Aesthetics and the Cinematic Narrative: An Introduction

By Michael Peter Bolus

Since the inception of cinema in the late nineteenth century, filmmakers have employed a wide array of precursory aesthetic strategies in the conception and creation of their disparate works. The existence of these traditional antecedents have afforded filmmakers a diverse range of technical and artistic applications towards the construction of their cinematic narratives. Furthermore, the socio-political and cultural contexts in which films are conceived often inform the manner in which particular aesthetic sensibilities are selected and deployed. Unfortunately, many creative artists – and audiences – remain unfamiliar with Aesthetics as a practical discipline and how it might apply to their own creative and/or interpretive pursuits.

‘Aesthetics and the Cinematic Narrative’ provides a concise historical survey of Aesthetics as a philosophical discipline and applies several of its underlying principles to the examination of filmic storytelling. The book’s four chapters codify working definitions of the relevant terms and concepts, employing specific case studies to illustrate how certain aesthetic stratagems govern a film’s structural design and execution. By drawing connections between the technical/creative decisions filmmakers must make and more time-honoured traditions regarding the nature of art, the structures of storytelling and the import of visual imagery, ‘Aesthetics and the Cinematic Narrative’ helps recontextualize film within a wider sphere of artistic/intellectual endeavour. The book is a useful and much-needed addition to the pre-existing canon for students of visual storytelling and for general readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Aug 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781783089833

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Aesthetics and the Cinematic Narrative

Aesthetics and the Cinematic Narrative

An Introduction

Michael Peter Bolus

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2019

by ANTHEM PRESS

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Copyright © Michael Peter Bolus 2019

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bolus, Michael Peter, author.

Title: Aesthetics and the cinematic narrative : an introduction / by Michael Peter Bolus.

Description: London, UK; New York: Anthem Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019021036 | ISBN 9781783089819 (hardback) | ISBN 9781783089840 (pbk.) | ISBN 1783089814 (hardback) | ISBN 1783089849 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures – Aesthetics.

Classification: LCC PN1995.B5155 2019 | DDC 791.4301–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021036

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-981-9 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78308-981-4 (Hbk)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-984-0 (Pbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78308-984-9 (Pbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

To Kristin

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Art and Aesthetics

1Myth and Parable

2Realism and Abstraction

3Classicism and Romanticism

4Escapism and Formalism

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The main ideas presented in this book were cultivated over many years in a wide variety of courses and seminars in which I participated, both as a student and a teacher.

I owe a profound debt of gratitude to my professors, namely, Marvin Carlson, Daniel Gerould, Jane Bowers, Jonathan Kalb, James Saslow, Rosanna Warren, Robert Phillip Kolker, William Flesch, Sarolta Takacs, and Derek Walcott, as well as a diverse array of critics, educators, and artists whom I was fortunate enough to encounter—central among them Christopher Ricks, Roger Shattuck, and Robert Pinsky.

There are, of course, the innumerable scholars and thinkers whose varied insights I’ve digested and assimilated indirectly over the years, which, sadly, prevents me from citing by name.

I must also acknowledge the acuity and passion of my many students at New York University, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, Santa Monica College, and The Los Angeles Film School, whose probing curiosity helped sharpen my own ideas.

I would like to thank Tej Sood, Abi Pandey, Kanimozhi Ramamurthy, and Megan Greiving of Anthem Press, who were invariably kind, patient, and supportive.

My parents, John and Catherine Bolus, without whose support and never-ending love and devotion I might not have trusted myself to pursue my passions.

John Gutierrez, my administrative assistant, exhibited an amazing amount of industry, resourcefulness, and loyalty throughout what was often an obstacle-laden process.

My amazing young sons, Andre and Jean-Paul, who never made me feel guilty for disappearing into my office for hours on end.

Finally, my primary thanks are reserved for my wife, Kristin, to whom this book is dedicated. Her infinite love and support, keen intellect, critical prowess, and unbounded encouragement made this book possible.

INTRODUCTION

ART AND AESTHETICS

WHAT IS ART?

In his 1890 poem, Conundrum of the Workshops, Rudyard Kipling writes,

When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden’s green and gold,

Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;

And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,

Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, It’s pretty, but is it Art?

As Kipling duly suggests, the questions surrounding our definition and understanding of the nature and purpose of Art are ancient ones:

1. What is it about certain man-made objects that make them beautiful, arresting, soothing, provocative, or enlightening?

2. Why are some objects worthy of the label Art, while others are somehow disqualified from that categorization?

3. How do objects created for specifically utilitarian purposes (e.g., a bridge, an office tower, a clay pitcher, etc.) transcend their practical functions and enter the realm of Art? What inherent properties or qualities must be present in a man-made object to justify that classification?

4. What is the criteria that we employ when making these types of determinations? And who defines and applies that criteria?

5. What is Art’s purpose ? To simply beautify our surroundings? To elicit an emotional response? To provoke thought or cerebral reactions? To make a rhetorical point or pose a rhetorical question? To compel some sort of social, political, and/or spiritual change? To allow for certain types of communication between human beings that cannot be achieved otherwise? Or to merely provide a welcome and relaxing diversion?

In attempts to answer these and related questions, we in the modern era are often ruled by Romantic¹ notions of individual subjectivity, which insists that absolute criteria be displaced by a fluid relativism, leading to the slippery notion that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

But if beauty lies merely in the eye of the beholder, does it then follow that there are no native qualities or innate characteristics in the object itself that render it beautiful, regardless of our own individual gazes? Is there no such thing as a fixed set of definable standards by which we evaluate an object’s worth? If not, does it then follow that Art means whatever anybody wants it to mean? Wouldn’t that make it mean nothing?

The collision of disparate approaches to determining the artistic value of a given object can be, by turns, frustrating and futile or thrilling and rewarding, both for the creator of the object and its eventual audience—which is why it’s useful to be aware of the manner in which artists enter and navigate the creative process, and sensitive to the ways in which given audiences interpret and assess the ultimate worth of the final product.

It should also be noted that different cultures, subcultures, eras, geographical regions, religious/spiritual traditions, and self-contained artistic movements have defined and employed their own unique, idiosyncratic criteria by which they comprehend beauty and determine the value of a work of art.

Furthermore, the assumptions and expectations that distinguish one set of artistic criteria from another are not static—on the contrary, they are often fluid and dynamic, undergoing dramatic metamorphoses, even within the confines of an otherwise insular environment.

Happily, there is a field of inquiry devoted to the contemplation of these questions and the complex, nuanced ideas that accompany them: Aesthetics.

What is Aesthetics?

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that attempts to locate and define the principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty—especially in Art.

Efforts to understand what makes something beautiful have a long and storied history.

In the Western tradition, Aesthetics can be traced as far back as the early fourth century BCE. The great Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 425–347 BCE) wrote penetratingly about Beauty and Art in his famous Dialogues, which were composed intermittently across several decades.

Plato maintained an unusual set of ideas on both Art and Beauty—two concepts that he did not conflate. Plato believed that the material world we encounter each day is merely a collection of facsimiles—copies of Ideal Forms that exist in the universe. The truth—which is what Plato always searched for—is to be found in the Ideal Form, not its copy; therefore, man-made objects (like Art) can impede our connection with the truth. Plato also believed that Art, which we encounter through sensory perception, arouses our emotions in unproductive and destructive ways, contributing to our being diverted from the truth, which is why he distrusted Art, Artists, and the manner in which human beings generally experience and understand the physical world that they inhabit. Therefore, true Beauty, according to Plato, is not to be found in Art or the material world but, rather, in the purity and perfection of the fixed and universal Ideal. While Plato maintained his suspicion of Art and Artists, he never denied their power to elicit profound emotional responses from audiences, which is one of the reasons he feared their potentially damaging influence on society and what he considered to be the pillars of an ideal civilization.

Plato’s most famous student was Aristotle (384–322 BCE), whose celebrated treatise Poetics (ca. 335 BCE) is an in-depth, if somewhat elliptical, examination of Ancient Greek Tragedy, which necessarily touches upon tangential notions of Art and Beauty. While never mentioning Plato by name, Aristotle’s defense and glorification of poetic drama—and, by implication, Art in general—as a morally redemptive and emotionally cathartic enterprise can be interpreted as a direct challenge to his teacher’s earlier conclusions.

Aristotle (384–322 BCE)

By examining plot, structure, character, language, theme, musicality, and the visual/theatrical aspects he observed in the tragic plays of Aeschylus (525–456 BCE), Sophocles (496–406 BCE), and Euripides (480–406 BCE), Aristotle begins to define the characteristics that constitute Classical notions of greatness and artistic merit in Ancient Greek Drama. Many of these characteristics are neatly applicable to other art forms: balance, symmetry, harmony, order, nuance, suggestion, decorum, a proportional grandeur, and a sense of wholeness. The degree to which these characteristics can be located in the art of the ancient world is startling given the scope and volume of creative output in Classical Greco-Roman culture.²

The Parthenon (fifth century BCE)

In the first century BCE, the Roman poet Horace (65–8 BCE) wrote Ars Poetica, an extremely influential epistolary poem in which he advises young poets on the art of drama and versification. Ars Poetica provides a crisp outline of maxims that poets should consider as they compose their versified dramas. Among these are the need for unity and simplicity, calculation in the face of emotional, intellectual, and/or stylistic extremes, clear distinctions between poetic/dramatic genres, a well-honed sense of decorum with regard to language and character, and a strict adherence to a five-act structure.

Horace also believed that the purpose of poetry (read Art) is "to delight and instruct." Notice that Horace includes a didactic component (instruct) alongside the more obvious aim of entertaining (delight) an audience or reader. Without either, the implication being, the work is not worthy to be deemed Art.

Horace also advised that the dramatic narrative should begin "in medias res," Latin for "in the middle of things," meaning that the action should start when the characters are already in, or close to, crisis mode, rather than "ab ovum," Latin for "from the egg," or the very beginning, meaning the moment of a protagonist’s conception. Horace’s advice on this point would be echoed about two thousand years later by the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), who wrote that "a drama is not designed to tell the entire story of a man’s life; but, rather, to place him in a situation in which his entire being becomes clear by the way he unties the knots."

Classical sensibilities regarding the nature and value of Art began to erode with the creeping advent of a proselytizing Christianity. In approximately 200 CE, the Christian theologian Tertullian (ca. 155–240 CE) composed a series of epistles entitled On the Spectacles, which is a scathing indictment of the moral depravity of the theatrical presentations that were both common and extremely popular in Ancient Rome. Tertullian argued that the sensual pleasures enjoyed by people attending these theatrical events (which included everything from mock naval battles in the Coliseum to bloody bearbaiting to the most brutal of gladiatorial combats) were an affront to God and a vulgar misuse of God’s gifts to man. By drawing connections between contemporaneous forms of public entertainment and myriad pagan rituals, Tertullian emphasizes the moral, ethical, and spiritual implications intrinsic to the creation, presentation, and reception of the dramatic arts.³

Following the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire in approximately 475 CE, the burgeoning Byzantine Empire codified the central tenets of Christian doctrine, and the Church began to emerge as the primary spiritual, civic, social, and governmental force in a Europe now devoid of the concentrated and unchallengeable authority of Imperial Rome. The Medieval World, therefore, would be informed and governed by Christianity in general, and the hierarchical structures of both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches in particular. While a secular tradition remained intact, the dominant currents of artistic output were decidedly religious in nature, and their aesthetic sensibilities were dictated and enforced by the Ecclesiastical authorities. It was an aesthetic that was very strict in determining the manner in which religious content would be conceived and executed by artists, and one that anticipated the responses of a largely illiterate lay community that received its theological indoctrination largely through ritual and visual imagery. Religious iconography, for example, especially with regard to depictions of Jesus, embraced an abstract quality that emphasized Christ’s divinity rather than his humanity.

Byzantine Icon (ca. ninth century CE)

An interest in Aesthetics in service of religion continued throughout the Middle Ages. The Christian theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) appropriated Classical ideas in ways that supported a more general approach to the dissemination of Christian doctrine, maintaining that integrity, proportion, and clarity are the three conditions of beauty—a notion that feeds a particular understanding of artistic creation.⁴

The Medieval aesthetic began to slowly dissipate in the late thirteenth/early fourteenth centuries, as the conditions for the Renaissance began to take root. The Renaissance (from the French word meaning Rebirth) was a complex cultural, intellectual, artistic, and philosophical revolution, marked most prominently by a desire to reach back past the Medieval World and reconnect with and resuscitate the spirit of Classical Antiquity. The word Medieval, Latin for Middle Ages, was, in fact, pejoratively employed by Renaissance thinkers to distinguish themselves from that era between themselves and the Ancient Greco-Roman culture they would attempt to emulate. The reasons for this phenomenon were numerous, but primary among them was a reintroduction of Classical thought to Western Europe, which included various strains of pagan philosophies and a set of monumental and refreshing aesthetic approaches to art and creative endeavor. This occurred alongside a profound set of scientific and technological advances that deeply affected people’s understanding of the universe and their practical worldview, as many of the conclusions arrived at by the scientific community stood in stark opposition to Church doctrine.

Central to the Renaissance was its embrace of Classical Humanism, a philosophy that represented a shift away from religious thought and experience toward the secular aspects of the human condition. It