B0041VYHGW EBOK (25 page)

In trying to see the meaningful moments of a film as parts of a larger whole, it’s useful to set individually significant moments against one another. Thus Dorothy’s final line could be juxtaposed to the scene of the characters getting spruced up after their arrival at the Emerald City. We can try to see the film as about not one or the other, but rather the relation of the two—the delight and risk of a fantasy world versus the comfort and stability of home. Thus the film’s total system is larger than any one explicit meaning we can find in it. Instead of asking, “What is this film’s meaning?” we can ask, “How do
all
the film’s meanings relate to one another?”

3.
Implicit meaning.
An adolescent who must soon face the adult world yearns for a return to the simple world of childhood, but she eventually accepts the demands of growing up.

This is more abstract than the first two statements. It goes beyond what is explicitly stated in the film, suggesting that
The Wizard of Oz
is in some sense about the passage from childhood to adulthood. In this view, the film suggests or implies that, in adolescence, people may desire to return to the apparently uncomplicated world of childhood. Dorothy’s frustration with her aunt and uncle and her urge to flee to a place “over the rainbow” become examples of a general conception of adolescence. Unlike the “no place like home” line, this meaning isn’t stated directly. We can call this suggestion an
implicit meaning.
When perceivers ascribe implicit meanings to an artwork, they’re usually said to be
interpreting
it.

Clearly,
interpretations
vary. One viewer might propose that
The Wizard of Oz
is really about adolescence. Another might suggest that it is really about courage and persistence, or that it is a satire on the adult world. One of the appeals of artworks is that they ask us to interpret them, often in several ways at once. Again, the artwork invites us to perform certain activities—here, building up implicit meanings. But once again, the artwork’s overall form shapes our sense of implicit meanings.

Some viewers approach a film expecting to learn lessons about life. They may admire a film because it conveys a profound or relevant message. But once we identify a film’s meaning, we’re often tempted to split up the film into the content portion (the meaning) and the form (the vehicle for the content). The abstract quality of implicit meanings can lead to very broad concepts, often called
themes.
A film may have as its theme courage or the power of faithful love. Such descriptions have some value, but they are very general; hundreds of films fit them. To summarize
The Wizard of Oz
as being simply about the problems of adolescence does not do justice to the specific qualities of the film as an experience. We suggest that the search for implicit meanings should not leave behind the
particular
and
concrete
features of a film.

This is not to say that we should not interpret films. But we should strive to make our interpretations precise by seeing how each film’s thematic meanings are suggested by the film’s total system. In a film, both explicit and implicit meanings depend closely on the relations between narrative and style. In
The Wizard of Oz,
the Yellow Brick Road has no meaning in and of itself. But if we examine the function it fulfills in relation to the narrative, the music, the colors, and so on, we can argue that the Yellow Brick Road does indeed function meaningfully. Dorothy’s strong desire to go home makes the road represent that desire. We want Dorothy to be successful in getting to the end of the road, as well as in getting back to Kansas; thus the road participates in the theme of the desirability of home.

Interpretation need not be an end in itself. It also helps in understanding the overall form of the film. Nor does interpretation exhaust the possibilities of a device. We can say many things about the Yellow Brick Road other than how its meaning relates to the film’s thematic material. We could note that the road marks Oz as a fantastical land, since real-world bricks are a brownish-red color. We could analyze how the road becomes the stage for dances and songs along the way. We could see how it is narratively important because Dorothy’s indecision at a crossroads allows her to meet the Scarecrow. We could work out a color scheme for the film, contrasting the yellow road, the red slippers, the green Emerald City, and so forth. From this standpoint, interpretation may be seen as one kind of formal analysis, one that seeks to reveal a film’s implicit meanings. Those meanings should be constantly tested by placing them within the concrete texture of the whole film.

4.
Symptomatic meaning.
In a society in which human worth is measured by money, the home and the family may seem to be the last refuge of human values. This belief is especially strong in times of economic crisis, such as that in the United States in the 1930s.

Like statement 3, this is abstract and general. It situates the film within a trend of thought that is assumed to be characteristic of American society during the 1930s. The claim could apply equally well to many other films, as well as to many novels, plays, poems, paintings, advertisements, radio shows, political speeches, and a host of cultural products of the period.

But there is something else worth noticing about the statement. It treats an explicit meaning in
The Wizard of Oz
(“There’s no place like home”) as a manifestation of a wider set of values characteristic of a whole society. We could treat implicit meanings the same way. If we say the film implies something about adolescence as a crucial time of transition, we could suggest that emphasis on adolescence as a special period of life is also a recurrent concern of American society. So, it’s possible to understand a film’s explicit or implicit meanings as bearing traces of a particular set of social values. We can call this
symptomatic meaning,
and the set of values that get revealed can be considered a social
ideology
.

The possibility of noticing symptomatic meanings reminds us that meaning, whether referential, explicit, or implicit, is largely a social phenomenon. Many meanings of films are ultimately ideological; that is, they spring from systems of culturally specific beliefs about the world. Religious beliefs, political opinions, conceptions of race or sex or social class, even our most deeply seated notions of life’s values—all these constitute our ideological frame of reference. Although we may live as if our beliefs were the only true and real explanations of how the world is, we need only compare our own ideology with that of another group or culture or era to see how historically and socially shaped many of those views are. In other times and places,
home
and
adolescence
don’t carry the meanings they carried in 1930s America.

Films, like other artworks, can be examined for their symptomatic meanings. Again, however, the abstract and general quality of such meanings can lead us away from the concrete form of the film. As when we analyze implicit meanings, we should ground symptomatic meanings in the film’s specific aspects. A film
enacts
ideological meanings through its particular and unique formal system. We’ll see in
Chapter 11
how the narrative and stylistic system of
Meet Me in St. Louis
can be analyzed for ideological implications.

To sum up: Films have meaning because we attribute meanings to them. We cannot therefore regard meaning as a simple content to be extracted from the film. Sometimes the filmmaker guides us toward certain meanings; sometimes we find meanings the filmmaker didn’t intend. Our minds will probe an artwork for significance at several levels. One mark of our engagement with the film as an experience is our search for referential, explicit, implicit, and symptomatic meanings. The more abstract and general our attributions of meaning, the more we risk loosening our grasp on the film’s specific formal system. In analyzing films, we should balance our concern for that concrete system with our urge to assign it wider significance.

In talking about an artwork, people often
evaluate
it; that is, they make claims about its goodness or badness. Reviews in newspapers and magazines and on the Internet exist almost solely to tell us whether a film is worth seeing; our friends often urge us to go to their latest favorite. But all too often we discover that the film that someone else esteemed appears only mediocre to us. At that point, we may complain that most people evaluate films only on the basis of their own, highly personal, tastes.

How, then, are we to evaluate films with any degree of objectivity? We can start by realizing that there is a difference between
personal taste
and
evaluative judgment.
To say “I liked this film” or “I hated it” is not equal to saying “It’s a good film” or “It’s wretched.” Very few of us limit our enjoyment to the greatest works. Most people can enjoy a film they know is not particularly good. This is perfectly reasonable—unless they start trying to convince people that these pleasant films actually rank among the undying masterpieces. At that point, others will probably stop listening to their judgments at all.

So personal preference need not be the sole basis for judging a film’s quality. Instead, the critic who wishes to make a relatively objective evaluation will use specific
criteria.
A criterion is a standard that can be applied in the judgment of many works. By using a criterion, the critic gains a basis for comparing films for relative quality.

There are many different criteria. Some people evaluate films on
realistic
criteria. Aficionados of military history might judge a film entirely on whether the battle scenes use historically accurate weaponry; the narrative, editing, characterization, sound, and visual style might be of little interest to them.

Other people condemn films because they don’t find the action plausible. They dismiss a scene by saying, “Who’d really believe that X would meet Y just at the right moment?” We have already seen, though, that artworks often violate laws of reality and operate by their own conventions and internal rules. Coincidental encounters, usually at embarrassing moments, are a convention of comedy.

Viewers can also use
moral
criteria to evaluate films. Most narrowly, aspects of the film can be judged outside their context in the film’s formal system. Some viewers might feel that any film with nudity or profanity or violence is bad, while other viewers might find just these aspects praiseworthy. So some viewers might condemn the death of the newborn baby in
The Crime of M. Lange,
regardless of the scene’s context. More broadly, viewers and critics may employ moral criteria to evaluate a film’s overall significance, and here the film’s complete formal system becomes pertinent. A film might be judged good because of its overall view of life, its willingness to show opposing points of view, or its emotional range.

While realistic and moral criteria are well suited to particular purposes, this book suggests criteria that assess films as artistic wholes. Such criteria should allow us to take each film’s form into account as much as possible.
Coherence
is one such criterion. This quality, often referred to as
unity,
has traditionally been held to be a positive feature of artworks. So, too, has
intensity of effect.
If an artwork is vivid, striking, and emotionally engaging, it may be considered more valuable.

Another criterion is
complexity.
We can argue that, all other things being equal, complex films are good. A complex film engages our interest on many levels, creates a multiplicity of relations among many separate formal elements, and tends to create intriguing patterns of feelings and meanings.

Yet another formal criterion is
originality.
Originality for its own sake is pointless, of course. Just because something is different does not mean that it is good. But if an artist takes a familiar convention and uses it in a way that makes it a fresh experience, then (all other things being equal) the resulting work may be considered good from an aesthetic standpoint.

Note that all these criteria are matters of degree. One film may be more complex than another, but the simpler film may be more complex than a third one. Moreover, there is often a give-and-take among the criteria. A film might be complex but lack coherence or intensity. Ninety minutes of a black screen would make for an original film but not a very complex one. A slasher movie may create great intensity in certain scenes but may be wholly unoriginal, as well as disorganized and simplistic. In applying the criteria, the analyst often must weigh one against another.

Evaluation can serve many useful ends. It can call attention to neglected artworks or make us rethink our attitudes toward accepted classics. But just as the discovery of meanings is not the only purpose of formal analysis, we suggest that evaluation is most fruitful when it is backed up by a close examination of the film. General statements (“
The Wizard of Oz
is a masterpiece”) seldom enlighten us very much. Usually, an evaluation is helpful insofar as it points to aspects of the film and shows us relations and qualities we have missed: “
The Wizard of Oz
subtly compares characters in Kansas and Oz, as when Miss Gulch’s written order to take Toto is echoed by the Wicked Witch’s fiery skywriting addressed to the citizens of the Emerald City, ‘Surrender Dorothy.’” Like interpretation, evaluation is most useful when it drives us back to the film itself as a formal system, helping us to understand that system better.