Lyotard - Acinema

Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology A Fihn Theory Reader Edited by Philip Rosen Columbia University Press New York Rosen. PN 1995.43'01 86-2619 ISBN 0-231-05880-2 ISBN 0-231-05881-0 (pbk. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Narrative.) P [0 9 8 7 6 Book design by Ken Venezio . lectures. essays. ideology. 1. Includes bibliographies. Moving-pictures-Philosophy-Addresses.Columbia University Press New York Oxford Copyright © 1986 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Printed 111 the United States of America Tills book is Smyth-sewn. I. Philip. N34 1986 791. apparatus. dirty. Publtshed as "L'Acinema" in Cinelli'" TllcMic. Reprinted by permission of the author. a shot.[20] Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard Acinell1a The Nihilism of Convened. Conventional Movements Cinematography is the inscription of movement. and translation used by permission of The Johns Hopkllls University Press. for the ftlm as a whole. in the fum sequence. Learning the techniques of filmmaking involves knowing how to eliminate a large number of these possible movements. of a gorgeous head of hair a la RenOIr. unsteady. and lens. overexposed. For example. sequence. and exclude them? If no movements are picked out we will accept what is fortuitous. It seems that image. movements of the fmal script and the spatiotemporal synthesis of the narration (decoupage). unclear. sort out. all these again plus the cuts and splices of editing. those of lights. and cliff edges appear. those of the actors and other moving objects. say. 1973) and trans­ lated in Wide Angle (1978). Icctllres (Paris: Ed Klillcksieck. Thus there is a crowd (nonetheless. a writing with 1110vements­ all kinds of movements: for example. And over or through all these movements are those of the sound and words coming together with them. frame. a throng of possible moving bodies which are candidates for inscription on film. poorly framed. a countable crowd) of elements in motion.59. and ftlm must be constituted at the price of these exclusions. Here arise two questions that are really quite naive considering the delibera­ tions of contemporary cine-critics: which movements and moving bodies are these? Why is it necessary to select. . outlines of incongruoLls Islands. upon viewing it you flI1d that somethlI1g has come undone: all of a sudden swamps. suppose you are working on a shot in video. 2(3): 53. in the film shot. colors. confused. A scene from elsewhere. worthless even as an insertion because it will not be repeated and taken up again later. but productive. is inscribed as a plus or minus on the ledger book which is the film. . A match once struck is conslJlTIed. We are not demanding a raw cinema. a scene not related to the logic of your shot. We observe that if the mistake is eliminated it is because of its incongruity. representing nothing identifiable. And yet . Therefore. for it is a movement belonging to the circuit of capital: merchandise/ match -> merchandise/labor power -> money/wages -> merchandise/match. No movement. is valuable because it returns to something else. And the order of the whole has its sole object in the functioning of the cinema: that there be order in the movements. . is valuable only insofar as it is exchangeable for other objects and in terms of equal quantities of a definable unity (for example. So you cut it out. the hissing of the tmy flame. the changing colors. in this case the movement. has been added. and those of the form "film music" for the sound track . but on the condition that its disappearance makes room jor still other objects (consumption). Such a process is not sterile. every move­ ment put forward sends back to something else. it is production in the widest sense. This oppression consists of the enforcement of a nihilism of movements. . and to protect the order of the whole (shot and/or sequence and/or film) while banning the intensity it carries. Pyrotechnics Let us be certain to distinguish this process from sterile motion. that the movements be made in order. as Dubuffet demanded an art brut. to be valuable the object must move: proceed from other objects ("production" in the narrow sense) and disappear. because it is thus potential return and profit. We are hardly about to form a club dedicated to the saving of rushes and the rehabilitation of clipped footage.350 Jean-Franfois Lyotard lurching forth before your startled eyes. the lIght flashing at the height of the blaze. that they make order. The so-called impression of reality is a real oppression of orders. quantities of money). the consumption is not sterile. is given to the eye/ear of the spectator for what it is: a simple sterile difference in an audiovisual field. But when a child strikes the matchhead to see what happens-just for the fun of it­ he el"Uoys the movement itself. Instead. those of narration for the instan­ tiation of language. the death of the tiny pIece of wood. The only genuine movement with which the cinema is written is that of value. The law of value (in so-called "political" economy) states that the object. arising from any field. If you use the match to light the gas that heats the water for the coffee which keeps you alert on your way to work. an undecidable scene. Writing with movements-cinematography-is thus con­ ceived and practiced as an incessant organizing of movements following the rules of representation for spatial localization. it is essential that the entire erotic force invested in the simulacrum be promoted. At the end of Beyond the Pleasure PrinCIple Freud cites them as an example of the combination of the life and death instincts. It is thus that Adorno said the only truly great art is the making of fIreworks: pyrotechnics would simulate perfectly the sterile consumption of energies in jouissance. The discussion of cinema and representational-narrative art in general begins at tllis point. instead of productive/ COI1SUl1lable objects. enclosed in a whole ordered by constitutive laws (in a structured group. what the physicist calls the dissipation of energy. as a composite of decompositions. its movement. Normal genital sexuality leads to child­ birth. should not be conceived primarily as belonging to the category of representation. would be (whether genital or sexual or neither) that motion which in going beyond the point of no return spills the libidinal forces outside the whole. but normal pleasure hides it in a movement of return. It is possible that they are also at work in the truly active forms of experimental and underground cinema. for example). blissful intensities. in­ cluding that giving rise to a hysterical attack. simulacrums. in his own movement. compensated for by them. vain. and in particular. as the paradoxical product of t h e d i sorder of the drives. Acil1el1Ja 351 He enjoys these sterile differences leading nowhere. These two poles are immobility and excessive movement. these uncompensated losses. But he is thinking of pleasure obtained through the channels of "normal" genital sexuality: all jOl<issan[e. to a perverse scenario. a simulacrum of pleasure in its so-called "death instinct" component. But the motion of pleasure as such. These two seemingly contradictory currents appear to be those attracting whatever is intense in painting today. that is. Two directions are open to the conception (and production) of an object. . a cinematographic object. Thus if he is assuredly an artist by producing a simulacrum. raised. and the child is the return of. and burned in vain. In letting itself be drawn toward these antipodes the cinema insensibly ceases to be an ordering force. are distinguished by this sterility. or contrariwise. displayed. at the expense of the whole (at the price of the ruin and disintegration of this whole). rather. insofar as they give rise to perversion and not solely to propagation. split from the motion of the propagation of the species. like the representations which imitate pleasure. Joyce grants tllis privileged position to fireworks in the beach sequence in Ulysses. it produces true. genital sexuality. contains the lethal component. he is one most of all because this simulacrum is not an object or worth valued for another object. or on. It is not composed with these other objects. Intense enjoyment and sexual pleasure (fa jOl<issance). a word dear to Klossowski) that misspends energy. understood in the sense Klossowski gives it. A simulacrum. In lighting the match the child eI�oys this diversion (detournement. On the contrary. conforming to the pyro­ technical imperative. it is to be conceived as a kinetic problematic. He produces. and the bureaucracy. films. so the film produced by an artist working in capitalist industry (and all known industry is now capitalist) springs from the effort to eliminate aberrant movements. If film direction is a directing and ordering of movements it is not so by being propaganda (benefiting the bourgeoisie some would say. is the work of Eros and Apollo disciplining the movements. line. in Beyo'1d the Pleasure Principle. These death drives are just outside the regime delimited by the body or whole considered. and therefore it is impossible to discern whal is returning. from the repetition of the other. if on the contrary something different returns at each lI1stance. Assuredly we fll1d here the insufficiency . takes great care to disso­ ciate the repetition of the same. This ftIm is composed like a unified and propagating body. In painting this may be a plastic rhyme or an equilibrium of colors. the cinema. differences of pure consumption. Just as the libido must renounce its perverse overflow to propagate the species through a normal genital sexuality allowing the constitution of a "sexual bod y " having that sole end. the principle not only of the metric but even of the rhythmic. useless expenditures. the resolution of dissonance by the dominant chord. the products of which. Now. others would add). To the point that it must be asked if indeed any repetition is involved at all. a fecund and assembled whole transmitting instead of losing what it carries. a proportion. if taken in the narrow sense as the repetition of the same (same color. It was an error to accredit Freud with the discovery of the very motion of the drives. but by being a propagation. when retu rni ng with these drives is the intensity of extreme jouissance and danger that they carry. The diegesis locks together the synthesis of movements in the temporal order. limiting them to the norms of tolerance characteristic of the system or whole under consideration. if the ctcrnal return of these sterile explosions of libidinal discharge should not be conceived in a wholly different time-space than that of the repetition of the same. what are these syntheses but the arranging of the cinematographic material following the figure of return? We are speaking not only of the require­ ment of profitability imposed upon the artist by the producer but also of the formal requirements that the artist weighs upon his material . All so-called good form implies the return of sameness. as their impossible copresence. which signals the regime of the life instincts. perspectivist representation does so in the spatial order. Repetition. which can only be other to the first-named repetition. chord). Because Freud.352 Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard The Movement of Return Let us back up a bit. in archi­ tecture. the folding back of diversity upon an identical unity. angle. would lull the public consciousness by means of doses of ideology. What do these movements of return or returned movements have to do with the representational and narrative form of the commercial cinema? We emphasize just how wretched it is to answer this question in terms of a simple superstructural function of an industry. in music. that is. The image must cast the object or set of objects as the double of a situation that from then on will be supposed real. The Instance of Identification This rule. In this regard all endings are happy endings. They form the instance or group of instances connecting and making them take the form of cy cles. The affective charges carried by every type of cinematographic and filmic "signifier" (lens. in the form of exclusions and effacements. is articulated following the cyclical organization of capital . as Metz would say. postponements.) are submitted to the same rule absorbing diversity into unity. an intrigue and its solution. etc. the director and cameram. lighting. The scenario or plot. of the repetition and propagation of sameness. references known." both connotative and denotative. the second.an condemn the image of film to the sacred task of making itself recognizable to the eye. cannot fail to be noticed by them because a large part of their activity consists of them." that is. It IS precisely through the return to the ends of identification that cinemato­ graphic form. In the fmc . when the fmal count is made they turn out to be nothing but beneficial detours. The exclusion of certain movements is such that the professional filmmakers are not even aware of them. jolts. a difference that is nothing. Aejllcl11l1 353 of thOiAghf. before and/or after the shooting. where it applies. operates principally. Thus all sorts of gaps. the same law of a return of the same after a semblance of difference. understood as the s y ntheSIS of good movement. but in the sense of "well known. any extreme glare. but they no longer act as real diversions or wasteful drifts. shooting. One example chosen from among thousands: inJoc (a ftlm built entirely upon the impression of reality) the movement is drastically altered twice: the first time when the father beats to death the hippie who lives with his daughter. This last sequence ends with a freeze-frame shot of the bust and face of the daughter who is struck down 111 full movement. Now these effacements and exclusions form the very operation of fum directing. we have said. familiar and established. in fact. for even if a fum fmishes with a murder. for example. when in "mopping up" a hippie commune he u nwittingly guns down his own daughter. which must necessarily pass through that sameness which IS the concept. on the other hand. framing. losses. and confu­ sions can occur. because it addresses itself to the eye's memory. but a detour. its movement of return organizes the affective charges linked to the tilmic "signifleds. cuts. These references are identity measuring the returning and return of movements. The image is representational because recognizable. Cinematic movements generally follow the fi gure of return. this too can serve as a fmal resolution of dissonance. to fixed references or identification. In eliminating. effacements. achieves the same resolution of dissonance as the sonata form in music. just by being endings. obliterating. exclusion. the other an excess of mobility. as we have just said) must also be an activity which unifies all the movements. are obtained by waiving the rules of representation which demand real motion recorded and projected at 24 frames per second. with this being its most enigmatic aspect. but to the benefit. of the filmic totality. a set of empty instances. the same ordering of all drives. effacing them no less off the scene than on. a profoundly unconscious process of separation. On the one hand. and inseparably. they mark it with a beautiful melodic curve. these two affective charges do not fail to suit the narrative order.354 Jean-Fral1(ois Lyotard murder we see a hail of fists falling upon the face of the defenseless hippie who quickly loses consciousness. it is an instance. this frame. this task consists of separating reality on one side and a play space on the other (a "real" or an "unreal"-that which is in the camera's lens): to direct is to institute this limit. in "reality" just as in the real (reel). So while they may upset the representational order. all told." Directing: Putting In. those on both sides of the frame's limit. nevertheless. which in no way operate through their content. both arrhy thmias are produced not in some aberrant fashion but at the culminating points in the tragedy of the impossible father/daughter incest underlying the scenario. good editing good sound mixing are not good because they conform to perceptual or social reality. On the contrary. clouding for a few seconds the celluloid's necessary transparency (which is that order's condition). and thus. excluding. it is a general process touching all fields of activity. and Out. These two e ffe ct s. good form. the first accelerated murder fmding its resolution in the second immobilized murder. just as capital is nothing but an instance of capitalization. but because they are a priori scenographic operators which on the contrary determine the objects to be recorded on the screen and in "reality. of Scene Film direction is not an artistic activity. And it is indeed produced. good lighting. the activity of directing (a placing in and out of scene. to the benefit of order. or society or fin al il1sta/1ce). now only representative of the realities of reality. thesame nor ms. The references imposed on the fdmic . [n other words. But on the other hand. in order for the function of representation to be fulfdled. Thus between the two regions is established a relation of representation or doubling accompanied necessarily by a relative devaluation of the scene's realities. for example. Thus the memory to which films address themselves is nothing in itself. As a result we could expect a s trong affective charge to accompany them. since tills greater or lesser perversion of the realistic rhythm responds to the organic rhythm of the intense emotions evoked. to circumscribe the region of de-responsibility at the heart of a whole which ideo facto is posed as responsible (we will call it nature. the one an immobilization. direction is simultaneously executed on two planes. imposing here and there. and effacement. that we are dealing with the social body in no way alters its function. real or Imyea!. They are supposed to realize the reasonable goal par excellence. that of knowing how and what to represent and the defmition of good or true representation. it eliminates all impulsional 1110vemwI. all movement which would escape identification. Direction [mt divides-along the axis of representation. upon the social body. the fundamental problem is the exclusion and foreclosure of all that is judged unrepresentable because nonrecurrent. But also. It is the ecclesia of images: just as politics is that of the partial social organs. The central problem for both is not the representational arrangement and its accompanying question. That the imperative of unification is given as hypothesis in a philosophy of "consciousness" is betrayed by the very term "consciousness." but for a "thought" of the unconscious (of which the form related most to pyrotechnics would be the economy sketched here and there ill Freud's writings). We will have to ask ourselves how and why the specular wall in general. as the support that the ftllme operation in all its . to the unity of an organic body. or petile peau). and thus the cinema screen in particular. Thus ftlm acts as the orthopedic mirror analyzed by Lacan in 1949 as consti­ tutive of the imaginary subject or object a. why and how the drives come to take their place 011 the [tim (pelliClile. the question of the production of unity. can become a privileged place for the libidinal cathexis. The Jilm. ftlm direction acts al ways as a factor of libidinal normalizatiol1. can no longer fail to be posed in all its opacity. and what is more. all sterile and divergent movements. and does so independently of all "content. missed by Lacan due to his Hegelianism. This is why direction. and this disjunction constitutes an obvious repression. is no more normal than the society or the organism. and the mnemic fixation. and outside the scene. Acil1clI1a 355 object are imposed just as necessarily on all objects outside the ftlm." be it as a "violent" as might seem. We will no longer have to pretend to understand how the subject's unity is constituted from his Image in the mirror. the ecclesiastic of the secular. and political activity. All these so-called objects are the result of the imposition and hope for an accomplished totality. The ftlm is the organic body of cinematographic movements. are the religion of the modern irreligion. is to know why the drives spread about the polymorphous body must hQlJC an object where they can unite. which is direction par excellence. Considered from the angle of this primordial function of an exclusion spreading to the exterior as well as to the interior of the cinematographic playground. This normalization consists of the exclusion from the scene of whatever cannot be folded back upon the body of the film. beyond this representational disjunction and in a "pretheatrical" eco­ nomic order. a political activity par excellence. rec­ ognition. the subordination of all partial drives. and due to the theatrical Iimit­ a reality and its double. a technique of exclusions and effacements. which II'ill 1101 lend itself to reduplication. But the real problem. strange formation reputed to be normal . opposing it to themselves as the pl a c e of thei r inscription. even an imaginary unity. We would say that tlus institution is made to order for the phantasmatic of Klossowski. we have said. It is not clear that narcissism or masoclusm are the proper operators: they carry a tone of subjectivity (of the theory of Self) that is probably still much too strong. as Klossowski admlrably . the client. a name derived from the pose solicited by portrait photographers: young girls rent their services to these special houses. Rather. we must understand this arrangement as a demarcation on both bodies. an immobilizing motion. The Tableau Vivant The acinema. given what concerns us here. The rep­ resentational arts offer two symmetrical examples of these intensities. clothed or unclothed. But it must be seen how the paradox is distributed in this case: the immobilization seems to touch only the erotic object. We must note. knowing as we do the importance he accords to the tableau vivant as the near perfect simulacrum of fantasy in all its paradoxical intensity. if it holds a certalll libidinal potential. that the tableau vivant in general. on the contrary. does so because it brings the theatrical and economic orders into communication. It is against the rules of these houses (which are not houses of prostitution) for the clients to touch the models in any way.ing this up too quickly as a simple voyeurism). stupefaction. would be situated at the two poles of the cinema taken as a writing of movements: thus. of the regions of extreme erotic intensification. In a libidinal economy they are. because it uses "whole persons" as detached erotic regions to which the spectator's impulses are con­ nected. beyond price. services which consist of assuming. We should read the term emotiol1 as a motion moving toward its own exhaustion. A libidinal economy of the cinema should theoretically construct the operators which exclude aberrations from the social and organic bodies and channel the drives into tlus apparatus. We must sense the pnce. Presently there exists in Sweden an institution called the posering. necessarily associated. the poses desired by the client. We see the proximity such a formulation has to the Sadean problematic of jOUlssance. terror. hate. a demarcation per­ formed by one of them. while the subject is found overtaken by the liveliest agitation. (We must be suspicious of sumn1. But things are probably not as simple as they might seem. whose integrity reputedly remains intact.356 Jean-Fral1fois Lyotard aspects will efface. an immobilized mobilization. extreme immobilization and extreme mobilization. anger. It is only for thought that these two modes are incompatible. another where agitation appears: lyric abstraction. that of model and client. pleasure-all the intensities-are always displacements in place. one where immobility appears: the tableau vivant. it is the support itself that is touched by perverse hands� Then the ftlm. the paper on which Klossowski himself sketches-it follows that the support itself must not submit to any noticeable perversion in order that the perversion attack only what is supported. must pay so that the pleasure will burst forth in its irreversible sterility. and reasonable forms proposed for identification. on the contrary. be it the writer's descriptive syntax. Thus representation is essential to this phantasmatic. since it indicates the inestimable price of diverting the drives in order to achieve perverse pleasure. we repeat. the pretended unity of the pretended subject. immobilization: because this latter (which is not simply immobility) means that it would be necessary to endlessly undo the conventional synthesis that normally all cinematographic movements proliferate. It implies a polarization no longer toward the immobility of the model but toward the mobility of the support. The object. offering his or her self as a detached region. it arises from any process which undoes the beau­ tiful forms suggested by this latter. that the organic body. the prostitute. it is essential that the spectator be offered instances of identification. of going beyond this and disfiguring the order of propagation that the intense emotion is felt. unifying. From here springs Klos­ sowski's active militancy in favor of representational plastics and his anathema for abstract painting. the film of Pierre Zucca whose photographs illustrate(?) Klossowski'sLa MOl1naie Vival1te. from any process which to a greater or lesser . Instead of good. This is the same price that the cinema should pay if it goes to the first of its extremes. AcillCllla 357 explains. All lyric abstraction in painting maintains such a shift. and focus refuse to produce the recognizJble image of a victim or immobile model. that is. taking on themselves the price of agitation and libidinal expense and leaving it no longer to the fantasized body. the representation of the victim: the support is held in insensibility or unconsciousness. It follows that the simulacrum's support. The allusion to this latter is an indispensable factor in the intensification. the paradox of immobilization is seen to be clearly distributed along the representational axis. This mobility is quite the contrary of cinematographic movement. lightings. the victim. Abstraction But what occurs if. the image would give rise to the most intense agitation through its fascinating paralysis. matter for the memory: for it is at the price. Here we should begin the discussion of a matter of singular importance: if you read Sade or Klossowski. all in all. movements. recognizable forms. takes the pose. We could already fmd many underground and experimental films illustrating this direction of im­ mobilization. but at the same time giving way and humiliating this whole person. the support.only fum screen. like abstract paint­ ing. must we then renounce the hope of finishing with the illusion. or before the almost imperceptible move­ ments of the little objects or organs of Pol Bury. Baruchello. so that it seems to him to be beyond all price? Before the minute thrills which hem the contact regions adjoining the chromatic sands of a Rothko canvas. if in the scene is. on the phantom of the organic body or subject which is the proper noun. takes its place. It blocks the synthesis of identification and thwarts the mnemic instances. which must be recognized as being crucial to our time because it is that of the staging of scene and society.358 jcal1-Fra/1(ois Lyotard degree works on and distorts these forms. but this is still to be understood as a mobilization of the support. and at the same time that they cannot really accomplish this unity? This foundation. It can thus go far toward achieving an atarxy of the iconic constituents. in all its most formal aspects. But from what unified body is it torn so that the spectator may enjoy. It is the same again though differently in the almost imperceptible movements of the No theater. canvas. this love. for the relation to the body of the client/spectator is completely displaced . The film strip is no longer abolished (made transparent) for the benefit of this or that flesh. making the client a victim. The question. How is jouissance instantiated by a large canvas by Polloc � Rothko or by a study by Richter. though following other modalities. follows: is it necessary for the victim to be in the scene for the pleasure to be intense? If the victim is the client. or Eggeling? If there is no longer a reference to the loss of the unified body due to the model's immobilization and its diversion to the ends of partial discharge. the represented ceases to be the libidinal object while the screen itself. do we lose to this arrangement all the intensity of the sterile discharge? And if so. it is at the price of renouncing his own bodily totality and sy nthesis of movements making it exist that the spectator experiences intense pleasure: these objects demand the paralysis not of the object/model but of the "subject" client. This way of frustrating the beautiful movement by mea/1S of the support must not be confused with that working through a paralyzing attack on the victim who serves as motif The model is no longer needed. in rendering the support opaque reverses the arrangement. with the effects of the excess of movement in Pollock's paintings or with Thompson's manipulation of the lens. not only the cinematographic illusion but also the social and political illusions? Are they not really illusions then� Or is believing so the illusion? Must the return of extreme intensities be founded on at least this empty permanence. The channels of passage and libidinal discharge are restricted to very small partial regions (eye-cortex). Abstract cinema. how does it differ from that anchorage in nothing which founds capital' . just how inestimable must be the disposition the client/spectator can have. and almost the whole body is neutralized in a tension blocking all escape of drives from passages other than those necessary to the detection of very fine differences. It is the same. for it offers itself as the flesh posing itself. the decomposition of his own organism. Claudine Eizykman. in collaboration with the author . Acil1cl11a 359 Note These reAections would not have been possible without the practical and theoretical work accomplished for several years by and with Dominique Avron. Livingston. -translated by Paisley N. and Guy Fihman.