Peter Wollen & Shifting Film Theory

This is the scratch/development area for the final of three 5-7 page papers written for Professor Phil Rosen's "Classical Film Theory." Though I did sketch out the A. prompt, I have decided not to respond to it. I guess that's the perk of thinking through a problem with this kind of outline.

The Prompt
In his conclusion (1972), Peter Wollen says he is modifying some of his earlier idea about the cinema and semiology, with his major examples Godard, who is understood as being in "the modern movement."

A. Summarize how Wollen sees his shift, and interrogate and evaluate his conception of signification and his conception of cinema. Identify one or more key issues in classical film theory (for example, relation of film to the real; relation of film to and spectator, etc. ) and organize your essay to show how Wollen might claim to address such issues. Evaluate his approach.

or

C. Wollen seems to claim that semiology of the 1960's falls within the traditional Western problematic of communication. Explain Wollen's account of that problematic of communication. Explain Wollen's account of that problematic and why he objects in "Conclusion (1972)." Does all of classical film theory fall under this problematic and his critique? Address this question with reference to one or two essays by any theorist we read this semester.

A

 * 1) Summarize how Wollen sees his shift
 * 2) interrogate and evaluate
 * 3) his conception of signification
 * 4) his conception of cinema
 * 5) Identify one or more key issues in classical film theory and organize your essay to show how Wollen might claim to address such issues.
 * 6) Evaluate his approach.

B

 * 1) Explain Wollen's account of that problematic of communication
 * 2) Does all of classical film theory fall under this problematic and his critique?
 * 3) Address this question with reference to one or two essays by any theorist we read this semester.

B

 * "Signs and meaning: contemporary Western thought, like its forerunners, sees the problem predominantly one way. Signs are used to communicate meanings between individuals" (158).


 * "Clearly this model of language rests on the notion of the thinking mind or consciousness which controls the material world. Matter belongs to the realm of instrumentality; thus, the consciousness makes use of the material signal as a tool... In essence, this view is a humanised version of hte old theological belief that the material world as a whole comprised a signal which, when decoded, would reveal the message of the divine Logos" (159).


 * "At the time of the enlightenment, God was no longer envisaged as the author of the great book of the world, but the same semiotic model was transferred to human communication. Artists, in particular, were seen as quasi-divine authors who created a world in their imagination which they then expressed externally. Within a Romantic aesthetic, the signals were taken as symbols, to be decoded not by applying a common code but by intuition and empathy, projection into the artist's inner world" (159).


 * "The really important breakthrough, however, came in the rejection of the traditional idea of a work as primarily a representation of something else, whether an idea or the real world, and concentration of attention on the text of the work itself and on the signs from which it was constructed" (161).


 * "What was (and still is) needed was a semiology which reversed and transformed the usual terms of its problematic, which stopped seeing the signal, the text, as a means, a medium existing between human beings and and the truth or meaning, whether the idealist transcendent truth of the Romantics or the immanent intentional meaning of the Classical aesthetic. Thus a text is a material object whose significance is determined not by a code external to it, mechanically, nor organically as a symbolic whole, but through its own interrogation of its own code. It is only through such an interrogation, through such an interior dialog between signal and code, that a text can produce spaces within meaning, within the otherwise rigid straightjacket of the message, to produce a meaning of a new kidn, generated within the text itself" (161-162).


 * "Thus in the past, the difficulty of reading was simply to find the correct code, to clear up ambiguities or areas of ignorance. Once the code was known reading became automatic, the simultaneous access to the mind of signal and 'content', that magical process whereby ideas shone through marks on paper to enter the skull through the windows of eyes" (163).


 * "It produces works which are no longer centripetal, held together by their own centres, but centrifugal, throwing the reader out of the work to other works" (163).


 * "The text is thus no longer a transparent medium; it is a material object which provides the conditions for the production of meaning, within constraints which it sets itself. It is open rather than closed; multiple rather than singe; productive rather than exhaustive" (163).

Criticism of Realism (and possibly Kracauer).


 * "In fact, this aesthetic rests on a monstrous delusion: the idea that truth resides in the real world and can be picked out by the camera. Obviously, if this were the case, everybody would have access to the truth, since everybody lives all their life in the real world" (166).