Unambiguous Contradictions: The "Love" Of European Cinema

Sometimes a discovery hits one on the head, like Newton's proverbial apple. What follows is not that sort of discovery. It would be nice to report, even to boast, that I've seen the heretofore unseeable, but no such report shall come. My discovery is more curio than creed, more reverie than revolution. No paradigm shift will follow this discovery's simple wake. Nonetheless, I hope you will join me on my brief jaunt through the philosophy of filmmaking, or cinematic storytelling, and the current condition of the liberal mind in America (I use the word "liberal" to indicate those who might describe themselves as secular progressives with socialist tendencies, and anyone to the left of that).

I am sure you've heard some version of the following in your lifetime: American films are vastly different from European films. No doubt you're nodding your head right now: Not only have you heard this before, you know it, from experience, to be true. And it is arguably true much of the time. In fact, let us without hesitation state the differences:

• American films are often overtold, without subtlety or nuance, in contrast to European films.
• American films present plot lines that are largely predictable, slaking Americans' thirst for resolution, for clear portrayals of the good and the bad; of the guy always getting the girl or the bad guy getting his comeuppance before the last credits. European films are freer from these constraining expectations; and European filmmakers are content with ambiguity and ambivalence, almost flaunting that contentment.
  
• American films speak not only to Americans' alleged need for clear and defined solutions and resolutions, but such films also speak to their alleged need for endings that are not abrupt, thus never leaving viewers hanging. Americans demand a denouement, a tidy wrap up. In contrast, European filmmakers, aware of the complexities of life and death, recognize that life itself often ends abruptly, without resolution, without clarity; their films mirror that reality.
  
• American films are produced for maximum economic impact, for making a big profit splash, while European films are produced for their own sake as works of art (or so it goes).
• American films are largely produced for entertainment purposes, for titillation or distraction, while European films are produced to elevate the soul, to engage the intellect and the heart; or to shock the viewer into existential honesty about the intrinsic meaninglessness (or purposelessness) of life and the shallowness and relativism of social mores.
  

I am not here going to discuss the veracity of these claims. I am interested in something more sociological than cinematic; I want to discuss politics and not the philosophy of art. In fact, what I am interested in is how the differences between American and European film have shaped personal identities in America. What do I mean? I mean that in America, those people who consider themselves "liberal" are nearly always the ones flocking to art theaters to see the latest European import, or the latest edgy independent film. Art films are not usually seen by mobs of conservative, flag-waving Republicans (forgive the overwrought stereotype). Art films, indie shorts, European cult films -- these and nearly anything else European or Euro-inspired are the sorts of things that help define "artsy-fartsy," left-leaning Americans. No self-respecting liberal filmgoer will ever pronounce that "Point of No Return" is better than its inspiration, "Le Femme Nikita," (to pick one populist, albeit violent, example). No genuine artsy-type would ever prefer the Academy Award-winning "Chariots of Fire" to the equally lauded and more continental "American Beauty" (assuming, of course, that type of person would even countenance such "mainstream" films). The European film is a mark of identification for liberals, who are just so comfortable with ambiguity, with abrupt endings, with being left on the edge of the seat, denying themselves the plebeian pleasure of a denouement. Having everything neatly packaged, or fully explained in the gross simplicities of black-and-white moralism, are all anathema to the liberal, sophisticated filmgoer. Tension, irresolution, angst, ennui, despair, futility (and laughter in the face of all of it): these are the mainstays of solid liberal film-loving. Give the liberal a Peter Greenaway film, and give the conservative the utterly predictable "Passion of the Christ" or "March of the Penguins" (both big among evangelicals, by the way); both will be happy.

At least this is true in my experience. When I visit the art house, or when I trek to Harvard Square for a progressive film, I am never surrounded by a bunch of John Birch-types, or even Reagan types. McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Clinton: these suit my fellow theater-goers. No, I'm surrounded by the urbane liberals whose sophistication comes trippingly off their tongues.

Oddly, this is only the case, apparently, when discussing film (or literature). For the liberal suddenly becomes an anxious dolt when it comes to politics. Just take a look at liberal responses to the Alito hearings, for example. Chuck Schumer, a liberal New York Democrat, was shocked and dismayed that Judge Alito would not define with absolute clarity his position on Roe v. Wade. Alito in fact incensed all the most liberal members of the US Senate, House, and press corps, hiding (or so he was accused) in ambiguity and dancing around nuance. Unsure of how a Justice Alito might adjudicate, liberals suddenly demanded certainty of their future, demanding guarantees to prop up what has given their lives meaning and purpose for so long. Liberals expect the courts and governments to give their lives stability, in contradiction of the existentialism of the art house, which says that meaning and stability can only come from the self (good old conservative self-reliance?).

One look at the Iraq War will also speak to my point. Liberals scream for an exit strategy, for a "plan" and "purpose," for something unambiguously immediate; for a redeployment that brings swift and immediate resolution. Liberals plead for a denouement; for a tidy ending. Liberals demand a purpose for war and every action related thereto; or they plead for a war-less world, one bereft of cinematic drama and reality's unblinking hardness. Liberals even pronounce a black-and-white sense of justice, with President Bush (and America) as evil and anyone else morally superior ("Anyone but Bush!"). Liberals aver that the war is "all about oil" or "all about imperialism," claims which are patently unambiguous and without nuance.

Liberals want government guarantees to care for the poor; or to save the environment; or to ensure that no child is either left behind or without medical coverage. That these are all fears voiced with a Hosanna! Hosanna! (Save us!) to the great State somehow go unnoticed. But what will not go unnoticed is how these anxious pleas stand in contrast to the love of art's alleged ambiguity and purposelessness.

Ironically, it appears that it is the conservatives who are comfortable with political ambiguity, of not knowing how everything will and must end. It is the liberals who want to take not only the suffering but even the anxiety out of life; while the conservatives, who abhor suffering and anxiety, recognize that neither can be expunged solely by the salvific state. Conservatives appear to be fine with free markets -- instead of laws -- shaping economies. Conservatives appear at ease with a war without a defined (and limiting) exit-strategy. Conservatives appear comfortable with a Supreme Court nominee who may or may not overturn Roe v. Wade (and there are many conservatives who support Roe v. Wade, whereas there is nary a liberal who opposes it, which suggests much about which side is more free-thinking). In short, it is the conservatives who are comfortable in practice with life's raw difficulties, whereas liberals only speak of such in theory from the safety of a Greenwich café.

So, there's my foray into film and identity politics. I have only opined about it here, having thought of my thesis last night while listening to the radio. Take it as you will. I am sure it falls short, but astute thinkers will see irony, hypocrisy and hubris, I believe, in those who claim to be "real" patrons of both progressive film and liberal philosophy.

Now, please excuse me while I go and watch "Memento" – in reverse.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

[Photo: Something ambiguous, I hope. Some of you won't see what it is until you "free your mind."]

Taking Flights Of Logical Fancy

Sometimes I feel like lifting off, taking flight, beating weary wings toward some distant, anonymous, perhaps even forsaken place. Recently I felt this acute rush of longing while standing before several pieces of art displayed at a New Hampshire gallery. I felt like fleeing not because of the art per se, which was patently awful. I felt like fleeing because of pretensions at intellectual grandeur, particularly the pretensions of philosophical grandeur printed in one featured artist's statement elegantly displayed near his work (which was also dreadful).

I have long speculated on why it is that the art world tends to be filled with liberals, Democrats, socialists, even progressive nihilists. Is it because art is all about "pushing the envelope" and "breaking with convention" and "inventing new rules that are also made to be broken"? Is it about "shattering presuppositions" in search of the "numinous" or the "meaningful"? Or is it that artists as a class need government subsidies, are even dependent on them; and not mere handouts of cash, but subsidies of equality, where grants and honors and exhibitions are awarded solely to acknowledge the equal effort inherent in every artist's work? You know, in an "all-artists-are-trying" sort of way? After all, was this not the very point behind another recent exhibit I attended, "Art as Process", wherein was displayed the "rough drafts" of several artists' work? Surely the subtitle to that exhibit could have easily been, "Artists: Look How They Try."

But perhaps the reason art and liberalism go hand and hand is about philosophy. I've often thought that conservative thinkers were often chided or disregarded because of their dependence on logic, evidence, you know, the components of reason. Conservatives are often berated for lacking compassion, and I believe they are berated thus solely because reason seems so absolute and confining, so limiting in its expectations and demands. Liberals, on the other hand, have always struck me as being more about passion than cogitation; more affective or emotional than hard-headed logicians. Of course, there are exceptions, but by-and-large I believe this to be so. How else to explain a revolutionary's zeal than to appeal to Jean Jacques Rousseau's "passion trumps reason" (what is felt is more important than what is known or thought); or to understand why George W. Bush campaigned as a "compassionate conservative"? Conservatives tend to think toward an answer to a problem, and this, at times, looks like an uncaring luxury in the slow, calculated manner problem-solving demands. In contrast, liberals tend to feel through a problem; they are compelled to act immediately to solve an alleged injustice: Feeling, fervor, motive, intent – these are the benchmarks of liberal activism. These are the signs over their exhibit: We Are Trying. We Mean Well. We Get Things Done. We Are Urgent.

AN ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I stood in silent disbelief as I read the young artist's statement describing his vision and his muse. It did me no good that I was standing, a glass of cabernet sauvignon in hand, in the midst of a whirling, blustering audience so enamored of the whole, well, "process." And it did me no good to see that several pieces, some fetching fairly good sums for a first showing, had already been purchased, red stickers indicating that pieces had quickly found a home.

Here's what the statement said, which began with a quote by "process theologian" Alfred North Whitehead culled from Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Massage."[sic] The quote first:

"In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions."

I beg your pardon for being so academic here. But this is not about being didactic. It is about laughing one's head off, right off one's shoulders. For the quote above is a genuine howler. Don't you see why? It's simple, really. Mr. Whitehead has insisted on using "hard-headed clarity" to show the futility of "hard-headed clarity." Thus, by his own clear argument against clarity, it must be concluded that his observation "issues from sentimental feeling." He himself must be superstitious. And thus, he wallows in a contradiction.

But Whitehead's argument couches something more important, and it is subtle. What Whitehead has done is to give permission to thinkers everywhere to embrace a sort of anti-rationalism, a sort of "reading between the lines" of logic, reason, and argument. In short, he's given them permission to blow off the hard work which the pursuit of logically viable truth and clarity demands.

Now, I know that Whitehead is in part responding to the logical positivists in his milieu, but most readers do not know that, nor is it relevant here. What is relevant is how our young artist understood Whitehead. See if you can make sense of it all:

"I use unrefined materials in imagemaking to depict images and themes in life that range from the common and local to complicated and global. In this manner, I am attempting to metaphorically bridge an unspannable gap between what exists on human scale and that which is distinctly not human, i.e. things which necessarily exist within a global context. A gap in which, as suggested by the quote above from A.N. Whitehead, chance, instinct, intuition and creativity are far more responsive than 'hard-headed clarity' to the 'perplexities of fact' – a commodity too often misinterpreted, misused and corrupted. The interest here is to open up and complicate meaning in a way that does not compromise integrity and does not shy away from presumptions of authority."

Besides it being hard to understand how there is a bridge over an "unspannable gap" between humanity and that which is not humanity, "i.e. things which necessarily exist within a global context" (Lord knows humans don't exist within a global context – Yikes!); one wonders how this statement helps us understand anything other than the artist's flight from reason. To this artist, intuition and feeling and chance are the real forces of creativity. Reason constrains, limits; it is for the hardheaded, and not the softhearted.

This, to me, is a perfect example of the difference between myself, a conservative, and my liberal peers. No doubt my liberal chums would press me to be less intensely logical in reading the artist's statement; that I should see that he is "trying", that his "heart is in the right place", and that he "means well." No doubt they'd also tell me that what was important was not what he wrote, but what he meant, what he intended between the lines.

But there is also this statement by the artist adjacent to the one quoted above:

"My art is a venue [Yikes! again] for a realm of discussion that does not easily find a place in our everyday lives. As people, I think that we need a certain amount of..."

I am sorry, did you say, "As people"? Could we be anything else? Oh, yes, of course. We are that indefinable other thing that lives outside "a global context". Oiks! Help! (This latter artist's piece entitled "Two Birds Talking" sold for $700. It was a pen and ink cartoonish piece, wherein a bird, gripping a branch, speaks to a juvenile bird [apparently]. There are dialogue bubbles. In the final bubble, the senior bird says, and I quote: "You might think we are lying and we may not wholy believe that we are not." Now, for $700, don't you think you might want to have "wholly" spelled correctly? Talk about a venue for discussions! Who needs clarity anyway?!)

WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?

This whole exercise for me is about the difference between philosophies of feeling and those of thinking. For me, the quotes above, and the work associated with them, smack not of creativity, but of laziness and even self-centeredness. The laziness part is revealed in the flight from reason, for reason is hard to master. To the lazy philosopher/artist, impulse, intuition, chance, randomness–these are what constitute creativity. Not planning, not practicing certain skills repeatedly. No, just the easy, hasty and quick burst of creative passion: This is art! This merits appraisal and approval! This trumps using one's head: The use of the Heart!

And it is self-centeredness because it seeks approval for being outside, unique, even insouciant. Instead of the tedium of logical constructions, which are all rules and traditions and practices, artists too often flaunt their improvisational skills without once proving they can do the rather rote skills possessed by the masters. Imagine if Michelangelo's David or the Sistine Chapel were mere whims of intuition! mere impulse! mere improv!

How, then does all this play out politically? Perhaps a quote from Socrates as found in Plato's Apology will suffice. Socrates, you might recall, was on trial for corrupting Athenian youth and allegedly denouncing the gods of the state. In his defense, or apology, Socrates described how he had begun his pursuit of wisdom as a result of divine inspiration: an oracle had spoken to him. And in his pursuit of wisdom, he inquired of wise men – politicians and poets and artisans – in an effort to discern what is real wisdom:

"I went to the poets ... I am ashamed to confess that there is not a person ... who would not have talked better about their poetry than the poets did themselves. So I learnt that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of ... inspiration. ... At last I went to the artisans ... I was sure that they knew many fine things; and I was not mistaken, ... But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; – because they were good workmen, they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom." [emphasis added]

The political implications of Socrates' statements are important.

No wonder he was executed.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes

PS. For you photo enthusiasts out there: the picture of the Blue Heron (above) was taken with a Canon F1, 80-200/2.8 lens (focal length 200mm). Settings were 1/1000th at f8 on Ilford HP5 Plus film. Click on it for a larger view.