FTV 5915

Esra KÖKKILIÇ

Fictional Realities, Ideologies, Text, Context and Interpretations

Real, Realism, Mimesis and Fictional Realities

The question of realism in cinema is a debate that took place some times within scholars.
Greek conception of mimesis (imitation) gain a significant importance during the nineteenth
century related with the contemporary world’s representation in arts. (Stam & Miller, 2000:
223) Especially in cinema, the question of being realistic was discussed in many ways. In
“Question of Realism” Robert Stam (Stam & Miller, 2000: 223-228) introduces the issue of
realism in relation to cinema referring many theoreticians and tries to explain the debates
related to realism within an historical context. He finally concludes in art is a representation
not so much in a mimetic as in a political sense, as a delegation of voice. (Stam & Miller,
2000: 228) In this point, it can be said that all artistic works, written or visual, reflect its
creator point of view and ideological place. At this point, artist is creating his reality and
reconstructs it with his own ways.
It can be say that the effort of making something realistic does not always ended up being
real. It is true that many of art forms tried to be a mirror of the real life but when an apparatus
came to the scene “the real” converted something else. In “Apparatus Theory” Toby Miller
(Stam & Miller, 2000: 403-407) says that the apparatus in film theory refers to the interaction
between spectators, texts, and technology and defines cinema as a social machine. Cinema
can be considered as an apparatus of the mainstream ideology with which it tries to found and
expand its own ideology (like Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus (Stam & Miller, 2000:
404)), even though it consist of different genres which are more independent. On the other
hand, the genres that strive to be independent from the ideology of the dominant culture
follow the exact same way with reflecting their ideology on the film. At this point, the reality
in the cinema cannot be the same with the real life’s reality.
It can be said that all films are fictional. The mechanism that worked during the production
process can be considered as an indicator of that idea. Scenario, casting, camera, sound,
lighting, director and all other workers, can be seen in all genres. Genres can be seen as
stereotyped forms and they include stereotyped contexts. Genres are like covers made for the
themes. In the ‘Interrogating Authorship and Genre’ article (Stam, 2000: 123-130), genre
defined as a system which creates the expectations of audiences. Interpreting with the genre,
deconstructing it or reforming it means that interpreting with the audiences’ expectations and
this concludes in making the audience to think and create a new whole meaning about what
they see. When representing the context with a different genre, the context gains new
meanings with the other genre’s stereotyped context. Peter Brunette discusses the
deconstruction in “Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction”, and brings the question of
‘natural’ relation between original and copy and the effect of a mimetic or imitative theory of
artistic representation. (Hill & Gibson, 2000: 91) He gives the example of a documentary
which can be seen as a copy of the reality but it is only an aspect of the reality which
individuates and creates by the director of the documentary. According to the Platonist
approach, documentary is a genre that copies the original reality, an imitation and a
representation.
Documentary films are also part of the dominant ideology. The ‘voice over’ which
distinguishes this genre from others can be considered as a ‘Kuleshov effect’. The very
peculiar example of this claim could be the nature documentaries. Voice over explains the
hunting process of animal in their natural habitat according to the ‘men’ ideology; mentions
the wilderness of the action. In that case, documentary is far away from representing the real
and it becomes a fictional film which consists of the ideology of its maker. Godard uses this
kind of voice over in Notre Musique (J.L. Godard, 2004). The film is not a documentary, in
contrary it is a fiction film, but in the beginning it pretends like a documentary. The footages
which are editing like a documentary are sometimes from a movie, sometimes from news. He
edited them like a documentary and a women voice over which is also unorthodox way;
indicates the ideas about war. Godard uses the apparatus of the dominant ideology in order to
expand his own.
Another example of interpreting the characteristics of the documentary genre is Zelig (Woddy
Allen, 1983). Film can be considered as a fiction film which includes all the elements of the
documentary genre. The voice over, old footages, the interviews with eye-witnesses, all
elements to build the credibility of the documentary are used. If the impossibility of the
subject is not to take into consideration, it can be seen as a documentary, in other word as a
reflection of the reality (according to the genre’s element). The film is a critic about the
stereotyping of people and the lost of the people’s identities by dominant culture. The film
uses the documentary genre which can be considered as an apparatus of the dominant
ideology to spread its own ideas. In that point, with the help of one of the apparatus of the
dominant ideology, the film reflects its own ideology shaping its own reality.
In addition, Zelig uses a documentary genre for a fictional context. At the same time it can be
thought vis-à-vis relation, Zelig uses a fictional context for a documentary genre. The
spectator starts to think about the real, representation and imitation because of the broken
genre and context synchronization. By this way, the story has a new meaning and it can be
said that after such an experience, the spectator cannot be look at the same way to a
documentary after seeing a mocumentary. This is an awakening and a warning at the same
time against the documentary which is considered as real. The unreliability of the
documentary comes to scene with the help of Zelig according to its fictional elements. That is
why deconstructing, interpreting with genres is powerful method to re-write the reality.
On the other hand, the reality of a film cannot be the same with the ‘real’ life’s reality.
Insignificance (Nicolas Roeg, 1985) can be considered such an example. The characters of the
film are the most important icons of the 1950’s world. A professor who blame himself about
the atomic bomb, a blonde actress who wear a white dress, a ball player who is married with
her and a senator who has a fear against the communism. In the real life we are truly sure that
all of these four people never been in the same hotel room during a whole life. Though the
film creates its own reality and demonstrates that another reality can be build with the real life
facts, and this reality cannot be the same with the real life’s one.

Codes, Ideologies and Meanings

The question of cinema is a language system or merely an artistic language is concluded by

Metz that the cinema is not a language system but that it was a language.(Stam, 2000: 112)
According to this assumption Metz argues that film become a discourse by organizing itself as
a narrative and thus producing a body of signifying procedures. (Stam, 2000: 114) In this
point, it can be said that films produce their own meaning according the narrative and the
codes that are used. Film can be telling several stories with different styles in the same time
but all of these different stories can be seen in a whole in narrative. In Kiss of the Spider
Woman (Hector Babenco, 1985) tells the spectator a story of two prisoners sharing the same
cell. They are different from each other, one is a queer who is condemned because of a sexual
relation with a young boy, and other is a political prisoner. The queer one tells the other a
movie that he likes, in that point film make a parallel-cut with the movie was told. There is
another film inside the film. The codes of this film are quite different from the film that we
see, at this point we can understand that a paradigm shift occurred and we are watching
something else. Even though they differ from each other in terms of codes, the movie and the
movie in the movie are telling the same story, love, sacrifice and treason. The narrative of
these two is the same but the narration is significantly different.
Another meaning creating process is come from the ideological tendencies. In the essay of
“Multiculturalism, Race and Representation” the writer mentions that multiculturalism
become important issue in the representation debates. (Stam, 2000: 267-280) He claims that
multiculturalism is not an assault on Europe but on Eurocentrism. (Stam, 2000: 269) As a
result of this Eurocentrism the stereotyped characters can easily be seen in the movies. It is
true to say that cinema is a Eurocentric art and the mainstream tendencies came from
Hollywood. That is it which makes the common codes and stereotyping. Ella Shohat traces
the lines of the stereotyping in her article “Gender and Culture Empire: Toward a Feminist
Ethnography of the Cinema”. (Stam & Miller, 2000: 669-696) She mentions about the
Western gaze and points out to the binary oppositions like men-women, culture-nature,
occident-orient. The attempt of the western gaze is to make the same all these oppositions; it
means that woman virginity is exactly the same with the virginity of the eastern lands; the
sexual desire of eastern women is the same thing with hotness of the eastern lands. All of
these understandings are a result of the western gaze in an exotic and unknown place. The
opening scene of English Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1996) makes a cross-cut with woman
body and desert.
However with the multiculturalism debates starting to 1980’s and the birth of the Third
Cinema which is defined by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Genito in the “Towards a third
Cinema”, is the cinema that recognizes in the anti-imperialist struggle the most gigantic
cultural, scientific and artistic manifestation of our time, the great possibility of constructing a
liberated personality with each people as a starting point, in a word, the decolonization of
culture; the stereotyping codes is used by the contrary. (Nichols, 1976: 47) In La Battaglia Di
Algeri (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966), Algerian women dressed like French ones and can easily go
out from a restricted area without searching by French soldiers. It can be said that this scene is
a criticism against the stereotyping, because these women committed a bombing attack and
nobody are suspicious about them, because they don’t look like Algerians, they are not
Algerian stereotypes, they are westerner ones.
Re-writing, Deconstruction and Making New Meanings

Rejecting to the idea of structuralism which is taken the structure of the text as a base and
ignores the audience and the relation between the texts and its audience, taking post-
structuralism and deconstruction into consideration, it can be talked about the effect of the
spectator on the text and vis-à-vis effect. Text cannot be thought independent from its
context. At the same time, it cannot be separated from the audience’s reflections. According
to this assumption, it can be said that text is not belong to its creator after reaching to
audience. Like Barthes’ claims, the audience can re-write the text and deconstruct it with all
his experiences. (Barthes, 1977) Text cannot be the same after reading; it changes, evolves
and turns something different. It can be said that in Cenneti Beklerken (Derviş Zaim, 2006)
focuses this idea, deconstructing the relation between the representation and authority,
focusing the concepts of similitude and verisimilitude, re-making a new painting with all new
meanings. The painter in the movie made western style of paintings in his studio which are
forbidden by the Ottoman authorities of that epoch. He tries to make verisimilitude of the
similitude. The concept of imitating the real is come to the scene at this point. The traditional
Ottoman miniatures cannot be considered as verisimilitude, they are only representations. The
painter’s aim is to paint like Westerners, representing the reality like how it is. He want to be
a mirror for the reality but all the eastern paradigms he understand that being a mirror is not
only reflect the reality but bring the viewer’s paradigms also. The deconstruction of
Velazques well-known painting, The Maids of Honnour, implicate it to his paradigm, re-
write it with new meanings are not simple for the painter to deal with. In one hand, it can be
said that because of the fear of the authority, in the other hand it can be interpreted like the
understanding of the impossibility of the imitating reality. In such case, it is not the painter
achieve the deconstruction it is a slave women. She re-writes the meaning of the painting
included it the paradigms of the painter, she combines western painting with Ottoman
miniature and explore a new way of looking, thinking and meaning at the same time. From
that point, neither the western paint nor the Ottoman miniature can be the same as they were.
They create a new meaning together and it is impossible to separate them in order to give
them their old ones. This relation is like the relation between the text and the audience
according to the post- structuralism which mentions before.
REFERENCES

R. Stam & T. Miller, Film and Theory: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
R. Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
J. Hill & P.C. Gibson, Film Studies Critical Approaches, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000.
Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, 1977. (http://www.vahidnab.com/author.pdf)
Fernando Solonas and Octavio Getino, “Twords a Third Cinema” in Bill Nichols (ed), Movies
and Methods I, Berkley: UCO, 1976, pp 44-64.