BLIND SPOTS: A SEARCH FOR ETHICAL BALANCE IN FILM THEORY RESEARCH

Abstract

When an author attempts to analyze their own artistic creation as a researcher, they will undoubtedly encounter blind spots, built-in and accumulated unconscious biases embedded in the creative process, which inevitably tend to cloud thinking during theoretical analysis and can easily lead the researcher astray. With this short paper, I wish to guard myself against those blind spots while, as a theorist, I’m stylistically comparing my two feature films working as a film author. Methodologically, I will describe the context in which I am doing my research, then I will mark the epistemological coordinates relevant for my honest scholarly approach, and by reflecting on the balance of arguments both in support of and in opposition to my expectations, I wish to shed ethical light by carefully choosing mechanisms for my film analysis. In a climate of ever-growing dominance of postmodern currents in academic discourse, which I respect as a critical tool, but due to their nihilistic nature I do not consider appropriate as a philosophical-civilizational foundation, I turn to the danger of their entrenchment as a parallel epistemological system in science, as described by mathematician and physicist Alan Sokal. I build upon this by using words from the introduction to a film theory book Post-Theory: in opposition to the sedimented dogma of Grand Theory (with a capital “T”), which forcibly attempts to fit all cinematic phenomena into the framework of its ideologically colored matrix, I choose to conduct my research in the spirit of cognitive neoformalism, a current grounded in the work and thought of the renowned film theorist David Bordwell, whose definition of a successful film theory (with a lowercase “t”) is a mid-level academic research practice in which one defines non-dogmatically a specific cinematographic problem which is then solved through logical analysis, empirical research, or a combination of the two. Film is a synthetic art form, simultaneously temporal and visual, mechanical and realistic, with its own idiosyncratic qualities such as montage, as well as many others it shares with the remaining arts. That’s why I opted for a comprehensive analytical theoretical-methodological approach to film analysis, drawing on proven principles of dramaturgy, formalist and realist film theory, and by employing modern tools for digital film analysis and supported by philosophical-scientific methods such as Wittgenstein’s family resemblance and prototype theory. I wish to devote equal attention to the arguments in favor of my thesis as well as to those that would prove the contrary. Through a practical example, using the negative theory of the renowned Gestalt psychologist and film theorist Rudolf Arnheim, we not only demonstrated one key element of the research — that there is an evident stylistic difference between the two films (one is black-and-white, the other in color) — but also, through Arnheim’s own words, we give attention to the counter-argument: that the viewer quickly grows accustomed to the absence of color, and that the impression is more phenomenological than narrative. Finally, by drawing in parallel on experiences from film practice and theory, this paper aims to contribute to strengthening the argumentation related to relevant issues in the communication between practitioners and theorists in the field. Additionally, I hope that my insights will serve as a stepping stone for deepening the discussion on the balance of arguments in artistic research—a quality that I believe is particularly lacking among authors. I expect the research to contribute to the Macedonian artistic and film community by bringing the postulates of neoformalist theory closer to film authors and cineastes, who are undoubtedly more familiar with dominant critical theory.