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Solipsistic film criticism. Review of The Language and Style of Film Criticism

2012; Routledge; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17400309.2012.672128

1740-7923

Warren Buckland,

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Abstract This review of The Language and Style of Film Criticism (Klevan and Clayton) considers the presuppositions of romantic film-philosophy, its influence on film criticism, and its tendency towards solipsism. This review also presents a theoretical framework for analysing descriptive passages in film criticism. Keywords: film criticismtextual analysisfilm-philosophyStanley Cavelldescription Acknowledgement I wish to thank several editorial board members (Richard Allen, Brian Bergen-Aurand, Edward Branigan, Sean Cubitt, Thomas Elsaesser, Paolo Russo) and William Brown for their comments and advice on an earlier draft of this review essay. Notes 1. Carroll also finds a problem with Cavell's strategy to regard 'a relationship between characters in the film as a metaphor of the director's relationship to the audience' (1982, 106). Carroll focuses on Cavell's analysis of Bringing Up Baby, and questions whether the Grant/Hepburn relation can characterise the relation between Hawks and the film's audience. 'Grant stands to Hepburn as an obsessive compulsive does to an hysteric. Yet Hawks as a director is anything but an hysteric; he is a coolly calculating manipulator. As well, this form of interpretation cannot be an acceptable one for film criticism. The results would be disastrous' (1982, 106). 2. If a critic describes an action, one would expect there to be some correspondence between the action and words (without, of course, expecting there to be a complete correspondence). 3. Klevan continues to discuss Affron in the following paragraphs, but he uses the same strategies – primarily paraphrase and quotation, with an occasional comment (78–80). 4. Monroe Beardsley provides a series of criteria for developing a method. 'An action can be methodized only if (a) there are alternative ways of performing the action, (b) it is possible to keep in mind general principles, or rules, while performing the action, and (c) a good reason can be given for following those rules rather than others' (1981, 130). If Klevan believes a method is unnecessary, he needs to indicate whether he thinks his way of carrying out metacriticism is the only way to carry it out, what general principles he is following and why he follows those principles rather than others. If he thinks he is not following any principles, but is working entirely spontaneously, then he is open to the charge of solipsism, which is not a firm basis on which to make this type of film criticism (and metacriticism) teachable. The need for methods has been recognised since Ancient times. Topoi, for example, are methods for argumentation: 'Aristotle's book Topics lists some hundred topoi for the construction of dialectical arguments. These lists of topoi form the core of the method by which the dialectician should be able to formulate deductions on any problem that could be proposed' (Rapp 2010 Rapp, Christof. 2010. "Aristotle's Rhetoric". In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Edited by: Zalta, Edward N. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/ (accessed February 29, 2012) [Google Scholar]). Rapp defines a topos as 'a general argumentative form or pattern', and goes on to point out that 'the topos … is crucial for Aristotle's understanding of an artful method of argumentation; for a teacher of rhetoric who makes his pupils learn ready samples of arguments would not impart the art itself to them, but only the products of this art, just as if someone pretending to teach the art of shoe-making only gave samples of already made shoes to his pupils'. Klevan only presents ready-made shoes to his readers. (In my own work, I spell out methods in detail. See, for example, Buckland 2006 Buckland, Warren. 2006. Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster, New York: Continuum. [Google Scholar], chap. 2; 2012 Buckland, Warren. 2012. Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, Abingdon: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], chap. 1; Elsaesser and Buckland 2002 Elsaesser, Thomas and Buckland, Warren. 2002. Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis, London: Arnold. [Google Scholar], chap. 1.) 5. It would take a whole essay to spell out how these concepts aid textual analysis. Elsaesser's book chapter, from which the quotations derive, is a good starting point (2012, chap. 9), followed by Raymond Bellour's exemplary textual analyses, represented in his book The Analysis of Film (2000 Bellour, Raymond. 2000. The Analysis of Film, Edited by: Penley, Constance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar]). Clayton and Klevan give a one-dimensional account of Bellour's work in their introduction (14–16; see also Klevan 82). Just reading Bellour's one-page summary of his six main textual analyses (2000, 13–14) exposes the superficiality of Clayton and Klevan's account of his work. 6. Although Klevan focuses on critics who discuss the movement-image of classical Hollywood, rather than the time-image of modern cinema, these critics discuss the films on the small scale, molecular level of the 'event' (characteristic of modern cinema's time-image, a cinema of the body) rather than the large scale, molar level of narrative (of classical Hollywood's movement-image, a cinema of action).