For a Baroque Aesthetic, A study of the Films of David Lynch

Realism and Cinema

The capacity of films and the moving image to imitate reality sent spectators running during the first projection of the Lumiere brothers' film, L'arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat, in 1895. Thus the question of reality and its representation is at the core of the history of cinema, as stated by Lapsley and Westlake in Film Theory an Introduction:

Although since then few spectators have mistaken the image for reality itself, film's extraordinary power to imitate reality has made realism a central feature of cinema aesthetics.^17(*)

From its beginnings, the perception of cinema has been split into two tendencies: as a window on reality, with its mechanical system of reproduction as warrant of its objectivity; or as the ultimate creator of illusions with the possible manipulation of its mechanical eye allowing all the tricks with Georges Melies (1861-1938) as the first illusionist:

Lumiere's camera awakes us to the world. Melies stretches behind his characters the painted canvas of the collective unconscious.^18(*)

The history of cinema is situated between those two poles of attraction, between realism and artifice. However the pretension of a large part of the cinematographic production to realism relies, as in literature or in plays, on its capacity to hide its conventions of representation. Thus associating cinema with the larger issue of realism during the 20^th century:

Far from being the faithful depiction of reality it is assumed to be, realism, through the various forms it has taken throughout its history, shows itself to be neither window nor mirror but a set of conventions. There is, in other words, `no realism but there are realisms'.^19(*)

The political discourse contained in the claim to realism of theatre had been exposed by such as Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956):

The importance of realism is a direct consequence of its epistemic status, as Brecht recognised when he called it a major political, philosophical and practical issue.^20(*)

The realist text functions on the articulation of various point of views, thus pretending to objectivity, but subjecting them to a unifying view presented as the truth:

The so-called classic realist text, then, whether George Lucas or George Eliot, is defined by a structure in which the various discourses comprising the text form a hierarchy. Among these various discourses, each of which proposes a version of reality, one is privileged as the bearer of the truth.^21(*)

Each object is firmly framed in its position by the dominant discourse, and no ambiguities are left to the reader-spectator:

The unified subject confronts the hypostatised object, each locked into a paralysing fixity, with no perspective for struggle or possibility of transformation.^22(*)

Through its technological capacity for reproduction the cinema was even more apt to pretend to a transparent discourse; unlike literature or theatre, it was proposed to be only reproducing reality.

But by being directly engaged with the appearance of the world, the cinema was necessarily a privileged medium to represent its shifting appearances. It may well be that the most likely medium to express a baroque aesthetic is the cinema. Hence it is not very surprising that the relationship between baroque and cinema has been a recurring feature of film theory.

* ¹⁷ Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake, Film Theory an Introduction, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988, p. 156.

* ¹⁸ Jean Collet, `Cinéma: Histoire', Encyclopaedia Universalis, Vol. IV, Paris, 1978, p. 497a, my translation:` La caméra de Lumière nous éveille au monde. Melies tend derrière ses personnages les toiles peintes de l'inconscient collectif.'

* ¹⁹ Lapsley and Westlake, op. cit., p. 158.

* ²⁰ Ibid., p. 156.

* ²¹ Ibid., p. 171.

* ²² Ibid., p. 172.