Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr
Summary & Implications: What is the author’s project and why is it important now? What’s the narrative about the field that’s emerging from the reading? What narratives are silent? Whose voices are silent?
In his follow up to Major Film Theories, which looked at the world of pre-1960s film theory through investigations, theorist by theorist, into the big ideas of film theory of the era, Dudley Andrew inverts his methods to instead follow the broader range of film theories roughly between the mid 60s and early 80s. Here he’ll ping-pong back and forth between theorists as he works through a progression of central ideas, categorized by different focuses. Since many theorists are interested in, say, both “identification” and “figuration,” you’re likely to see the same names pop up throughout the text (Mitry, Metz, Barthes, Lacan, all the hits). Writing in the mid 80s, Andrew is enamored with the semiotic and figural theories that dominated the discourse of high theory at the time.
And make no mistake, this is the highest of high film theory. It isn’t an introductory text, either, as Andrew doesn’t do enough to introduce the ideas, terms, or their relationships he’s writing about here so the novice (or not-so-novice) reader can fully follow along. Indeed, as focused as he is on the brainiest of the brainy, he largely ignores the rumblings of other kinds of theory that have since come into fashion (thankfully!). These include feminist film theory (I noticed 3 total women cited in this text, and one of those was a throwaway reference to Susan Sontag), most of cultural theory (which gets passing nods here and there), and any mention of anybody who isn’t heavily invested in the overly jargon-laden high theoretical discussions Andrew loves diving into here. I tend to lean towards that kind of writing as being not just obscure and obtuse but also just not super useful to me as the authors (and Andrew is no exception here) tend to be more invested in showing off their theoretical muscles rather than doing any real heavy lifting.
Anyways, here’s the breakdown of the chapters, which I’m going to keep to basically just a table of contents because, though the ideas feed into each other, each idea is difficult enough to understand in Andrew’s attempt at summary and even more difficult to understand in conjunction with each other. Suffice to say that Andrew’s project is to build up to the area of theory that he feels is most useful in the final chapter by way of showing how each chapter generally leads to the next, which takes what was in the previous chapter(s) and adds another layer on top.
The State of Film Theory
Perception
Representation
Signification
Narrative Structure
Adaptation
Valuation (of Genres and Auteurs)
Identification
Figuration
Interpretation
He concludes by writing that interpretation of figures in film theory is the most valuable current (again, published in ’84) way of dealing with film texts. He’s big into hermeneutics, which is great for him.
Context: Who is this author debating with and why? What is the context of the text’s production and distribution? What historical, cultural, etc. factors affect the way it makes meaning? Does the author seem to be in conversation with other scholars and/or paradigms? Where is this piece of writing centered in the field? What is their intervention in the literature/field? What text is this text in conversation with?
Andrew doesn’t do a whole ton of debating himself, he mostly lets summaries of film theories duke it out among themselves. As I wrote about above, this book is definitely a product of its time, that time being an era when film theory with a capital F and T was at a premium, and when the text was seemingly less important (given the absence of films almost throughout this book). As a tract which is apparently written to both give an overview of the, well, concepts in film theory as well as advocate for the author’s choice in the vague hierarchy he sets up here, it fails almost entirely. I could pick out nuggets of useful/decipherable writing here and there, but for the large part I was floundering around for a handhold to grasp onto. It seems that Andrew is trying to be at the center of the field, pulling everything together into one relatively small book. But instead he mostly feels like he’s positioning himself above the field, subtly and not-so-subtly suggesting what is important and what is a waste of time. Fine if you agree with him, kind of terrible if you don’t.
Methodology: What is the methodological framework of this text? What methodological moves or questions does the author engage? What is their object of analysis?
Like Feminist Film Studies by Janet McCabe, the idea here is to create an overview of the field via short summaries of the major theoretical areas of interest at the time of the book’s writing. There is some sense of a development over time, though this happens under the top level of the book’s discourse, popping its head up here and there rather than coming at its forefront as it does in McCabe’s text. Importantly, it also lacks any real engagement with films themselves, instead Andrew suffices with an overly generalized conception of the cinema and the film without attending to any meaningful examples. The few times he did use an example to illustrate a point were also, not coincidentally, the few times where I was able to follow along for paragraphs at a time.
Rhetorical Moves: What are the major rhetorical moves of the author’s arguments?
Andrew’s most obvious and important bit of rhetoric is the structure of the text, which presents the concepts of film theory as a kind of twirling vine wrapping itself around a pole. As the book progresses, the vine grows and new ideas are added to the old all the while reaching towards the zenith that is hermeneutic interpretation. Great. We did it.
Engagement & Application: How do I engage this text? How does this apply to my work? Does it support or provide a counterargument or model for strong intro or lit review? In other words, why is this piece of writing useful to me and/or how is it limited (bad writing style, problematic, didn’t consider x, y, and z)? Does it intersect with other items on the list?
I don’t engage with this text. It is a text written to engage only those who are already true believers in the gospel of high theory, and I am decidedly not that.
Key Terms: What terms are key to the author’s argument, and are they operationalized explicitly or implicitly?
perception, representation, signification, narrative structure, adaptation, valuation, genres, auteurs, identification, figuration, interpretation, sign, signifier, signified, figure, hermeneutics,perception, representation, signification, narrative structure, adaptation, valuation, genres, auteurs, identification, figuration, interpretation, sign, signifier, signified, figure, hermeneutics,
Significant Quotations: What key quotations from this work would I want to have quick access to?
For this is the state of film theory as it has come to be, an accumulation of concepts, or, rather, of ideas and attitudes clustered around concepts. Film theory is, in short, a verbal representation of the film complex. (3)
In sum, film theory today consists primarily in thinking through, elaborating, and critiquing the key metaphors by which we seek to understand (and control) the cinema complex. This can be done only in public, discursive events, in classrooms, journals, and conferences. It can be done only collectively. (12)
The questions named by the terms perception, representation, signification, narration, adaptation, valuation, identification, figuration, and interpretation have always been with film theory. Yet these new names are not merely the product of pretension and fad. They are a response to the social reconstruction of the terrain of the humanities. Film theory has not only profited from that reconstruction, but has actively contributed to it by recognizing itself as a social practice and picturing and repicturing our understanding of film, of society, and of art. This is the basis of its growth and its pride. (17-8)
In other words, realism in the cinema is driven by a desire to make the audience ignore the process of signification and to grasp directly the film’s plot or intrigue; for most film viewers, the plot is precisely and fully what a film represents. In this way realism stabilizes the temporal dimension of film, turning the flow of pictures into a single large picture whose process of coming into being has been hidden behind the effect of its plot. (48)
This, I would say, has been the mark of the 1970s, to contaminate a limpid structuralism with the living processes of interpretation and to thwart the egalitarian ideal that made all texts equal as versions of the same structure (the same myth). instead, post structuralism has upheld the priority of texts that question themselves and thereby seem to rewrite themselves for every epoch. (95)
In sum, the category of figuration is paramount because it involves structure and process simultaneously, and because by its very nature it insists on the primacy of interpretation. In this, it helps write the topsy-turvy world of film studies by restoring to the text themselves an integrity worthy of discussion, and by fostering an interplay of theory and interpretation rather than a dominance of the former. (159)
Interpretation invokes the context for meaning and establishes whatever is pertinent about such meaning. History is one of its most common guises as it brings the “otherness” of texts into the life of individuals and cultures. (172)