Eric Brooks - Midterm

Eric Brooks

2/15/2010

Film Theory – Midterm

Art and Nihilism¹

[F]or there is nothing either good or
bad, but thinking makes it so. (Hamlet, 2.2.50-51)

The cultural conception of art stands as further evidence towards humanity’s insatiable need for transcendence. In face of the disturbing possibility that life’s only purpose is duration, finding meaning beyond that of the human and empirical has become paramount. In this veim, great thinkers have assigned art such profundities as to make it “more than” human. I would argue such reveries have been mis-assigned. With no known exceptions, all of these supposedly transcendent art objects came into being by human hands. How can a thing be defined as beyond human if within the spectrum of human ingenuity and thought? Failure to describe an emotion does not mean that it is beyond description, but rather cites a failure in language and communication.

Language exists as an arbitrary, though certainly not useless, construct. Phonetic combinations hold no inherent, preordained meaning. These meanings only arise from application and reinforcement. In this essay, I hope to isolate, communicate, and justify the arbitrations which I have personally applied to the term “art,” and to one of its media; cinema. The purpose of this discourse is to make explicit the qualities which I have applied to art, and to provide the standards by which I disqualify others. From this I hope an expediency of communication, the most beneficial consequence of language, will follow.

An applied definition can only be incorrect if internally contradictory. This arises from the realm of mathematics. Even before humans ever contemplated shaping our mouths and vibrating our vocal chords to produce the word “square,”² that shape had four sides. This held true long before any one bothered to count. Numerical concepts are not human creations. Like fire or lightning, they are something to be discovered rather than invented. One plus one, regardless of what we call it, has forever and will forever be “two.” If mathematics is a realm which can be thought inherently logical, we can apply its rules uniformly to language. One rule of mathematics is that both sides of an equation must be equivalent. One plus one can never equal three. This inequality transposed to language would be a definition which does not remain consistent in all cases. If we call a “car” anything with four wheels, yet we also call a bicycle a “car,” there is an inconsistency within the definition that must be addressed. Keeping this rule of logic in mind, I aim to create a definition of art in which the criteria apply equally in all cases.

Defining actions by their consequences yields confusion rather than expediency of communication. Take for instance the action “to murder.” This verb has come to mean loosely “the actions of one directly leading to the death of another.” The verb retroactively defines the initial action, and thus muddles the identity of that initial action. “Stabbing” in some cases leads to murder, but in others does not. The verb “murder” can only be applied once the victim has deceased, and not before. Similar confusion arises if one hope to communicate “to shoot” by using the verb “to injure.” The consequences of actions cannot be known until performed, thus defining an action by its consequence leads to disorganized results. I don’t want to define the creation of art by its consequence, the created material. I want a definition of art which is not retroactively defined, but proactively defined. I see it as a failure of communication if we assign an identity to that which we call “art,” and then define the action “to create art” as the process which yields our pre-assigned result. The inconsistency of consequence, even in the face of otherwise identical actions, calls for a definition built on intent rather than effect.

Keeping in mind both an effort to eradicate inconsistencies and to build my definition upon purpose rather than consequence, I define art as follows: the external expression of internal ideas and emotions, the sole purpose of which being expression. I choose this definition because of its utility in distinguishing between different modes of expression. For example, human’s use of speech can have any number of purposes. It can be used to manipulate, to beg, to educate, to entertain, to warn, etc. By my definition, speech only becomes artistic if the speaker uses speech for the sole purpose of externalization. I do not mean to assign value to these different purposes of expression, for any such value would be based on arbitrarily created criteria, but merely to acknowledge their differences. There has been the tendency to rarify art, but that is not my intent. In absence of a transcendent force which would assign inherent value, all things are inherently equivalent.

Thus far, I have defined art by its relationship to the creator.³ New thought must be used when considering how the consumer⁴ relates to art, just as the cook and restaurant patron share little in their experience of food. Assumedly, no consumers of art experience the world from identical perspectives, thus it would be prudent to create a definition of art that does not require a strict definition of the “art object.” Thus I consider art, when taken from the perspective of the consumer, as the recognition of one’s own internal ideas and emotions expressed externally, seeking no value in this recognition other than awareness. While assumedly no two people share identical thoughts, albeit theoretically possible, a consumer might still recognize outside himself an articulation of his own ideas and emotions. One may have read and been entertained by the tragedy Hamlet, but only had an artistic experience when exposed to Hamlet’s sentiments of meaninglessness. The other structural features of Hamlet, cause-effect narrative, poetic language etc., if not shared ideas of the consumer are only entertaining, educating, or stimulating the reader.

The consumer’s recognition may come despite not even being fully conscious of their own emotions. The first exposure then becomes like a recalled memory or an echo. This is why the “artistic experience” is so often associated with the transcendent. When one witnesses their own emotions recreated corporeally, the experience can be quite profound. The realization of shared sentiment hints at a meaning beyond the individual. The consumer’s experience occurs independently from the process which went into the expression’s creation. The means by which an object came into being, even if the expresser had an alternate purpose to mere expression, in no way prevents any form of experience for the consumer. The relationship between the creator and the art object has no bearing on the consumer’s relationship to the art object. This definition of art assumes, and necessitates an impossibility of knowing the expresser’s intent.

In order for a definition to have no internal contradictions, it must apply in all cases. To create a definition which features subjectivity, that subjectivity must be universally applied. Thus each construction of art in my definition takes place within the mind of each individual. Within each individual, the artistic realm exists, the objects and expressions which provide this experience being altogether different from the next individual. Art does not exist by strict criteria. No object may be universally declared as “art” or “not art.” By my definition, that disqualifying/qualifying process occurs at the level of the individual.

I define a medium as the means by which one expresses. We can define a medium because it is not a consequence but rather an adverbial concept, a “means by which.” Any medium can fulfill any of the multitudinous purposes for expression, including art. Cinema is one of these mediums of expression. I define cinema as the sequencing of images, each image visible for a duration of time preordained by the film’s creator. Notice that this definition would exclude a collection of paintings organized in sequence and hung on a wall, because the amount of time each image is viewed is at the mercy of the viewer rather than the painter. Cinema, like all media, has no inherent purpose. Any “ultimate” purpose a media has acquired has been arbitrarily assigned. One can, however, acknowledge those features of film which empirically have most assisted in the creator’s purpose. In other words, in order to describe how a film must be to best perform its purpose, that purpose must be defined. The value system must be created, as no system of values exists inherently.

If the creator’s purpose for film be economic, i.e. to maximize financial profit, he would want to create a film which features a cause-effect narrative centered around a primary “hero” character whom tries to overcome an obstacle to achieve a desire, ultimately triumphing. The editing must also trend toward invisibility. He must edit his images in accordance with the will of the audience. The cuts must feel reflexive, just as an audience member would turn his head automatically to see the source of a sudden crash. Not every financially viable film has been fashioned in this manner, though almost all have, but since we cannot know with full certainty the consequence of our actions, we must choose those courses of action with proven empirical success.

Cinema has difficulty creating art by my definition, because it is still largely at mercy to reality. More so than any “artist,” the artistic film maker must be a great consumer of art, because in order to express one’s internal images externally through images, the creator must be able to recognize his own thoughts when they naturally occur. The film maker cannot lose himself in his own thoughts, but must always exist as a conduit between his mind and matter. As the filmic image breaks from reality, the more that what fills the frame becomes the creation of human intent rather than natural accident, the easier it will be to express oneself through film identically to one’s imagination. In many ways the same reasons that make cinema such a daunting task for the creator make it a comfortable task for the consumer. As our thoughts are often contextualized within images of our world, it might become easier for us to recognize our own emotions within a imagistic context. Film continues to become closer and closer to replicating human experience, and thus might be more conducive to the recreation of human emotion, assuming of course that one draws from the other.

Textual Notes

1. By using the word “nihilism” I don’t intend to attach myself to preexisting schools of thought. I have read no “nihilistic” philosophy and know vaguely what it constitutes. My beliefs may or may not be in accordance with these philosophies, but I felt my views are similar enough that it would put the reader in an accurate process of thought before reading my essay.

2. For the sake of this essay, I will ignore the Descartian possibility that a mischevious devil might be tricking us every time we try to count the sides of a square. I will concede that absolutely nothing can be known for certain, but must press forward based on the assumptions of verisimilitude by which we live.

3. I define “creation” as the bringing about of phenomena which would not have identically existed in that space and time otherwise.

4. I define consumer as any one capable of being stimulated.