalents of our words to create or make, which presupposes imposition of the self on matter".

She gives an example of the Eskimo artist at his art from Edmund Carpenter’s "Eskimo",

"As the carver holds the unworked ivory lightly in his hand, turning it this way and that, he whispers ‘Who are you? Who hides there? ‘And then: ‘Ah, seal!’ He rarely sets out, at least consciously, to carve, say, a seal, but picks up the ivory, examines it to find it hidden form and, if that is not immediately apparent, carve aimlessly until he sees it, humming or chanting as he works. Then he brings it out: S al, hidden emerges. It was always there: he didn’t create it; he released it; he helped it step forth."

IN REALISM the artist, artefact and reality is dependent on the structures of capitalism. Already the link between art and the real world is possible only through resemblance; the role of the artist, unlike NATURALISM, is to create/this resemblance through doing work. The artist is alienated from his art and his art from reality. In consideration of this note that any word that would describe an "artefact" always has connotations of work or creation at the very least involved in it – thus "work of art", "product". The use of the Marxist dialectic reveals a useful perspective to Realism. In this, the relationship between Reality, Art and Artist are apposite to Naturalism. Realism makes manifest the subjective content of the artist through the manipulation of reality. Thus art creates consciousness as against NATURLISM where Art is life,

In the history of the cinema, the two theories of NATURALISM and REALISM, reflect the history of certain relationships between human society, art and nature. What can we expect next?

John Berger points the way in "Art and Revolution". In considering the conservatism of Russian art he says of it: "The artistic process is taken for granted: it always remains exterior to the spectator’s experience."

But there is one dramatic theoretician whose insights may prove even more fruitful. Bertolt Brecht agrees with Dziga Vertov who said, in 1923, "From today we are liberating the camera, and making it work in the opposite direction (to Naturalism), furthest away from copying.

More illumination came from the author of "Brecht in the cinema":

"Lukacs thus tends to see the work of art as an entity, something complete in itself. Brecht, on the other hand, rejects this concept of ‘closure’, and with it the idea that the work of art should concern itself with ‘Wholeness’. Brecht’s thrust is towards an open-ended theatrical form, which makes contradiction and alienation explicit. He sees the ‘closure’ of the work of art as itself potentially alienating, in that it perpetuates the distinction between author and audience, producer and consumer. . . . . Brecht actively worked towards creative participation by the audience they ceased to be spectators; consuming ‘art (as they still are in Lukacs aesthetic), and become an integral and necessary part of the production of the work. Thus matters of ‘form’ and ‘technique’ assume much greater importance for Brecht than for Lukacs; implicit in Brecht’s theory and practice is the notion that a work of art could only be politically revolutionary if it was technically revolutionary also"

In the future the role of director/artist could be only as a guide to the finished product, where the product’s resemblance to reality is purely metaphoric, or allusive. Examples of these dramas occurred in several French Theatre of the Absurd productions where the audience interacted with the cast of the drama, and there is no real schism between the enactment of the drama and the spectator’s response.

It may be cynical to write this at this time, but in George Orwell’s novel 1984, there occurs what strikes me as the perfect example of a possible next phase of cinematic production.

In the morning keep-fit exercise late in the novel, and the two-way link between teacher and pupil, there is expressed the extreme example of the next extension of the role of the director. In this example, the teacher/director’s reaction to hero/audience’s reaction to her, in this we have possibly the most awful expression of future film. The computer only makes this easier.

Re-Construction is both Realist and Naturalist. It is a task to tell how doubles in time as that experienced by the hero of 1984, do exist and is a style in re-Construction… The audience need not be passive, too. And as anyone who has everyone who has ever lived through a "verging" will tell you, All things in Life beyond boundaries of Now, could be connected to One…..

Too, re-Construction is an artform that celebrates an occult, and a living, sleeping, and often wrong God that is All in One that could guide and befriend us in troubled times ahead….

Further this Living God has an Earthly Heaven and one beyond this Life: re-Construction is therefore a celebration of all this…..

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