Cinema: The Seventh Art?

Let me preface my post with a little… nevermind, new direction:

Life advice from the Guy Next Door: Be a solid generalist, a renaissance man; in the next several years, beware of well-packaged campaigns (advertising, politics, etc) without any substance because a lot of people are still sheep;  surround yourself with smart people because they will make things happen;  as an exercise, think of three places you haven’t been and would like to go, and three things you would like to be good at: you will learn things about yourself; and finally, body-surfing in the Pacific– connecting with nature– is Nectar.  That’s what he said.  Nectar.

OK, moment over, but I couldn’t pass that up.  And John, you win again: most thorough and well-articulated post of the day (week) for “…The Seventh Art.”

Is cinema the Seventh Art?  Yes, I think so.  It is not just a combination of the others.

• Cinema has an almost unlimited ability to exploit its unique technical aspects (foreign to theater)– multiple and simultaneous story-lines, split-screen, reverse-speed motion, one actor can play more than one character in the same scenes, short cutaways to expose or develop plot;
• It constantly envelops new art forms (computer graphic manipulation, 3-D, who knows what tomorrow);
• It commands the audience’s sensory perspective completely in a way not shared by theater.  For example, which way do you see this dancer spinning?  Supposedly right-brained people see her spinning clockwise, while left-brained people see the opposite.  But it is an example of perfect visual ambiguity.

These abilities of cinema are wholly  unique, and while the other arts have certain elements foreign to cinema (the written word, sculpture, etc), none of them has its breadth of potential.

Those of us in or entering the world of cinema should remember that “with great power comes great responsibility” (to quote Spider-Man’s grandma).  Our medium has the ability to evoke emotions very easily, and is therefore dangerous.  A certain Prussian dictator, for instance, commissioned the famous commercials that advanced the Hitler Youth.  Beware the well-packaged issues without substance.  Schrader would agree, Tarantino wouldn’t.  Did I just link Tarantino to Hitler?  Whoops.

Paul Schrader, Hegel and Cinema, The Seventh Art

Cinema is often called the 7th art.  So what are the other six fine arts?  These classifications come from the German philosopher Hegel’s aesthetics, in which he roughly categorizes the main fine arts as:

1. Architecture
2. Sculpture
3. Painting
4. Dance
5. Music
6. Poetry

And cinema has been called the 7th, though really it’s like a synthesis of many of them.  But what interested me as I dove into a little Hegel, was his placement of art’s highest end as serving religion.  For Hegel, humanity cannot live by philosophical concepts alone, but also needs religion which allows the imagination to grasp faith in truth.  Hegel even goes so far as to claim that through religion “a nation defines what it considers to be true” (Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 105, from plato.stanford.edu).  Thus, Hegel seems to suggest that art’s true end is to present to a nation the truths of its religion.

Well, this is all pretty abstract.  But it reminds me of Paul Schrader‘s excellent article “Cannon Fodder” (PDF here) from 2006 in Film Comment magazine.  My brother, Jacob, sent me this article months ago, and I jotted down some notes but never fully formulated my response.  In this essay, Schrader tries to define an elitist canon of the top, most influential films.  He sees the demise of the idea of a canon as tied to the demise of high culture, which has disappeared with commonly accepted moral standards, which passed away with a culture that used to be unified by religion.

While I don’t think Schrader is mourning the fact that we don’t all share the same religious values, he is definitely mourning the separation of art from its highest calling, namely, to help us understand objective truths about the nature of reality and how life ought to be lived.  It is certainly interesting that “canon” is originally a religious term, particularly, a Catholic term.  The hierarchy of Aquinas’ Great Chain of Being… the ordering of goods in ascending levels of importance, with God at the top, is very Catholic and very Western.  Schrader points out that we have to evaluate art by standards of better and worse.  If art can be objectively better or worse, or if it can convey truth with greater or lesser effectiveness, then that means there are objective standards of good and bad.  And that scares some people a lot.

Yeah, dude, it’s all the same argument between absolute values and relative values.  And if absolute values of good and bad exist, is it the purpose of art to reveal those values?  And if so, what is the best way?  Long live the debate.  I’m of the opinion that yes, this is art’s role, but that the areas of gray exist, and indeed, are most interesting, because our deepest intentions, desires and needs are often hidden and the most difficult to understand.

Schrader pointedly criticizes the direction Hollywood has taken.

“The only criterion is “fun.” Is it fun? Is it cool? Is it hip?… assemblage is the art form of the 20th century.”

“Sensation replaces sentiment. “

I think Schrader and McKee are in accord here.

So, question: Is cinema really a completely new art form from Drama (which Hegel groups with Poetry)?  Or just a sort of “multimedia” mixture of the fine arts: dance, music, poetry, painting?   A penny for your thoughts.

I hope I can find time to do my next post on the Hindu aesthetics of rasa regarding drama and film.

Nabakov and Shakespeare and Cervantes

Today is April 23rd, 2009, and it is the birdthday of Vladamir Nabakov and William Shakespeare.  The one born in Saint Petersburg in 1899.  The other, in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564.  Shakespeare also died on his birthday.  So today is also the death day of Shakespeare and Miguel Cervantes, who both died this same day in 1616.

Cervantes is credited with the first modern novel, Don Quixote, which was so self-conscious and complexly embedded within framed narratives that it is impossible to understand the author’s own thought.  For this reason it is a goldmine for professors and grad students who spend their days immersed in dissecting the layers of story and constructing the author’s intent.

Shakespeare is badass because he entertains on so many levels at the same time.  He invented so many words and phrases we would still be hacking poor peasants with spiked maces if it hadn’t been for his elegant word-craft.

Nabakov has inspired many modern masters, including Salman Rushdie, Edmund White and Jhumpa Lahiri.  In contrast to the lives of his tortured protagonists in Lolita and Pale Fire, Nabakov lived the last 20 peaceful years of his life retired with his wife in a hotel in Switzerland, writing books, creating chess problems, and chasing butterflies all over Europe.

Today, it would seem, is an excellent day to start an award-winning script.  Are you up for writing a Shakespearen-Cervantine-Nabakovian masterpiece?

RIP Shakespeare and Cervantes, masters of the English and Spanish language respectively, who have given us so much beauty.  Even though I can’t draw upon quotes from all of them, I know that their literary worlds exist, and they exist despite the fact that I can’t quote more than a handful of lines from each.   All our experience becomes a part of how we go on to experience the world.   And so much of our experience is consciously with us too, though unsaid.  As The Writer’s Almanac brought to my attention yesterday, the poet Louise Glück said, “I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence. … Often I wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary.”  What does McKee say about the gap… something about the space between what we expect and what happens, between what we want and what we need.  I’m sorry to say I lost my copy of McKee’s “Story” in the Madrid bus station.  What is it about Madrid and stuff disappearing?

What does Keats famously say about beauty and truth?  If beauty lies in the gap, in the unsaid, in the eloquent silence, then there could be truth there as well.  So, in thinking about how to make a short film… let’s think less about how to make it innovative (see previous post on Eva Zeisel) and more about how to hit at the gap.