Plantinga: Emotion and Reason

In “Spectator Emotion and Ideological Film Criticism”, Carl Plantinga argues that a Brechtian dualistic approach as overly simplistic. What Plantinga defines as Brecht’s “moralistic opposition between ‘feeling’ and ‘reason’” (PF) represents, I believe, a misunderstanding about the way in which humans make moral judgments. While certainly, there are Holywood films which play cheap tricks on our emotions by offering pornographically glorified pseudo-realities, which can be seen in any Schwarzenegger action blockbuster, for example, to suggest that reason must be devoid of feeling is dangerously inhuman. I would argue that the vast majority of the moral framework that guides what we would view as a just and praiseworthy society is based on the way the issues in question make us feel. We have banned cruel and unusual punishment because we are repulsed by the thought that humans can be legally made to suffer extreme physical and emotional trauma. No matter how effective torture may be as an interrogation method, the majority of American citizens view indulgence and utilization of these methods as degrading to our society and culture. If torture is so effective, then pure reason should tell us that we absolutely should torture; however, reason alone is not an adequate metric for determining moral propriety. We do not believe in torture, because of the emotional relationship human beings share. We naturally empathize with each other, and to disregard this emotional connection is dehumanizing. It makes us less human. To feel compassion for another person is not a matter of reason. Rather, it is inherently emotional. Likewise, the civil rights movement in America gained national support when people were faced with video images of their fellow humans being beaten by police, mauled by dogs, and knocked down by fire hoses. One could argue that reason alone has and will lead to immoral behaviors in our society. At the birth of our nation, slavery was a Constitutionally protected institution. Despite the fact that many founding fathers, including slave owners like George Washinton and Thomas Jefferson, felt that slavery was a moral wrong, it was kept for pragmatic economic and political reasons. Compassion and emotional connection to their fellow human beings was ignored, in favor of a reasoned approach to the nation’s political and economic condition. Even though this was a reasoned rational approach to the question of slavery, every sane human being can agree that this decision to keep slavery was morally despicable.

Our Narrator, who art in Fabulas

The question “does film require a narrator?” is interesting mainly because it raises other important questions. It also forces us to examine our film viewing experience and try to determine why we follow films the way we do. Is there a train a thought we're following? The power of the image versus the power of langauge again come into conflict. Does film have a singular narrator, implied or not, who guides us through the film, or does the film simply guide itself? They seem at first to just be two different ways of speaking, but in fact there are distinctions which need to be made if we are to speak at all meaningfully about agency in film. For example, Chatman's notion of film communicating to the viewer gives film that agency. I initially agree with Chatman because I feel guided through narrative, and I think of narratives as communicating to the viewer in some way.
I also think this question is more theological than we realize. To question whether or not a viewer following along segments of film is guided by a narrator seems equivalent to me to asking whether a person watching their life go by is instructed by a kind of cosmic narrator. In fact, Bordwell's appeal to Occam's razor in affirming that he doesn't need a narrator in the concluding paragraph of his article assures me that he has these concerns in mind. What may or may not be a problem is the fact that he attributes agency to film, whereas Chatman says that's basically a way of saying there's always an implied narrator. However, while I agree with Bordwell's theology, I agree with Chatman's theory of narrative. I'm optimistic with both Bordwell and Chatman that film has the capabilities to present literary narrative, using a narrator of course.

She Loves Who?

Arguably the greatest film of all time, Casablanca leaves its audience with one issue unresolved by leaving one question unanswered: Does Ilsa love Rick of Victor Laszlo more? Or does it? Is this question really unanswered or has the answer, so obvious to audiences of the period, simply become unanswerable through a contemporary lens? Let’s be frank. With more than fifty percent of marriages ending in divorce, marriage is not what it used to be. Marriage is no longer viewed as a sacred institution necessary for survival. Bearing children is no longer a necessary step toward a successful marriage. In the nineteen forties, when Casablanca was released, divorce was a sin committed rarely by immoral people. Marriage was about duty to God and humanity. Today, marriage is about finding someone who makes you happy, nurturing a romantic love for each other, and maybe having children. For the original audience of Casablanca, Rick was a jaded, cynical anti-hero. He was a saloon owner and a lothario. While Rick was cool and seductive and even a man with a good heart, he was not the model of a good father. On the other hand, Victor Laszlo was the pillar of moral fortitude. He was a man who worked and fought tirelessly with great personal sacrifice for what he believed in. Victor Laszlo is the model of a good provider and a good father. Someone who is totally dependable and loyal to his kin. While he lacks the style and charm of Rick, these qualities would make him less noble. Victor Laszlo keeps faith with his beliefs, his comrades, and his wife even in the face of brutal torture at the hands of his Nazi captors. He is unyielding in his commitment and even impresses Rick. Rick on the other hand is selfish. He abandoned his beliefs when they became too difficult and turns his back on the world. He drunkenly curses Ilsa and implies that the woman he loves is a whore. For Ilsa and a World War 2-era audience, Rick is an escape from the troubles of the world. He is a lover with whom she escapes emotionally; however, in doing so she runs from her problems. For people of the period, the relevant question was who is the better husband. Clearly, the answer is Victor Laszlo. The film leaves us not with an unresolved question but with Rick facing the fact that he is not ready to be a husband and a father. We are left with Rick and Louis as two boys beginning their journey to become men, and Victor and Ilsa as husband and wife on their way to becoming father and mother.

Sympathy for Brendan aka Night Hawk

In Engaging Characters, Murray Smith discusses what he believes are the three components of sympathy: recognition, alignment, and allegiance. Smith seems to frame allegiance as the key to sympathizing with the character. As Smith puts it, “by engaging with the character on the level of allegiance, our responses… are sympathetic rather than empathetic”. In thinking about this I am reminded of the masterpiece movie Step Brothers. In Step Brothers we begin with recognition of and alignment with the character Brendan, also known as Night Hawk. Brendan is a forty year-old bachelor who lives with his mother, has no girlfriend, plays with toys, and pretends to be a ninja. The entire film is aligned with Brendan and the audience recognizes him as a human being with many, many problems. Throughout the film we experience Brendan’s life and emotions. We see his heartache and angst as his mother remarries and moves in with Robert Doback. We understand that even though Brendan moves with his mother he is threatened that Mr. Doback, as Brendan calls him, may steal his mother away. We empathize with Brendan’s fear of a male rival in his new equally aged and equally developmentally challenged stepbrother, Dale Doback. We see this fear turn to joy and love as Brendan discovers a kindred spirit in Dale and his immature antics. However, through all this our relationship with Brendan is restricted to intellectual empathy and cannot make the jump to emotionally supportive and approving sympathy. Despite Brendan’s problems, the audience is left with the nagging impulse to tell Brendan to get off the couch and get a job. However, Brendan’s life comes to a head when he ruins his mother’s marriage, tries to kill his step brother, and is forced to live on his own. Brendan gets a job at his brother’s company and embarks on a mission to save his mother’s marriage, reconcile with Dale, and get his family back together. Brendan willingly crushes his child-like free spirit to become a responsible adult and help others. It is at this point, where the audience recognizes that Brendan is capable of self-sacrifice and overcoming selfish behaviors to help others, that we form allegiance with Brendan and empathy becomes sympathy. Where before Brendan and his antics were an amusing curiosity and his suffering worthy only of empathy, now that Brendan has taken steps toward adulthood we become emotionally invested in him and our empathy changed to sympathy. The audience has an emotional desire to see Brendan succeed. So while recognition and alignment were a necessary foundation, allegiance was the key to inspiring the audience’s sympathy for Brendan, aka Night Hawk.

Chatman's Cinematic Narrator

In The Cinematic Narrator, Seymour Chatman makes that point that “it is not that the viewer constructs but that she reconstructs the film’s narrative… from the set of cues encoded in the film”. Chatman makes this comment in response to Bordwell’s assertion that narrative in film is constructed by the viewer and cannot be constructed by the creator because there is no single creator to construct a single coherent narrative. When considering this debate, I am reminded of Homer’s ancient call to the Muse, which is a call that all great creators make. Great art, I would argue, is less a product of the awkward machinations of our conscious mind than it is something channeled from deep within our subconscious. Ernest Hemingway was almost always belligerently intoxicated by whiskey and wine whenever he sat down to write. Like him many other authors and artists have accomplished their best work under the influence of any number of intoxicants and inebriants. They did not do this because it made their conscious minds better at producing art, they did this to obliterate their conscious mind and to keep it from obstructing what only the subconscious can produce. To create a narrative is not to consciously control one’s creative juices. Rather, it is to let go and allow the mind to go where it will. That a collective group rather than a single person constructs a film does not detract from the validity of its narrative. On the contrary, I believe it brings more creative power to the final product. If, according to Bordwell, the viewer constructs a film’s narrative, then every great story told through film has been a matter of pure coincidence. I find this highly unlikely and am inclined to agree with Chatman that the viewer is reconstructing. I think it much more likely that a group of people can play off each other’s ideas and talents to channel a narrative into a film. That this narrative is not controlled by a single person is irrelevant. The relevant factor determining the quality of the narrative is how well the various participants can mesh with each other to produce a good narrative. If they can then the narrative should not be considered an invention of the viewer, but a collaborative effort to encode a set of cues into the film and create a quality film that will strike a chord with its audience.