Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

I'm unfamiliar with that term (a reference to Occam's Razor...?).

My entire argument appeals, to a large extent, to poststructuralist thought, which I find incredibly helpful when studying and criticizing postmodern texts like advertisements or contemporary films.

Ordinary Language philosophy throws a lot of doubt on your intention-based interpretation as well.

 

[Dak]

My entire argument appeals, to a large extent, to poststructuralist thought, which I find incredibly helpful when studying and criticizing postmodern texts like advertisements or contemporary films.

Ordinary Language philosophy throws a lot of doubt on your intention-based interpretation as well.

First:

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

I'm going to judge intent based on the occupations and derived benefits of those involved. Basically a "follow the money trail" approach. It's what I usually use.

 

[Einherjar86]

There's no doubt that people have monetary interests in mind, but you can't necessarily verify that meaning in the messages you find in popular media.

I wouldn't appeal to Hanlon's Razor because I don't even think it's that simple. As soon as a text is made, its meaning changes; it's constantly in flux. You can't use it as a doorway to the secret intentions of its creator.

 

[Dak]

I think Hanlon's Razor is useful for mitigating something like road rage at inconsiderate drivers. Not for judging the underlying problem with more dastardly sort of phenomena. Like the monetary system for instance.

Obviously there can be a disconnect between a writer's intent and the reader's understanding. This happens quite a bit for me when I read things, since I am working with a wider range of recall and understanding than "your average joe". But in those cases, the author isn't targeting me, he/she is targeting that average joe. So I have to take that into account. Just as a communicator has to take into account his/her audience, the person on the receiving end has to take it into account as well.

There's that line of thinking that says "it's not a lie if you don't believe it", which I find absurd. The intent was to mislead, it's efficacy is not the dependent variable.

 

[Einherjar86]

Whatever dude. When you publish an article on this someday, I'll publish one back.

 

[rms]

Even a worse example than Zero Dark Thirty since there are far more documents on Abraham Lincoln that the film may be drawing on for inspiration. Just because it excludes certain details does not make it a lie. Again, whose statement is it? Spielberg's? Kushner's? Who speaks "Lincoln" the film? There is no lie going on here whatsoever, and no one can blame the film for its audience.

You do not think the Director controls his/her opinion of the film? Now I understand many interpretation's for a film can be made, but if the director does come clean, or in Lincoln's case(i'm sure they did not portray him properly as a non-black lover...ie watch Ken Burns the Civil war on instant netflix)isn't he responsible? Isn't that a lie to be told? Shouldn't Spielberg trust people with PHD's in History, spend their life studying one man throughout many years as the correct interpretation of his life? I don't think it's fair to say he may not be to blame because Daniel Day Lewis played Abe different than the Screenplay writer wrote him..in the end someone is responsible for the action of that film, and that's the director..that's why he gets paid the most money.

But I do not agree that Zerodarkthirty is the same thing, I cannot agree that the same principle applies to Lincoln

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm sure all directors have opinions of their films; but those opinions are not "in" the films.

 

[Dak]

:::craftily constructs a strawman:::

ITT we find that Pat does not believe anyone can lie or be responsible for anything.

 

[Einherjar86]

We're talking about films; not individuals.

 

[Dak]

We're talking about films; not individuals.

What is a film or other corporate work other than the sum of individual contributions? Obviously we may not be able to reduce something to a single point of "blame".

I don't know how Goldman Sachs does what it does. I don't know who all it's employees are. I don't know all of it's dealings. I know enough about it to know it's an "evil" corporation.

 

[Einherjar86]

Wow. You don't think that a complex text like a film is, in some sense, "greater than the sum of its parts"? Granted, a film does not make itself; but you'll never be able to reduce all the components of a film to the explicit intentions of those involved. Someone will always read at least one thing, somewhere in a film, that cannot be traced back to anyone.

You don't think that what we perceive as "evil" can arise spontaneously, as a kind of consequence of multiple individuals acting somewhat unconsciously? You should take a look at Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem.

 

[Dak]

Wow. You don't think that a complex text like a film is, in some sense, "greater than the sum of its parts"? Granted, a film does not make itself; but you'll never be able to reduce all the components of a film to the explicit intentions of those involved. Someone will always read at least one thing, somewhere in a film, that cannot be traced back to anyone.

Of course someone can read something in that wasn't intended. I do it all the time. But I also recognize it wasn't intended.

You don't think that what we perceive as "evil" can arise spontaneously, as a kind of consequence of multiple individuals acting somewhat unconsciously? You should take a look at Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem.

I think it can, but not when joined in a common goal of corporate advancement. Corporations have a board of directors, and hierarchical chains of command to implement the "vision". Films have directors and consultants (which are usually picked by the director) etc. Based on the Wiki for Eichmann in Jerusalem, this fits. You can't say Hitler was unconscious of his actions or the intended outcome (in relation to the Jewish purge). The "just doing my job" person embodied by Eichmann is most people, the ones led around by those who direct. Does that absolve them of blame?

 

[Einherjar86]

It doesn't absolve them of blame, no; but it's impossible to reduce the "evil" of an enterprise, political party, film, etc. down to its basic "board of directors."

 

[rms]

I'm sure all directors have opinions of their films; but those opinions are not "in" the films.

You are saying that no director has an intention with his film, that he makes an objective film, always, and that all interpretations are of the audience? If you agree with this, I may have to think of some examples later.

 

[Einherjar86]

It isn't that a director has no intention with a film he/she participates in; we have to try not to think of the situation as a bunch of mindless automatons layering words until they have texts (e.g. the "enough monkeys in a room will eventually write Shakespeare's sonnets" scenario).

We have to acknowledge that the text of a film in no way "contains" its director's intentions (as though intentionality were some metaphysical essence that permeated the work). It contains the material possibility of intention, certainly; but if we acknowledge that the director's "intentions" (if he/she even knows what they were) are materially present (i.e. of the infinite intentions/meanings contained in a film, the combination of words that forms the director's intended meaning is one possible combination), we have to in turn acknowledge that all other meanings are present as well.

We tend to assume that statements/texts contain an implicit and specific meaning because this is our rather narrow human response; we must make practical matters that are complicated. Even if a film like Lincoln supports American cultural hegemony and ideology, Spielberg need not have intended this; sheer cultural power and the prevalence of our need for a national identity are enough to imbue such a text with excessive meaning. This only means that Spielberg's movie Lincoln perpetuates American hegemony and identity; it does not mean that Spielberg perpetuates it.

Directors are assigned blame symbolically; that is, through the criticism of their films. Look at all the flak Zero Dark Thirty is catching on the internet. Look at how much Django Unchained is being accused of perpetuating racial stereotypes. However, this does not mean that Bigelow promotes torture or that Tarantino is a racist, and no one is accusing them of being such; the faults lie with the films. When we accuse Django Unchained of being racist, it is not the same as accusing Tarantino of being racist, because the racism is confined entirely to the text of the film. A film is only ever a symbol; there is no "real" intention behind it, so to speak; the "reality" of the intention exists purely within the film itself.

 

[Prismatic Sphere]

I'm sure all directors have opinions of their films; but those opinions are not "in" the films.

That would suck for Passolini as he would have died in vain since he was assassinated for what he was trying to "say" with Salo.

 

[rms]

I think we are talking about different themes in a film, let me see if i'm smart enough to portray my thoughts properly haha

I don't agree with Dak, and most people who say this film incourages torture, but even then, wasn't torture allowed in the early Bush administration? Or does my memory suck? Either way..that's not a theme I would get from that film, and I wouldn't even say it has a theme..it's just a go-USA-movie for Americans.

Django, from what I saw, did not encourage racism and if you would even call Tarantino that, you could go to Pulp Fiction where he goes and says my pals like 5 times when the Wolf comes over to get that car cleaned.

But Lincoln, a film where historians have the best possible knowledge to this day, have improperly portrayed him as a black-saviour(but it's so hard to say this, I have not seen this film but let's just argue this point) and that just isn't true, from civil war historians have said he was not, and most of it was political to gain an advantage in the war.

 

[Prismatic Sphere]

You're telling me those "facts" as though they refute my earlier point. Do you even understand what I'm saying? It doesn't matter if Lincoln didn't actually "like" black people (a point so hopelessly subjective and personal that no one could be expected to "truthfully" represent it), or if he was dragged into the situation. The movie does not lie about anything, since any condition of actual "truthfulness" is, especially in the case of Abraham Lincoln, impossible to ascertain. The film is a re-representation of numerous texts already compiled on the subject; it is no one's "lie."

Even the trailer for Lincoln contains an outrageous lie. The "trailer" for the movie Lincoln based on a book by the confessed plagiarist Doris Kearns-Goodwin. It's probably less than a minute long, but it contained these words, spoken to Abe, by his wife: "You are beloved by all the people more than anyone else in history." Contrast this with the writings of historian Larry Tagg, author of The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: America's Most Reviled President (with an endorsement by Lincoln cultist Harold Holzer on the back cover) published just a few years ago:
"The violence of the criticism aimed at Lincoln by the great men of his time on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line is startling. The breadth and depth of the spectacular prejudice against him is often shocking for its cruelty, intensity, and unrelenting vigor. The plain truth is that Mr. Lincoln was deeply reviled by many who knew him personally, and by hundreds of thousands who only knew of him."
Larry Tagg documents how the New York Times editorialized in May of 1864 that Lincoln had been justifiably labeled as "a perjurer, a usurper, a tyrant, a subverter of the Constitution, a destroyer of the liberties of his country, a reckless desperado, a heartless trifler . . ." and intoned that there is no place in hell "that is full enough of torment to expiate his iniquities."


^Taken from the LRC bolg.
There's also a really great article detailing Spielberg's upside-down history quite laudably. http://lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo245.html


Instead of me trying to dissect your abstract meanings of truth and lies, how about you define these terms concretely, first. Otherwise it's confusion for everyone.

 

[Dak]

Instead of me trying to dissect your abstract meanings of truth and lies, how about you define these terms concretely, first. Otherwise it's confusion for everyone.

I was kind of trying to bait this a little bit with my strawman. Pat refused to bite

 

[Einherjar86]

That would suck for Passolini as he would have died in vain since he was assassinated for what he was trying to "say" with Salo.

No, he was assassinated for what somewhat perceived in Salo. All death is in vain for the deceased subject.

I think we are talking about different themes in a film, let me see if i'm smart enough to portray my thoughts properly haha

I don't agree with Dak, and most people who say this film incourages torture, but even then, wasn't torture allowed in the early Bush administration? Or does my memory suck? Either way..that's not a theme I would get from that film, and I wouldn't even say it has a theme..it's just a go-USA-movie for Americans.

Django, from what I saw, did not encourage racism and if you would even call Tarantino that, you could go to Pulp Fiction where he goes and says my pals like 5 times when the Wolf comes over to get that car cleaned.

But Lincoln, a film where historians have the best possible knowledge to this day, have improperly portrayed him as a black-saviour(but it's so hard to say this, I have not seen this film but let's just argue this point) and that just isn't true, from civil war historians have said he was not, and most of it was political to gain an advantage in the war.

I don't think anyone would condone Lincoln as a movie that will help you pass your undergraduate 19-century American History final; but again, that doesn't immediately mean it's a lie. It is a framed representation that specifically leaves out certain details; and how could it possibly include everything? This obsession that some posters on this forum have with the negative side of history (we might say it's all negative) is fine, but the condemnation of films that choose to edit out certain details as "lies" is absurd. No one is actively being lied to, that's the whole point.

Even the trailer for Lincoln contains an outrageous lie. The "trailer" for the movie Lincoln based on a book by the confessed plagiarist Doris Kearns-Goodwin. It's probably less than a minute long, but it contained these words, spoken to Abe, by his wife: "You are beloved by all the people more than anyone else in history." Contrast this with the writings of historian Larry Tagg, author of The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: America's Most Reviled President (with an endorsement by Lincoln cultist Harold Holzer on the back cover) published just a few years ago:
"The violence of the criticism aimed at Lincoln by the great men of his time on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line is startling. The breadth and depth of the spectacular prejudice against him is often shocking for its cruelty, intensity, and unrelenting vigor. The plain truth is that Mr. Lincoln was deeply reviled by many who knew him personally, and by hundreds of thousands who only knew of him."
Larry Tagg documents how the New York Times editorialized in May of 1864 that Lincoln had been justifiably labeled as "a perjurer, a usurper, a tyrant, a subverter of the Constitution, a destroyer of the liberties of his country, a reckless desperado, a heartless trifler . . ." and intoned that there is no place in hell "that is full enough of torment to expiate his iniquities."

Let me ask you something: who spoke that line? His wife, right; Mary Todd Lincoln? A character in the movie. How is that a lie? It is one opinion of a character depicted within the film itself; maybe she genuinely believed he was beloved; maybe she convinced herself of that. She wasn't entirely mentally stable. Hell, maybe she knows it isn't the truth and is simply trying to make her husband feel better; maybe she actually is "lying" to him (*gasp!*). To then extend this and say that "the film is a lie" is an absurd and logically fallible conclusion. The film is not telling its audience that Lincoln was loved by all, and if certain people see it that way then they're not properly thinking about who exactly is speaking that line and how it operates. There's no truth that is revealed or concealed here; it's merely one flawed character purportedly speaking to another...

Instead of me trying to dissect your abstract meanings of truth and lies, how about you define these terms concretely, first. Otherwise it's confusion for everyone.

Truth is inhuman; there's nothing we can do to "make" a truth (I'm still waiting for Alain Badiou to convince me otherwise). It simply is; an actual state of things.

A lie is intentional and deceptive; that's its definition. Now, applying intentionality to something as multi-layered and communal as a film is an exercise in futility. You'll never succeed. So who can we really say is "lying"?

There are some extreme post-structuralists who would claim that by this definition everything we say is a lie, since words can never achieve the actual state of the thing they're supposedly representing...

If all else fails, use the OED. Then ask yourself a question: do you think a film is talking to you?