Chapters 3 and 4 Summary Questions

 Chapter 3:

1. Film as a medium reinforces the dominant ideology by choosing what it wishes to depict and share with its audience, most often presenting the dominant ideology as the only one. If film only ever represents one way of thinking, the audience will be convinced that it is the only way of thinking, especially if they take the medium of film at face value and internalize the lessons being taught without thinking about them. Through this, stereotypical and often negative depictions of those classified as 'other' will be internalized by the audience, 'other' and not, which leads to internalized prejudice. A most important tool for fighting this dominant ideology, proposed by many for use in the film theory journal Screen, is a counter-cinema.

2. Developing a counter-cinema was proposed as a way of fighting the ideology and cinematic conventions that had dominated cinema of the time, and still dominates today. McDonald recounts how this idea was first proposed in the film journal Screen as a way of commenting on and educating about the tropes that had arisen in cinematic storytelling that could be potentially harmful. Things like unconventional storytelling, asynchronous sound, and different use of framing onscreen all served toward the building of this counter-cinema. At the time, this concept was very new, and hadn't yet had the breakthroughs necessary to really get the right changes to be made. 

3. How specific groups are represented on film teaches us things about those groups. When we're not exposed to those groups in our own lives, that void of knowledge and experience is filled with things we see in media like film. If this film is telling us things that are not true, or things that can be harmful to those groups, it creates ideas in our brains about these groups that could lead to more harm. Viewers challenge these images by pointing them out in their ubiquity and educating those who don't notice on their presence and how they can be harmful.  

4. Mulvey's essay was so influential and became such a turning point because it called out the voyeurism of what she called the 'Male Gaze' in cinema. Not only did she point it our and put a name to it, she called for its complete removal from the medium, which others in the field were never bold enough to do. She also says that, reflecting the idea of a counter-cinema, the best way to combat the Male Gaze is to create a different form of visual storytelling that communicates a more personal and respectful kind of beauty than the Male Gaze seeks to view. This blunt interpretation of women's role in film lead many to disregard the nuance of all women in film, while others debated that there could still be nuance in how women are portrayed, especially when the new gaze proposed is used.

5. Being that film is a visual medium, and was originally a strictly visual medium, most film conventions were constructed through the use of visual storytelling, something that radio dramas and books cannot achieve. It would follow that these visual tropes would be the primary focus of film theorists. It is also the case that more sound-based mediums have their own theory communities that focus more on those sound-based issues, which allows film theorists to focus on the more visual issues. That said, those sonic problems are still present, like how women in film are often demure and passive so female actors are encouraged to speak in a softer or quieter tone, or how queer-coded characters are often louder and have more exaggerated vocal inflections, feeding into negative stereotypes of these groups.

Chapter 4:

1. Film scholars were wary of the influence of French Theory and Screen Theory because the way that they presented themselves was often presumptuous or closed-minded, often bordering on elitist. Their presentation assumed that the reader was already familiar with the works of other theorists and moreover, assumed that the reader agreed with the theorists. This would normally be fine, but the sheer level of influence that Screen had over the debate, and the journal's general unwillingness to accept alternate ideas, created an atmosphere of elitism in those who dominated the space, and alienation in those who didn't and those who were just entering it.

2. Early cinema was so important because it had a whole different personality and culture to that of modern cinema. The PMR (Primitive Mode of Representation), as it was called by Noel Burch, was far different to the current norm of filmmaking, the Institutional Mode of Representation, the IMR. Burch claimed that the culture around filmmaking in the days of the PMR was mostly seen as it related to other forms of media like vaudeville and circus attractions, forms that hinged on the audience being amazed by what the performers could do as opposed to what the performance meant, which fed into the way filmmakers of the time innovated. This aligned with the primary ideals of historical poetics by bringing the attention of theory onto the conventions of the time and how they shaped the modern conception of film. In this way, it paved the road to the practice and acceptance of media archeology.

3. Cognitivism views the spectator as an integral element to the medium of film. It sees the viewer that is observing and analyzing the film as a crucial part of the art of filmmaking as opposed to the inconsequential happenstance that earlier theorists had considered them. It thinks more broadly about the wide range of interpretations that the viewer can take from the film, and how to inform those interpretations when making the film, as opposed to what a film happened to be saying, intentionally or not. Rather than focusing on the subtext of films, cognitivism focuses on how the audience interprets by that subtext and how one can be more mindful of those interpretations.

4. Vivian Sobchack didn't introduce but made popular the idea of phenomenology in film. She stood behind and incorporated into the work the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's similar philosophy, one which had been largely ignored in its time, and posited the idea of film as an out of body experience, and interaction between the filmmaker and the viewer in a world which neither occupied. Jacques Derrida, still overlooked for his somewhat unconventional view on film as a form of language, namely in its merits. He emphasized that language, in general, is unstable. Through this he encouraged the deconstruction of the most essential of filmmaking conventions, communicating ideas. Stanley Cavell, specifically in his works related to film, talks about how film reflects reality, and how this affects the viewer and the characters in the films themselves. He encourages the viewer to look philosophically at the relationships that film invents and reflects, because in many cases they are real. He also encourages this because he recognizes, paradoxically, that while film allows to feel more connected to ourselves and our relationships, it also allows us to distance ourselves from them because of our role as an audience viewing a story. These three philosophers are similar because they all encourage us to examine the different kinds of relationships that film as a medium reflects, despite the different kinds of relationships each choses to focus on.

5. Film theory does have a future. It may not look much like it did in the past, but it's not going anywhere. Theory in the past has been a rapidly changing and evolving area of study that was constantly seeing new names and faces change the landscape forever, and that's not the case anymore. As Rodowick stated, theory has basically accomplished its job of encouraging more people to examine film critically from the important lenses. That doesn't mean that theory will just go away, though. It may not change as much as it did in the past but it will still be alive and well so long as we keep it that way. If we continue to involve more people in the pursuit of intelligent filmmaking, theory of the past can only help us in doing so. Rodowick even proposed that this plateau of new thinking means that the field is better than ever, implying that we've found the right answers. Of course, that could be false, but that just means someone else will come along and propose a new answer that could be even more correct. Film theory will be relevant as long as film is relevant, so yes, theory has a future.