This
paper concentrates on two of
Bruce Conner’s works, A Movie (1958) and Report
(1963-67) and their representation of violence.
I will show how through his involvement with a mass visual medium, Conner toys with a
commodity promoting and maintaining an aesthetic of violence, an esthetization of violence. In the
first place, I will investigate A Movie to establish
formal strategies of representations and then use Report, to show how these representations reach full maturity and expression.
What
makes Conner’s works significant is that violence is already a by-product of representations of
a reality. We are no longer viewing a finely fictionalized rendition of a violent reality, where
the filmmaker has full control of the mode of narration and shooting process. Conner was indeed a
pioneer for his use of found footage, image appropriation, and the incorporation of junk and trash
in his creations. Consequently, no approach to these representations of violence would make sense
without surveying the artistic map surrounding the creations of the film, their locations, as well
as the era Conner lived in, and understanding why the artist chose the visual medium over other
mediums.
Born
in McPherson, Kansas, in 1933, Bruce Conner moved in the mid-fifties to San Francisco, then the
West Coast’s art center, the artistic locus for what would later be labeled the Beat Generation,
or Beatnik. The movement, in its initial phase, was
known as a social phenomenon. Its art was known as Funk Art. The Funk art movement was an attempt
to move away from the artistic institutions that until then had defined the aesthetic tastes and
artistic authorities. It was also a move against Modernism and its isolation from life, the
repudiation of the introspective Abstract Expressionism and Figurative painting, such as
Rothko’s, Johns, and Pollock. Art for the modernists was an object separated from life. Life
corrupted human spirit and creativity.
Born
as an underground movement, Funk art was not from academia but the street. Instead of
self-reflection as a shelter against the world’s danger and corruption, it embraced and
incorporated all aspects of life. The Korean War, the booming of a consumer society, eased by the
growth of television and mass media, the House Committee on Un-American Activities eager to
castigate deviations from the recognized political ideology, could be viewed as having
precipitated the genesis of the movement. In a climate where “norms and appearance and conduct
became increasingly rigid,” (Albright p82) young people grew restless. An unsatisfied youth,
sensing their destiny to be out of control was attracted to a life of art. Through drug and
alcohol experimentation, and love of music, young people began to mimic the life style of jazz
players. Improvisation became a form of creativity. Albright asserts that this life-style
appropriation encouraged the breakdown between the creator of art and the performer. Art at this
stage became a process rather than a result, a fully integrated way of life.
The
trend carried over to other artistic avenues. Eventually, objects of daily life found their way
into the artistic creations. Searching for greater freedom of expression, artists moved away from
the flat canvasses to the multi-dimensional assemblages. Artifacts from all walks of life, not
only from Western but also Eastern culture, were incorporated into the works. Windows, wheels,
photographs, broken bottles, etc. became part of the artistic landscape in sculpture and painting.
Life’s objects infused the art because art was life itself. This new emerging society was
perceived as shallow and scary. Often through an
ironic tone, the works of Funk artists reflected the dumbness and absurdity of life, the futility
of existence in the face of fear and loathing of the A-bomb. This approach was also an endeavor to
turn the ridiculous into the sublime, madness into sanity, violence into a beautiful thing. Jess
Collins, Wally Hedrick, Jay De Feo, Wallace Berman, and Bruce Conner, are the best known
representatives of the movement (if it was a movement).
All have left considerable imprints in Funk art of the Bay area (mostly based around North
Beach, Haight-Ashbury) with their assemblages, collages, “junk” constructions,
“paste-ups,” and “translations.”
These
are the artists and environment that Bruce Conner found when he arrived in San Francisco in 1957
from Nebraska, where he was studying. Conner was a Funk artist right from the start. His first
paintings were “thick encrustation of white oil on masonite, often cuts into shapes that
resembled rocks, fragments of wall, or scraps of wood (…),” (Albright p98). In 1958, Conner
founded the Rat Bastard Protective Society with the collaboration of Michael McClure. The reason
underlying the creation of RBPS matters because the artists involved only cared about the process
of creation and disregarded both technical artfulness and the life expectancy of their creations.
The artistic stance was to comment on society’s indifference and hostility towards their works.
As Conner phrases it: “People were making things with detritus of society, who themselves were
ostracized or alienated from full involvement with the society,” (Conner quoted in Duncan p107).
The
founding of RBPS corresponds with Conner’s first assemblages.
They consisted of disparate appropriations of found objects: jewelry, nylon stocking, old
shades, mirrors, photographs of pin-up girls, furs. From the get-go, Conner appeared to favor
sexual fetishism, religious icons (especially Mexican), which he wrapped in sinister atmospheres,
reminiscent of deterioration and death. The assemblages were covered with dust and dirt, often
giving the sensation of decay. The accessibility of
these constructions, nonetheless, was limited to a small circle of friends. These assemblages,
even though containing mass-produced objects and hints of technology, still were not the product
of the technology surrounding the era. Perhaps failing to reach a broad audience, or feeling its
indifference, Conner moved to films in 1958.
A
Movie was Conner’s first film. It consists
of a twelve-minute collage of found footage, “juxtaposed to emphasize the relationship between
sex and violence in American culture,” (Albright p100). Conner had never made a film previously.
He had bought some discarded reels from a photo-shop, without knowing what the reels contained,
and started to edit them. In a way reminiscent of his assemblages, he also added a piece of a blue
film that a friend had given him. Conner incorporated the pin-up footage at the beginning of A
Movie. The film launched Conner’s film career; he went on to become one of the most
prominent filmmakers of the independent scene in the 60’s. He was then at the avant-garde in
filmmaking for experimenting with stock footage and filmic collage in America. His most famous
films are A Movie (1958), Cosmic
Ray (1961), Report (1963-67), Dreamland (1976), Crossroads (1976), Marilyn
Five Times (1963-73), and Valse Triste
(1978).
Conner’s
influence is visible in the work of other filmmakers, especially Kenneth Anger and Robert Nelson.
Two main features distinguish his works, a speeding montage on the images juxtaposed with a
continuous soundtrack, which provides a based continuity and rhythm, and looping. The speed of the
montage and the troublesome associations it creates tend to engender a strong emotional response,
a “hostile outburst,” (Grindon p37). Moreover,
the extensive use of loops and repetitions give the films their well-known humorous, sarcastic,
and cynical qualities.
Conner’s
career evolved immensely in the late 60’s, through the 70’s, and up to the present day. Yet,
because of his preoccupation with mysticism, sex and violence, themes and motifs run through his
entire work. He returned to drawing, in the 70’s, using felt-tip and ballpoint pens, to depict
abstract and enigmatic squiggles and hieroglyphic lines. He produced photograms (photographs made
without a camera, exposition made by direct contact) of his own body in which the mystical nature
of light enhances the mystery of form and the physical representation of the human spirit. In the
late 70’s, he became involved with the Punk scene, another anti-establishment artistic movement,
which culminated with his collaboration with Devo, Mongoloid,
(1978) and David Byrne in 1981, America is Waiting.”
His
loved of Gospel music, however, got all of his attention throughout the following decade. In his
collages reminiscent of Max Ernst’s, Conner’s obsessions came to the front. Riddled with the
Christian imagery, the “Christ” series shows how absurdity in daily life is mixed with the
mystery of the universe. Conner only seems to have interest in “examining the underbelly of
conventional notions about beauty and morality” (Duncan p106).
Whether
Bruce Conner can be credited to have contributed to the breakdown between high and low culture,
which Funk Art, and later Pop Art and the Punk movement represented, he is certainly one of its
main practitioners. His main contribution stems from his experimental editing technique, his
disturbing re-arrangement of footage, that questions and exposes the very nature of mass media
production which generates meanings in the consciousness of our culture, in the most disturbing
way.
It
is precisely this media culture generating meanings that makes Conner’s works fascinating. Far
from the process of the artist working in isolation, Conner used technology producing visual
images and turned it against itself. By applying a
collage and assemblage mode of thinking to films, Conner had the possibility to move beyond the
limitations of painting and sculpture. Besides being widely accessible, film was a medium capable
of incorporating a vast range of cultural artifacts, such as music and installations. The medium
was also a perfect imitation of the capitalist mode of productions, using a technology to produce
highly emotionally laden responses. With the spread of television and the growth of a consumer
society to an unprecedented scale, film represented an appropriate aesthetic need reflecting a new
cultural climate. News and television programs were destined for an audience starved for
information and entertainment. Conner’s works stand apart from the static art objects present in
the margin of society that would seek “an exploration of the social determinants of the work and
the ideological impact the work had on its audience,” (JHGLTC p585).
Applying
this dogma, making extensive use of found footage and collage method, Conner completed a long
cherished project, “Report.” Report marked a
departure from A Movie. The twelve-minute film deals with the Kennedy assassination. Conner
started the film right after the murdering on Nov 22nd 1963, but did not complete it
until 1967. The film went through eight versions over the years, and its completion was made
possible by a Ford grant that gave Conner access to archives footage. Similar to America
is Waiting and A Movie, Report is entirely composed
of black and white found footage, and old archives, which date and predate the assassination. Yet,
unlike A Movie, Report
takes the representation of violence a step further. Not only does Conner depict a violent reality
through the editing process, but also the subject portrayed, the tragic ending of Kennedy’s
life, comments on the depiction and representation of violence in the visual medium. As already
initiated in A Movie,
the use of humor, and irony, makes Report, and its
treatment of JFK’ s assassination, a highly polemical film (unlike A Movie which is not).
For
this reason, the two films remain an extraordinary testimony to a cultural paradigm shift. The
films came to light when all the cultural and political forces came into interplay (now labeled
Postmodern). This postmodern sensibility rejected the possibility of an autonomous artist in a
capitalist society as both sterile and fictitious. The artists are the product of the society they
live in. The language, images, they use come from the culture they inhabit. The artists, on the
whole, are constituted by the culture. The Funk underground movement believed that isolation and
alienation prevented the artists from accessing the energies and debates taking place within the
culture. At the time of the making of A Movie, and the
events of JFK’s assassination, artistic creativity became impregnated with life and culture. The
artist delved into the world, annexed the culture in order not to be dominated by it, as a way to
reclaim a sense of identity. The films are the product of this artistic shift, where life and Art
fused together to the point where aesthetics and ideologies also merged. The films’ images of
violence are contrasted with an ironic approach to life. James sums up the situation:
“That
culture was informed by a persistent search for authentic experience, a search punctuated by
utopian visions and an optimism about merging technologies. And
yet that same culture was characterized by opposite tendencies, a growing recognition of the
mass-mediated aspects of life and the power of the economy to bend utopian visions to the service
of corporate profits,” (James quote in Simon p144).
This
tension is rampant in A Movie and Report. The films refer to a world of full artistic integration. The obliteration of
high and low culture assumes that the artwork by using modern technology could also comment on the
mystification of reality and its narration of history. Through the mass culture, a Western
society, with its pathological fictionalization of reality, could indeed appropriate history for
its own ends.
Yet, whether or not A Movie reflects a subversive account about the easiness to narrate a history of
mankind, Report certainly articulates this subversion.
*
* * *
Now
the films’ backgrounds have been exposed, some words about the definition of violence and the
legitimacy of its discourse are necessary. Understanding violence’s causality without digressing
into other disciplines remains a challenge. Knowing, however, the sociological and psychological
effects of why violence in today’s society is still broadly diffused, and has entered mainstream
arts, permits us to concentrate on the subject adequately. Theories
ascribing the modulation of violence over the years are far and wide.
They span from sacrificial and scapegoating rituals based in a psycho-mythological
approach; and to the economical and capitalistic necessities approach (the capitalist system
exposing its own paucity for meaning intensifies destruction rather than confessing its failure);
to the disappearance of reality altogether, “utopia achieved;” or better still to the
elaboration of a human metaphor allowing generations to transgress it.
Regardless of the perspective, all these theories carry something in common. Each inscribes
the thematic of violence broadly into three categories. At the individual level, how the self
responds to the macrocosmic exposure to violence; at a collective level, how the self is
annihilated; and at level of the legitimacy of the discourse of violence itself, its place and
effectiveness in the ideological discourse in today’s world, they all voice that violence has a
function. First, violence provides a debate where our numerous convictions are exacerbated. We
retain the conviction that understanding violence will cure all of our ills, yield a solution, or
simply provide an evanescent hope for the future. Second, violence is the reflection of a
sustained discourse about violence, a process of normalization that has an integral part in our
culture and, which during the process, does not exempt the films from having ludic and
entertaining qualities. Still, whether violence has a genuine social function complicates its definition.
Indeed,
of what does violence consist exactly? David Slocum offers an excellent expansive definition in
the introduction of his book Violence and American Cinema. Without repeating the entire
outline, for the purpose of this paper and for concision’s sake, I will use the word violence
broadly (with the hope to eschew a quarrel over the word’s legitimate terminology), from
describing harmful actions, aggressive, sadistic, or destructive behaviors, be they psychological
(such as threats), physical or sociological, exhibited by individuals, groups, and states, against
individuals, groups, states, animals, properties, and nature. The actions or behaviors can arise
out of from conditions such as racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, or xenophobia. Yet, although
understanding who has the authority to impose the term on a certain action, event, or behavior,
and not on another one, falls outside the scope of this paper, suffices to say that language does
play an important factor in the representation of violence merely because what constitutes a
violent or non-violent act is defined through language, which in turn suggests what is legal or
illegal violence. (A State has the legal right to use violent methods that individuals have not.)
Slocum rightly mentions at this stage that “prevailing standards of representation go far in a
given culture to produce and circumscribe violence,” (Slocum p3). Violence would manifest its
presence not only in actions and behaviors, but also in the film’s language, in its
construction.
Thus,
the films, because of the narrative constitution of the medium, question the nature of language
not only in the subject depicted, the diegetic content, but also in the fashion it is depicted,
notably the editing technique. For example, the juxtaposition of shots played at high velocity,
its kinetic energy, can add a violent aura to a scene. Both aspects help to shape a representation
of reality, either illusionistic or anti-illusionistic. Logically, the understanding of violence
is subject also to this duality. Conner’s films, because they result primarily from an editing
construction, fall prey to this definition and, ultimately, add depth to the subject treated.
*
* * *
Conner’s
A Movie offers a fascinating artifact to study violence
in films. Fascinating, because the film is highly controversial in its rejection of classical
methods of the filmmaking process. Through this remarkable alternative, Conner constructs a film
that represents violence at all levels of its production phases. The film is made without a camera
(has no camera movement), has no actor, no dialogue, or story. The film, as a matter of fact, is
nothing other than an aggregate of other films’ footage that Conner has patched together, a
recycling technique known as collage, montage, assemblage,
or even more problematically, compilation narrative. Conner’s piecing consists of an assemblage
of vastly disparate filmic sources, notably parts of blue movies, newsreels, documentaries,
narrative films, and pieces of leader. Not only is the representation of violence reflected in the
construction of reality (the content echoing it by representing a pictorial seemingly incoherent
disintegration) but also does the form emulates similar entropy. The film appears to mimic Dada
techniques celebrating irrationality, chance, and the ridiculous, via a discourse that reminds us
that form shapes content and is just as important. We must accept that through his experimental
approach, Conner “offers a cogent example of daring form and ideological address,” (Grindon
p2), which is not devoid a macabre humor and irony.
This
refusal to make use of the set of conventions in the filmmaking process already suggests a violent
critique against the political establishment and art movements. Viewed from this perspective, the
films would reflect a caustic ideological protest to which the aesthetic endeavor would
subordinate. “The filmmaker reminds us that process transforms meaning and can become an
ideological tool of devastating force,” remarks Grindon, (Grindon p43). Both form and content
are the violent voices of dissension. Violence here is to be understood as a socio-political as
well as artistic rejection at a dual level. On the one hand, the artist’s non-involvement in the
alteration of the footage implies an artistic rejection, a destruction of the medium, and, on the
other, the seemingly violent destruction is the negation of the filmic language, especially of
narration. The film bespeaks violence in the most violent fashion.
A
brief description of the films’ structures allows this duality to appear. A
Movie is structured in five parts, each corresponding to a phase of standard fiction narrative
structure (exposition/conflict, rising conflict, crisis, climax, and resolution). None includes
dialogue, camera, or actors. Their only common denominator rests on Respighi’s four parts tonal
poem The Pines of Rome (1924).
In that the parts of the movie correspond neatly with the parts of the tonal poem, the moods of
the film mirroring the moods and structure of the music.
The
first part (exposition) begins with a prologue. A black card monopolizes the screen, while a
euphoric music, with strong chivalric overtones, opens. Lots of march-like rhythmic brass tones
are heard in a fast tempo. The complete darkness is then followed by the name of the artist, Bruce
Conner, which remains on the screen for more than ten seconds. Flickers of brief inserted
pieces of leaders and geometrical shapes blink on the screen.
Some lines, “End of part Four,” for example, appear until a segment of found footage,
representing a naked woman removing her stockings, replaces them. At this stage, another card
announces the end of the film although the music shows no sign of abating or switching moods or
tempo. A long black silent pause succeeds this insert.
The
short footage with the woman stands out against the darkness of black cards, leaders, and written
title-cards. The young woman remains in mind
distinctively. Conner seems to announce a sexual theme, although the unusual anarchic beginning
favors a notion of chaos. The film, instead of reassuring the viewer that the narrative will
satisfy expectations, only encourages doubt, uncertainties, and entropy. Conner destroys all
cinematic associative narrative conventions during the opening.
The
second part (rising conflict) retains all the musical characteristics of the first one: energy,
speed, and colors. Several shots of a western film,
horses panting across a field, carriages darting, cars crashing, all occupy the screen. The action
moves first from left to right, then brutally from back to front. Horses and carriages come
flashing aggressively towards the viewers. A tank makes a transition; an elephant charges the
camera. The music supports the feeling of frenzy, agitation, race, and high dynamic competitions.
There are numerous repetitive crashes getting more and more violent. The car falling down the
cliff corresponds exactly to the culmination and screeching brass staccato. A roll of drums
anticipates the end of the movement. The film at this point has become more threatening and
confirms the entropic impression of the exposition. The second part concludes with a black insert,
The End, which precedes a long dark silent pause.
At
the opening of the third section (the crisis), the mood has radically shifted. The music is now
slow, pulsing. Whiny strings convey a magnanimous macabre sensation. A periodic gong marks a
musical cycle, adding emphasis to the sequence’s mysterious and sacred tone. The music precedes
the footage. The sequence begins once more with a black segment upon which the film’s title,
“A Movie,” quickly flashes. A brief shot of two topless indigenous women, wearing enormous
cone-shaped pyramid appears. A black insert replaces them, and a fade-in shows a large phallic
Zeppelin, viewed from different angles, flying in the sky. Another black insert succeeds, making
room for a pair of funambulists, before yet another black insert and a title-card with “A Movie
by Bruce Conner” invades the screen. The music gets louder, more intense. The instruments from
the rhythmic section add to the images’ dramatic emotional impetus. The famous sequence with the
submarine peeping at a pin-up girl, launching missiles, which results in an atomic explosion,
takes place. The missiles recall the graphic pattern of the Zeppelin, the atomic mushroom, the car
exploding at the end of the second segment. Swimmers, surfers, crashing in the waves, stunt men on
water-skies, recall the bikers fighting in the mud. As the magnitude of devastation increases with
each segment, so does the music’s tragic intensity. Each piece of footage functions as an
emotional leitmotiv. The music’s passionate magnitude matches the content of the shots. The
third section closes with a contrasted close-up of T. Roosevelt followed by a shot of a crumbling
suspended bridge. A long, dark, silent break occurs next.
The
fourth part (the climax) opens in complete darkness and is accompanied by an ominous music. The
tonality and texture carry apocalyptic resonance. The music sounds dark, lugubrious, dismal,
melancholic, tragic. This segment is by far the densest and most elaborate. This fourth segment
also represents the place where Conner was most involved in corrupting the footage. While in all
the other segments Conner mainly amalgamated the footage, in this last part, he actually
intervened to add some personal textual interferences through the editing process. A part of the
segment contains a series of dissolves: two planes flying on top of each other dissolves into a
volcano, which dissolves into the burning Hindenburg
Zeppelin, followed by a series of explosions, then a brief scene showing an archbishop crowning a
king, then a row of tanks wading across trenches. This montage showing the passage of time
collapses the diachronic eventfulness of the footage. It appears as a pastiche, a parody. Following
this montage, Conner has inserted swipes between the images of a snake charmer and a contorting
bridge. Another swipe precedes the shot of a man being assassinated by a shooting squad. A double
simultaneous fade-out-wipe occurs in the scene of Mussolini hanging. The inserted transitions
appear to mock feature films’ editing process.
Not
only does the music at this stage become the most dramatically intense, but also, in order to
isolate and emphasize each of these scenes, Conner has inserted a dark card into the film. The
“continuity” editing pattern breaks down completely. Unlike in the first three segments, each
piece of footage is separated. The insertion of black separations (dark inserts) gives the feeling
that the film’s pace gets either slower or faster. The inserts could represent a process
enhancing time compression and/or ellipses in the narration.
The
black inserts belong to fade-in/out technique. They indicate the passage of time or space, or
both. They also fragment the narration and punctuate the story’s flow. As the content of the
shots becomes more and more drastic, more violent and destructive, so does the frequency of the
black cards. This increasing magnitude is suggested with the complete darkness that follows the
ultimate annihilation, self-annihilation—and death: hundreds of people lie dead on a river’s
shore; an enormous mushroom from an A-bomb rises in the sky, writhing kids suffering from malaria
agonize in pain; a dirigible crashes in a big ball of flames. Nothing survives death. The audience
is severed from potential absorption in an anti-illusionistic fashion where consciousness is
forced to remain alert.
The
last segment (the resolution) constitutes the fifth part. Suddenly, the tone vacillates. A manatee
swims underwater, then a deep-sea diver replaces it. He
reels around a shipwreck and disappears inside the hull. The music reaches its ultimate paroxysm.
The tone is bright and induces a feeling of hope, renewal of faith, and peacefulness. This
last section brings out strong Judeo-Christian feelings where death must precede rebirth.
Resurrection becomes possible after redemption. This symbolism is clearly exposed with the closing
footage of the blasting sun shimmering over the sea’s surface, which contrasts with the fatalism
depicted in the four previous segments. This suggests that despite the danger and violence endemic
in the world, be it on the earth, sky, or in the sea, life will continue.
Despite
its radical approach, the film reveals that A Movie does
not suffer from complete incoherence or seditious anarchism. Indeed, the found footage is not
patched together in random order. The film, on the contrary, exhibits a narrative arc, an overall
global structure imitating the set of conventions found in feature narrative films, here
understood as encompassing the basic structural elements of fiction films. A close analysis of the
diegetic tone and style suggests that, during the conception of the film, the filmmaker has taken
special care to organize the footage by thematic groups, each group contributing to the logical
progression supported by the global structure. The violent exposition that both content and form
initially portrayed indicates that the content’s diegesis subordinates the form and in doing so
favors an ideological comment. The film is about destruction and rebirth, the denouncing of the
historical use of violence, and at the same time the consolidation of its implementation through a
sardonic re-writing of history. The depiction of an apocalyptic world rests on a logical narrative
progression that the form supports. Conner shows that mankind’s historical construction of
disorder, chaos, and anarchy still has an order. Violence in A
Movie is controlled.
This
statement leads us to investigate whether the film is first of all narrative (narration is context
based) or ahistorical. Warren Bass observes that
Conner’s uses of “fondness” (timeworn materials) for his images suggests already a strong
sense of past tense (Bass p15), which inscribes the materials within a fixed period of time.
Although the scenes have a past history, while we watch them they exist only in a virtual present.
The new narration of past events must be recognized as a present narration of a different nature.
A temporal disjuncture results from two incompatible present tenses that ultimately deny the
linearity of the present. Bass claims that these two
presents (present narration, present picture) cancel each other. We can only infer the disjunctive
synchronicity in the immediate present, (Bass p17); the present of the past remains inaccessible. A
Movie becomes a zeugmatic film. The film gives the appearance of narrating a story while at
the same time it rejects the process of narration by undermining it as a spectacle. Unlike in
narration, there is always a risk in spectacles, precisely because of their non-repetitive nature.
This
is one of the major features that differentiate A Movie
from Report. The former works by compression. The film
attempts to narrate the history of a spectacle, which is based on a collection of disparate and
unrelated events. The film mirrors a personal rendition of a perception of reality or history. Report,
on the other hand, works by expansion. The film
refuses to narrate a precise and real historical event. This difference explains why A
Movie comes across as a more naïve or immature work. The film has none of the violent depth
and radical sarcasm of Report, which condemns the idea
of the spectacle.
Still,
whether conscious or unconscious, the editing choices constitute one of the tools the filmmaker
uses to vehicle and create new meanings (the other one being music). Through this assemblage of
non-related bits of footage, the filmmaker expunges the original meaning of the footage, removes
it from its historical context. Thus, through the process of intentional juxtapositions, Conner
creates both a new context and a new history. The technical corruption that occurs during the
editing reflects the depth of the violent discourse.
A
Movie, therefore, should be analyzed in relation to its historical context. The film bears
signs of time merely because of the footage’s content. The
film is based entirely on past events. Excerpts of documentaries, newsreels, a Western film
relating to the Manifest Destiny, a blue movie, all create a fracture among sequences and
segments. The film, dated 1958, insinuates that the then-present is explained by causes found in
the past. Since the past has been violent, the present can only retrace, create, infer, and depict
violent representations. Since all aspects of life are violent, the work of art cannot be but a
violent reflection, the past being mirrored the present. Bass remarks that Conner describes the
tragic-foolishness of the human condition. “He matches action by cutting on motion to create
absurd continuities out of diverse chase scenes,” (Bass p17). Disjunctive impulses, reminiscent
of the fracture of space in Cubism, of time in Futurism, and the concepts of de-familiarization
and foregrounding influenced by Modernism, underline the risk involved in associating various
sources of footage distorting the spatial and temporal parameters.
Most
of the articles read for this paper do underline the important role of the associative character
of the film’s structure. Atkinson observes that “all films collaged from reused footage
struggle between the interrogation of mass-media image-use and the examination of the fragility of
cinematic meaning itself (...),” (Atkinson p81). Conner, in A
Movie, purposely associates thematic images in order to create new meanings while playing with
the rule of continuity editing. The most striking example of this is the famous shot of the
submarine’s periscope showing us a young woman lying on a bed, which is followed by two missiles
darting toward a distant target, and finishing with the extreme long shot of a nuclear explosion.
Taken in a syntagmatic progression, which imitates a chronological progression, the film does
indeed suggest a causal relationship between these shots.
There
is, effectively, nothing compelling the viewers to perceive the film as such. Conner, in repeating
similar graphic patterns (shots of cars racing, planes flying and crashing in succession) could
have just as well insisted on the parallel nature of these shots. The progression would then adopt
a paradigmatic scope, with all the complications that the term implies, notably its ahistorical,
substitutive, and metaphorical features. A paradigmatic reading espouses the idea of repetition
tied to the spectacle, whereas a syntagmatic one suggests narration related to the notion of
simulation. Thus, nothing can refute that the
disparate shots have to be perceived and understood in a syntagmatic mode. Each shot could
represent isolated single instances that bear nothing in common but merely repeat each other. Some
scenes recur over and over again, while others make a brief appearance and never come back again.
The shots are self-contained. They do not have causal or temporal associations beyond the film’s
universe, but only in potential relation to each other. A Movie is a work providing no answer in regard to past and post correlations. A
paradigmatic reading emphasizes parallel, crosscutting, editing concerns, while a syntagmatic one
stresses a single linear narrative seeking cohesion.
The
diegetic content of the found footage here takes all its significance. Paradoxically, while
working in association with a syntagmatic context, the connections between bits of films create
visual metaphors, which dehistoricize the footage and give them a substitutive nature that
ultimately contextualize the whole film in a historical context, the time of its conception.
There would appear to be a contradiction in the understanding of the film between the
constitutive nature of the material used to make the film and the film’s conception. The duality
of these historical associations, forced into a rendition of ahistorical meanings, creates a
violent tension, a tension reflected in the film’s violent diegetic content. Each shot must be
seen as delineated within its own self-enclosed world. Two consecutive shots bearing the same
repetitive thematic, a carriage racing towards a camera followed by a tank jumping towards the
camera, generate a violent tension. Where transitions between shots should be smooth and
invisible, the association of elephant and tank conveys abrupt jump-cuts. It is because the
appropriation of footage dehistoricizes the materials' historicity that Atkinson claims that
Conner’s films are “relatively apolitical and free of dogma” (Atkinson p80). It is this
“freedom” that estheticizes the violence in the film. The film appears to estheticize violence
only because the images are forced into meaningful connections.
The
role of editing remains vital given that the stringing of disparate elements reinforces the
negation of their connections. Charney claims: “Both story and character fail with the
historical and aesthetic position,” (Charney p52). Yet, given the violent and omnipresent
threats existing within the footage: news reels of stunts and disasters, blue movies, a Hopelong
Cassidy western, a German propaganda film, compilations of racing-car accidents, and several types
of leaders, this anti-position is not necessarily true. The film’s structure shows how the
aesthetic mood prevails. A brief historical perspective is necessary here to show how the
ideological interpretation is undermined.
A
Movie’s Time and Space reminds of the technique of documentary filmmaking developed by the
Russian Film School of the post Russian revolution, which sought to educate the masses. Even
though both Eisenstein and Conner have some similarities in their ample uses of spatio-temporal
expansion and compression (innovated by Kuleshov), Conner’s uses of juxtaposition are different
from Eisenstein’s, who favored an illusionistic cinema based on expansion (story time greater
than real time). Not only does Conner recapitulate the history of mankind within less than twelve
minutes, but he also visits a staggering number of different locations. Conner works by
compression (story time smaller than real time). In fact, in the film, story time has no set
frame. This editing difference is already playing against an ideological interpretation.
Vertov’s
montage technique, on the other hand, comes closer to Conner’s free associations. Vertov
is famed for having transformed reality without changing the ontological diegesis of the images,
simply by structuring the footage in a carefully crafted story, essentially anti-illusionistic.
This technique gives the advantage of endowing the footage with two conflicting authorial
intentions, the author of the original footage and the restored footage. Atkinson suggests that
“by decontextualizing cinematic fragments, filmmakers like Conner send them into a
free-associative abyss, where they can signify nearly anything in nearly any context,” (Atkinson
p79). A conspicuous disparity between the filmmaker’s formal political aims and the diegesis of
the original footage destroys any possible fixed meaning. O’Pray echoes this tendency when he
underlines, “the neurotic form of documentary filmmaking,” should Conner’s work be similar
to Vertov’s, “whose idea of making strange” is nothing less than an attempt to document the
real, to propound a social criticism through a politics of perception (O’Pray p316). Conner ’s
work would represent a sharp ideological statement. Vertov’s involvement in documentary
consisted in inventing new ways to view the world and society. A
Movie, on the other hand, cannot be labeled as such. Unlike Vertov, Conner does not control
the technical aspects of the shooting process but only the editing one. Conner has to subordinate
to the footage’s diegesis, and for this reason can only orchestrate the footage in a spectacle
of violence.
The
main question ensuing from this authorial duality is whether the recycling of images, within the
frame of violence, represents substitutions or cumulative associations of meanings that enhance
the violence. Substitutions would imply a replacement of a violent image without a gain of
intensity and magnitude in the range of depicted violence. Associations, on the contrary, would
work towards an endlessly growing paroxysm. History is generally understood as a rational and
logical scripting of the past, corresponding to a logical chain of events—the past events
derived from logical causalities. Conner awakens complex readings of his film. No reason exists
why the viewers should understand why an elephant charging the camera results in a tank flying
into the camera. Indeed, like the case of Vertovian distorted
views of reality, the syntagmatic process of editing appears forced into an ahistorical,
metaphorical field, instead of an historical and metonymical one. History strives to locate causes
affecting an event and narrates them accordingly. The
viewer’s perception of reality rests on the interplay of the ontological and epistemological
nature of Conner’s construct where the original footage is uprooted from its representation in
order to be better recontextualized. This recontextualization problematizes historical constructs.
Yet, it is the refusal to de-process the footage’s ontological “nature” which engenders the
violent outburst during the scripting. The epistemological construct is denied, contrary to
Vertovian principles of narration, where crosscut segments contrasted with each other promote a
sense of coherence. For Conner, the substitutive quality of the footage within each segment
becomes redundant and destroys the metonymical connections to the point where they cancel each
other out. Should historical constructs work by way of substitutions, this would reject the
aesthetical process.
By
taking great care to arrange each segment according to themes, Conner exposes the aleatory nature
of our reliance on narration. His refusal to corrupt the ontological diegesis of the footage and
to associate it in a narrative logic that expunges an epistemological reading, manages to recreate
a work that destroys all preconceived notions of filmmaking. Peterson points out that Conner’s
films often appear narrative because Conner draws especially dramatic material from narrative
films (Peterson p54). Conner’s film is constructed
around a double-layered structure, containing sequences of individual images incorporated into a
global structure, bearing the appearance of “an episodic” narrative (Conner quoted in Peterson
p55), characterized by an antipathy toward the internal and psychological, and rejecting
conventional narrative structure.
The
film promotes the posture of uncertainty and endless doubt. There is no attempt to produce a work
that explains an apriory and posteriory
causality. The footage begins in the most ambivalent fashion, in media
res, and closes off with an open-ended resolution. From the outset, the filmmaker’s attitude
questions (through the use of found footage) the epistemological foundation of human narrative, by
creating a work of chaos in the most coherent fashion. Because it is paradigmatic of film’s
other structure (imitating well-honed definitions of dramatic structure), A Movie is nothing else than the discursive disintegration of the content. Its global
structure reflects both a deeply anchored and metaphorized reality.
Consequently,
the footage can progress in only two possible fashions, either by way of metonymies or metaphors.
Metonymies, contrary to metaphors, can be absent from the story. It is a device often used in
commercial feature films for the sake of sparing viewers from unnecessary details. The viewers
infer the absences in the story themselves. A hero
awakening and then seen driving to work would be a perfect example. The gap from the timing of the
waking up to the car trip is bridged by the viewers who supply the absences, the indeterminacies,
with their own knowledge. Narrative films are in essence deeply metonymical, because they are full
of “holes.”
In
the case of metaphorical narrative, gaps cannot exist. The viewers cannot supply information that
is absent. It is only the juxtaposition of two shots that provides new meanings, imagery or
fantasy. Should this process fail, viewers would assume that the gap is a transition, the starting
point of a new spatial or temporal account. The black inserts between each segment perform this
part. “Black [inserts] play the role of bridges” (Bass p16).
If I see a carriage with demented horses dashing towards the camera, an elephant charging,
then a tank flying towards me, a sense of threat and aggression is awakened. The threat comes
alive through direct juxtapositions. Proximity supplies danger—the empty space does not.
Furthermore,
the film does not carry semantic features (two metonymical images denote the content of their
representation) but rather pragmatic ones (visual metaphors connote the diegetic content with
meaningful units of representation).
Given this overview, A Movie emerges as a compilation narrative that functions with metaphorical equivalents.
A Movie is then a film of presence, of a free-floating
present. For this reason we must assume that each metaphorical segment unravels in real time. And
since the film bears no resemblance to reality, the visual metaphors contribute to the
estheticization of the depicted violence.
There exist also two types of metaphors in avant-garde compilation narrative. Centripetal
metaphors involve a defamiliarization of the object of focus in order to make the interpolated
object more vivid. The short sequences involving the submarine, Marilyn Monroe, and the torpedoes,
followed by the atomic mushroom, are a perfect example. In a centripetal case, the emphasis
remains on the narrative intent and would exclude the insertion of Marilyn who should not pertain
to the war scene. Centrifugal metaphors work in reverse. The narrative undergoes a
defamiliarization of the process; the accentuation is on the anachronistic insert, in this case
Marilyn herself. A major problem ensues from the compilation narrative since it relies heavily on
metaphor. Rather than commenting on the elements of the basic story, they end up representing it.
This
is the main point suggested during the opening scene with the “girlie film.” Given the context
preceding the sequence as well as following it, both a centripetal and centrifugal metaphor
becomes possible. Does the undressing woman depreciate the presence of the film’s title, bits of
leader, and intertitles? Or, is she depreciated in order to enhance these latter items? The choice
of focus on the viewers’ part yields opposite narrative inferences. This metaphorical approach
subverts narrative expectations. Metaphors have then the ability to defuse the shots’ contents
by forcing viewers into compulsory meaningful investigations.
The syntagmatic habit of viewing coerces the viewers to actively deduce some sort of
understanding. The emphasis is then displaced on the causal relationship between the disparate
elements. We no longer see either the naked woman or the bits of black leader, but rather the
productive interaction between the frames. Metaphors become processes based on the perspectival
choice of placements. They are an example of how the incorporation of life objects within works of
art also creates a double interpretation. Centripetal metaphors direct the attention on to the
footage, on life itself, while centrifugal ones call attention to the medium itself, the art.
The
question remains as to whether A Movie can be something
else other than the reflection of the materials the film is made of, a mock-epic, parody of
art-life, something which can be removed from its historical context. Knowing the gruesome
political climate at the end of the Fifties, with Senator McCarthy spreading the Red scare, the
Cold War, the Korean war, the movements of independence in Third-world countries, Mao in China,
the Suez Canal crisis, the beginning of conflicts in Vietnam, A
Movie encloses the intertextuality of its origins. Its historical context cannot be severed
from it. If the film truly estheticizes its violence, it can only do so against the frame of
history. The double-layer, previously mentioned, in relation to history, adopts a double-logic:
[In
double-logic] one principle emphasizes the primacy of event over meaning, that is, insists upon
event as the origin of meaning; the other stresses the primacy of meaning and its requirements,
that is, insists upon events as the effect of a will to meaning. The first principle emphasizes
the logical priority of story over discourse; the second stresses the reverse and makes story the
product of discourse. (JHGLTC p527)
To
view A Movie as a possible rendition of History,
straight away, suggests that the work would have ideological aims. Yet, since we have already
concluded that the film progresses by way of metaphors, we are left stranded with a crippling
contradiction. The story neither prevails over the discourse nor the discourse over the story. The
film’s metaphorical tone favors instead an aesthetical mood, where violence appears
free-floating.
A judicious choice since Respighi was famous for his eclectic musical style (collage method),
notably the blending of Russian Romantic such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Impressionist such as
Debussy, and Modernist such as Ravel, all of which are extremely discernible in the
“Pines”. Given Conner’s synthesis of found materials, the choice of composer imitates
Conner’s eclecticism. Let’s not forget that although the film bears all the appearances of
an entropic enterprise, the music provides some solid foundations.
Conner works, again, against the grain of tradition. In operas, tonal poems, and
commercial films, lyrics and images come first before the music.
The music, with the exception of extant pop tracks, is customized to the film’s
length. In A
Movie, this tendency is abridged. Conner taylored the film around the existing piece of
music. The timing of each sequence corresponds exactly to each movement of Respighi’s piece.
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