Visconti's Death in Venice

In his 1971 adaptation of the Thomas Mann novel Death in Venice, director Luchino Visconti cast Dirk Bogarde in the role of composer Gustav von Aschenbach. While the casting seemed to be effective overall, it also raised some issues against the original novel. As Geoffrey Wagner notes, "the real difficulty is the appearance of Bogarde, looking like an absent-minded professor who is in reality a lecherous fag…"[1]. But while the characterization of Bogarde's Aschenbach as a "lecherous fag" might prove slightly exaggerated, the fact that this poses a "difficulty" might require some further exploration. How does Aschenbach's homosexuality fit in to the larger picture of Death in Venice and why, regardless of Wagner's opinion on Bogdade's appearance, might this be difficult? With an analysis of Visconti's film, I intend to show that the same-sex attraction in Death in Venice serves to further elaborate on the conditions of art and life as relating to the homosexual context of the early 20^th century. To do this, I will first examine the historical context of both the film/book's plot in the early 20^th century and its relation to the Visconti production of the early 1970's. How is Visconti's film and Aschenbach's same-sex attraction work in both the plot's and the film's respective historical places in time. Following I will look at the concept of the (gay) artist in Visconti's film. How does the idea of the homosexual artist relate to both the fictional Aschenbach and to Visconti himself. Finally, I will explore the relationship that the homosexual artist in history, through Death in Venice, has to art and life. What significance does Aschenbach's attraction to Tadzio have in light of his character as a (supposedly) failed, dying artist and how does Visconti use this to deliver his message.

First I shall consider the historical context of the book's plot as well as Visconti's 1971 production. While Death in Venice can work well as a timeless "parable about longing and obsession" it is also very much a "mise-en-scène of the homosexual condition in a certain historical epoch"[2]. This historical epoch, if we are to accept Mann's wife's memoirs about their actual holiday in Venice which inspired the book[3], would have been 1911, a year before the book was published and still very relevant when the book would have been first read. Not so was the case with Visconti's work, which in the early 1970's could already be categorized as a period piece. By then, Mann's book and as consequence Visconti's film would have been only a "final celebration of a departed … sexual regime", "nostalgic and anachronistic within the rapidly changing gay cultural context"[4]. In essence, Mann's book's relevance at the beginning of the 20^th century was of a quite different nature than Visconti's film was in the early 70's. While Mann's book considered gay issues as they were happening, Visconti's film reminded us of the way they used to be and as consequence showed us how they have changed. The presence of young Tadzio's character, while not so jarring in the early 1900's, posed a definite challenge in the early 70's, especially with "the tightening taboos on pedophilia within sociomedical-juridical discourse… [and] changing conceptions of the economic role and sexual identity of the child"[5]. Further, Tadzio poses a problem in Visconti's film due to the fact that he "had to be visualized and thus particularized instead of appearing more or less just as a projection of Aschenbach's mind"[6]. Since "Visconti has no time to insinuate Tadzio into Aschenbach's consciousness as deftly and delicately as …the original author"[7] did, it rendered the exchanges between Tadzio and Aschenbach more as actual events than the internal thoughts and contemplations of Aschenbach's character that Mann might have intended.

Regardless of his representation in Death In Venice however, Tadzio represents the ephebe male type as defined by Thomas Waugh[8]. But while Tadzio is the ephebe, Aschenbach is by no means its polar opposite, the "he-man", but rather represents the third body, the "implied gay subject, the invisible desiring body of the producer-spectator - behind the camera, in front of the photograph, but rarely visualized within the frame"[9]. As such, Aschenbach dons the disguise of the third body, his eyeglasses, makeup and mortality[10] serve not only to disguise himself in order to survive as an invisible stigmatized minority but also to desexualize him in the erotophobic regime that he is a part of[11]. But while Visconti was hardly part of an erotophobic regime, he nevertheless sets up Aschenbach in such a way as to create autobiographical parallels as the aging gay artist. "The image of… Aschenbach on the porch of the Venice hotel, is that of both the alienated artist charting the machinations of social power from the wings and the gay man tuning into the sexual undercurrents of his surroundings"[12]. Indeed, the "autobiographical discourse can be read on a quite literal level" when considering "Visconti, in his sixties, undertaking his final progression of aging artistic figures"[13].

But why would Visconti create this parallel to an era where attitudes to homosexuality were different and to an aging gay artist on the verge of mortality fighting with his inner demons in the face of sublime beauty? Is he struggling with similar inner demons as Aschenbach is when his artistic merit is challenged and he is faced with his mortality? To a certain extent - yes. According to Bacon, the minimal narrative tension in Death in Venice "creates the sense of attempting to stop time, overcome death and old age by stepping out of time into the eternal spheres of beauty of forms"[14]. But while stopping time and overcoming death might seem futile, Visconti's Aschenbach might serve another function. His existence in a time past but not too far away to be forgotten reminds us of the ever-changing nature of life and his mortality points to life's ephemerality. Further, his role as the gay artist, third body figure makes the connection not only with the Director as the aging gay artist but also serves to create a contrast between the themes of beauty and its corruption, life and death, art and its demise. In essence, Aschenbach's same-sex attraction to something supremely beautiful serves to provide this contrast and counterbalance its perfection. As Bacon notes, "the achievements of the spirit through the creation of beauty are counterbalanced by the decadence that seems to be eroding the basis of the civilization that has produced it" and "while the spirit may continue to exist in works of art, biological and social corruption inevitably take their toll"[15]. While Aschenbach's character is not the polar opposite of Tadzio's ephebe (as discussed, he is not the "he-man" figure), he in fact serves as a polar opposite of what Tadzio represents. Abstracted, Tadzio's ephebe in Death in Venice stands for ultimate beauty, youth, life, art, while Aschenbach makes for the complete opposite of all this. Their connection then serves to show the inevitable necessity for each other among these two opposites and "the contrast between the tragedy of Aschenbach's inability to accept this and the way his story is rendered through the serene and sensuous splendour of the film becomes a metaphor for the basic paradoxes of our relationship to art and to life: inasmuch as art can be a way of transcending the contingencies of life and even overcoming its fundamental transience, inasmuch as art can be a path toward resignation, it also runs the risk of becoming alien to life"[16].

To conclude, we have seen how Visconti's Death in Venice operates in the historical context of both the plot of Mann's book and of the film's 1971 production. We have seen how changing attitudes and social-norms between the two places in history (beginning of 20^th century and early 1970's) have contributed to shape both Visconti's adaptation of Mann's book and attitudes to its same-sex relation with a young boy. Further, I have considered the character of the aging gay artist embodied by Dirk Bogarde's Aschenbach. While noting the autobiographical parallels between the character and the film's director, we have seen how the character of the gay artist functions as both Waugh's "third body" and as a contrast to Tadzio's ephebe without being the ephebe's traditional opposite (the "he-man"). Finally, considering these elements, we looked at the way that Visconti uses them in his adaptation of Mann's novel to point to the contrast between the themes of beauty, youth and life vs. decay, old age and death. By providing this contrast, both through the thematic elements of Mann's novel and through the visual ones in the film adaptation, Visconti points to the inseparable nature of opposites in both art and life. Aschenbach's contrast to Tadzio and their link despite this contrast points to the larger reality of the link that beauty and art has to corruption and decay, to the inevitable necessary balance between them, and to the necessity of one for the continued existence of the other.

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[1] Bacon, 1998, p161

[2] Aldrich, 1993, p4

[3] Mann, 1975, p62-63

[4] Waugh, 1993, p436

[5] Waugh, 1993, p436

[6] Bacon, 1998, p161

[7] Bacon, 1998, p161

[8] Waugh, 1993, p431

[9] Waugh, 1993, p432

[10] Waugh, 1993, p435

[11] Waugh, 1993, p434

[12] Waugh, 1993, p439

[13] Waugh, 1993, p437

[14] Bacon, 1998, p172

[15] Bacon, 1998, p172

[16] Bacon, 1998, p172

REFERENCES

Aldrich, Robert. "The Attraction of the South for Northern Homosexuals." In The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art, and Homosexual Fantasy, 4. London: Routledge, 1993.

Bacon, Henry. Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Mann, Katia. Unwritten Memories. New York: Knopf, 1975.

Waugh, Thomas. "The Third Body: Patterns in the Construcion of the Subject in Gay Male Narrative Film." In Queer Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and Video, 431-447. New York and London: Routledge, 1993.

Themes of "momism", Communism and Conformity in 1950's American Cinema

As the 40's reached their end and post-war America neared completion of its transition to the peacetime socioeconomic environment of the early 50's, new concerns began to preoccupy the minds of the American people. Feelings of anxiety and uncertainty associated with the changing shape of the social and political situation that the country was facing began to permeate the collective consciousness of the American population. With the defeat of Axis, creating a vacuum of ideological opponents, and with the emergence of the Soviet Union as a seemingly equal yet diverging superpower on the international political landscape, it would seem only natural for the USSR to have been the prime candidate for filling this vacuum in the United States. Diverging political ideologies, however, are not enough to paint a whole nation as an enemy, as it was not enough for the Nazi ideology to paint Germany as an enemy until the US was actually attacked (the fact that they were actually attacked by Japan, was not an issue, since Japan was allied with Germany at the time and the US already had plans for an offensive on Germany and Italy, according to the "Plan Dog Memo"[1]). Without actually being at war with the Soviet Union, America began to slowly paint this picture of their enemy based on paranoia and the post-war psychology of having to live in a world that, unlike that of the 40's, had no clear enemy or a clear war to fight.

This gradual process of demonization of the USSR leading to the general anxiety and paranoia of the 50's, was fuelled by two major themes observable in motion pictures produced in America at the time. The first theme, namely the concept of "momism", coined by Philip Wylie to refer the excessive attachment to one's mother and conversely the over-protectiveness of thereof[2], but more broadly to the general attitude of "playing it safe" instead of the more risk-taking attitude that Wylie professed, would be a major theme in the psychological justification of the USSR's demonization in the US. The second element was the actual presence of the USSR on the international political stage and the power struggle that ensued following the defeat of Germany, the split of Europe and the technological advancement that gave birth to nuclear warfare, which positioned the Soviet Union on the same international superpower level as the United States. Combined, these themes, present in one form or another throughout 1950's American cinema, would contribute in shaping American society's view of Communism, the Soviet Union and inadvertently but perhaps more importantly - their view of themselves.

Examining four of the decade's motion pictures, namely My Son John (1952), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957), will help to understand these themes and further show how they were conveyed, as well as how they contributed to shaping American society's view of itself at the time.

Returning to the concept of momism, Wylie talks of the mother being (as opposed to quoting) Thomas Jefferson and becoming the "American Pope"[3], referring to the increased importance and influence of the mother figure in the American male's life. He concludes that this eventually leads to "young men" fighting for security, as opposed to freedom, while "the enemy explodes uranium, plutonium, hydrogen", exclaiming: "But where's man's freedom?"[4] This search for freedom in the face of momism is perhaps best exemplified by James Dean's Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause, who is not afraid to get in a knife fight with the local bully or take the risk of dying in a car crash to defend his pride. Similarly, he is rejecting his dad's complacency (representing Wylie's "fight for security") and rebels against his mother's treatment of his dad (suggesting at some point that his dad should use violence against her to solve their problems). But while Jim's mother is not exactly the "self-righteous, hypocritical, sexually repressed, middle-aged woman" that Wylie describes[5], she does indeed seem like a woman that lost the preindustrial woman's household functions and got men to worship her[6] as is seen when Jim's dad is bending down with an apron to clean instead of her. John's mother in My Son John, further fulfils this image, as she is hardly able to hold her "household functions" due to her physical/mental state. Her confinement to the house (as Wylie would have suggested for a solution to momism) only furthers her problems, most likely being the cause for them to begin with[7], and causes her to eventually leave the house in search for her son, thus furthering her role as an active participant in her son's eventual exposure as a communist. But while this conforms to Rogin's idea of the mother being the "polar opposite" of communism, the opposite of the subversive in the family[8], and even despite Wylie's own equating momism to "McCarthyism"[9], momism was ultimately seen as leading to communism.

My Son John, Rogin claims, implies that "John has become a communist… because of the liberal ideas and sexual availability of his mother"[10]. In this sense, My Son John placed the threat to the free man "less in the alien Communist State than in his loving mother"[11]. Further, considering the case of homosexuality with Sal Minelo's Plato from Rebel Without a Cause, caused no doubt by his lack of a father and despite his mother's non-presence, but nevertheless due to the momistic treatment he gets from the maid, which, due to the perceived national weakness associated with "sexual transgressions", again places momism as "leading down the path to communism"[12].

This same view, placing the threat not so much externally, in the Soviet State, but rather internally, was also shared in Invasion of the Body Snatchers where anybody you know in your little town could be a threat (much like Soviet spies, but more importantly like American communists) and while "danger might come from without… what needs to be defended against is the wish from within"[13]. But while Invasion of the Body Snatchers worked as a "Red Scare" film, it also worked as a "protest against pressures for political conformity"[14], not only because the initial ending had the main protagonist, actor Kevin McCarthy, sharing the name of Joseph McCarthy, yelling "you're next" but also because the alien pod invasion was similar to the "unnatural, menacing, even alien…bloblike growth of the postwar, self-replicating suburbs"[15].

This concern with the loss of independence but more importantly the loss of the desire or even the idea of independence,[16] was one that was explored by Mills in his 1956 The Power Elite, which described the man in the mass society without the transcending view allowing him to observe and evaluate what he is or he isn't experiencing[17]. This in turn leading to, according to Mills, a unified and organized elite that has power over the "drifting set of stalemated" middle class and powerless lower-class[18]. This idea is explored to a certain degree in Sweet Smell of Success which presents the image of the corrupt top elite embodied by Burt Lancaster's J.J. Hunsecker and his media conglomerate, which grants him almost absolute control, even above the law (using his corrupt policemen). In this portrayal, communism isn't so much an actual threat, but rather yet another extortion device used to discredit an honest American (Martin Milner's Steve Dallas), which, despite not saying that the threat of communism isn't real, places it in a position where the consequences of being deemed a communist are actually worse than actually being one. As such, the fear and anxiety become not the prospect of being invaded (ideologically or otherwise) by communists, but rather of losing your place in society for being associated with them by a member of your own society. Portraying this in a film might have gone over several of the guidelines in the "Screen Guide for Americans", which served as a McCarthyist production code, though treated more as suggestions rather than actual rules. Specifically, the sections forbidding to "smear industrialists,"[19] "wealth"[20] and "success"[21] would have been in violation, all 3 of which are accomplished in the portrayal of J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success. As such, the film functions as a critique of the elite, of american society and its ideals and strives for a liberation of Mills' mass society man from his binds of conformity (most obviously exemplified by Steve's attempt to break free but more importantly by Tony Curtis' Sidney Falco's various attempts to stand up to J.J) as well as the difficulties encountered when such non-conformity is attempted.

In conclusion, 1950's America under the apparent threat of momism and communism, through film, managed to explore issues that were germinating under the surface of the power politics at play, both on the international and national levels. As such, these films constitute a unique view into 1950's America and into how certain issues were expressed, both overtly and covertly.

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[1] Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the sun : the American war with Japan, (New York: Free Press, 1985), 65.

[2] Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers, Newly Annotated By Author, (New York and Toronto: Rinehart & Company, 1955. First Published, 1942), 197.

[3] Ibid., 207.

[4] Ibid., 217.

[5] Michael Paul Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 242.

[6] Ibid., 242.

[7] Ibid., 243.

[8] Ibid., 240.

[9] Wylie, Generation of Vipers, 196.

[10] Rogin, Ronald Reagan, 251.

[11] Ibid., 252.

[12] Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 96.

[13] Rogin, Ronald Reagan, 266.

[14] Ibid., 266.

[15] Ibid., 266.

[16] C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 323.

[17] Ibid., 322.

[18] Ibid., 324.

[19] Ayn Rand, Screen Guide for Americans." In Journals of Ayn Rand, David Harriman ed., (New York: Dutton, 1997), 358.

[20] Ibid., 359.

[21] Ibid., 360.

REFERENCES

Sweet Smell of Success. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick. United Artists, 1957.

May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988.

My Son John. Directed by Leo McCarey. Paramount Pictures, 1952.

Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.

Rand, Ayn. "Screen Guide for Americans." In Journals of Ayn Rand, edited by David Harriman, 356-366. New York: Dutton, 1997.

Rebel without a Cause. Directed by Nicholas Ray. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1955.

Rogin, Michael Paul. Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Directed by Don Siegel. Allied Artists Pictures, 1956.

Spector, Ronald H. Eagle against the sun : the American war with Japan. New York: Free Press, 1985.

Wylie, Philip. Generation of Vipers. Newly Annotated By Author. New York and Toronto: Rinehart & Company, 1955. First Published, 1942.

Form and Meaning in Peter Rose's Secondary Currents and Michael Snow's So Is This

Produced at a time when avant-garde film making experienced a newfound marginalization due to the normalization of film studies in academia[1], Peter Rose's Secondary Currents (1983) and Michael Snow's So Is This (1982) constitute a kind of filmic answer to the academic efforts to theorize film in writing, using the "theatre space as the medium for communication", in writing. This situation was described by Snow himself, in his 1989 and 1990 interviews with Scott MacDonald, where he refers to the "academic theorists" who believe that "the subject" is "totally culturally shaped" and his disagreement with the opinion, opting instead for a view that favours nature more than nurture, and which is further evidence of this feeling of marginalization that avant-garde film makers might have felt at the time, having to defend their creativity in light of film theorists' (textual) analysis[2]. While an essay analyzing this practice could be seen as the very thing which these two films are an answer to, and as such risking to even further marginalize avant-garde film-making, it is the very recognition of this risk that renders the analysis even more relevant. Further, as opposed to the supposed film studies work of the 1980's, that would have marginalized avant-garde film making, and which would have concentrated on commercial cinema, exploring the convention of entertainment[3], a text dealing directly with two avant-garde films, should only render avant-garde cinema as more relevant (one would hope), as opposed to marginalizing it.

Through film and text combined, the two works function in conveying an understanding of both means of expression that neither can provide by itself. As such, Both Michael Snow's So Is This and Peter Rose's Secondary Currents allow for a deeper understanding of constructed meaning that goes beyond the meaning presented in text or film in and of themselves.

To see how this is accomplished, I will commence by exploring the formal elements of both films, both visual and (in case of Secondary Currents) aural. Following this, I will look at the concept of time as it is present in both films and the way that it affects our understanding of the text conveyed. Finally, I shall observe how these two elements converge in creating meaning and how this contributes to our understanding of this meaning that neither element can fully achieve by itself.

Beginning with the formal elements of the films - both constitute of primarily white text on a black background, making the films almost entirely text based. Such an approach might seem like it would be going against the very medium used to convey the message. Snow's own admission that such a form is "inconsistent with the nature of the medium"[4], coupled with Brakhage's condemnation of verbal language, stating "Imagine a world before 'the beginning was the word'"[5] might make it seem as though the films are going against the very experimental film tradition from which their creators come. A deeper examination however, reveals that both work very well as structural films. Considering Sitney's definition of structural film, we can find most elements (fixed camera, flicker effect, loop printing, rephotography) that he considers the building blocks of structural film[6], in both Rose's and Snow's films. Other than at the end of Secondary Currents, there is no movement at all in either film (camera movement or text movement). The rapid succession of words in So Is This, at times gives the impression of flicker, and the rapidly alternating words at the end of Secondary Currents gives a similar impression. Finally, in So Is This, Snow employs rephotography (after the segment announcing "Let's Look Back:" there is a brief recap of the first part of the film through rephotography of the screen[7]). Despite exhibiting many of the elements that would deem it as a bona fide structural film, Razutis claims that Rose's film merely has its "roots in structural films" but "nevertheless exceed(s) the prescriptions that have strangled structural film"[8]. While this view that structural film is "strangled" by its own prescriptions might seem somewhat extreme, one can clearly see how both Rose's and Snow's films go beyond the structural film dogma (as defined by Sitney, if one exists) and employ a range of other strategies not necessarily associated with structural film. Rose's film, for example, draws on foreign art house films both in the aural delivery of the dialogue by Rose (alluding to Bergman, Kurosawa and Fellini[9]) and through the visual representation of the text, playing "with the viewer's assumptions about how subtitles will be organized"[10].

Snow, on the other hand, proclaiming in So Is This that "the rest of the film will look just like this" raises the possibility that film is just what it seems to be, that it is "purely visible"[11] something that, on the surface, would conform to Sitney's notion of structural film, insisting on its shape with minimal content that is subsidiary to the outline.[12] Despite this, however, we are placed in a sort of pedagogical position, in front of a blackboard, with all our expectations of narrative pleasure intact[13], giving the film its "educational" nature, that goes beyond what it seems to be and beyond it being "purely visible".

Moving beyond the audiovisual elements of the films, let us now consider the element of time in Secondary Currents and in So Is This. In Rose's Secondary Currents, there are two instances where time is a factor in our understanding of meaning (or lack thereof). The first is when an extended passage narrated by Rose's "woman" voice, in something that sounds similar to Italian, spends around 8 seconds at about 0'05'49" in the film[14] saying something that is "translated" in one single word (the word was "nonsense") pointing to the reality that what was heard wasn't adequately represented by subtitles[15]. The second instance is towards the end, when the "translation" becomes increasingly complex, and as consequence increasingly indecipherable due to the fact that the sentences must be presented only a phrase at a time[16] leaving the viewer little time to form a coherent meaning of the sentences. Both of these instances show how Rose uses the element of time to control our understanding of the text's meaning.

Snow's So Is This, on the other hand, uses time as a means of controlling the pace in which we read his text, not bound by the timing of the made-up narration like Rose was, by doing so he places us, the viewer, at his mercy.[17] MacDonald refers to this as Snow "frustrating our ability to read" and "turning film loose on the experience of reading".[18] But why would Snow do this? Mellencamp talks of the political dimensions of silence, in the gaps and quiet spaces in between words in a world of constant sound, talk and speeded up imaging.[19] But Snow's whole film is silent, and the gaps and quiet spaces between words are represented visually by a black screen. Elder, then, suggests that since the words present themselves one after another, like moments in time, So Is This challenges the apparently obvious truths that what is given in the present moment is fully present, since the viewer needs to remember words presented and anticipate what words are yet to come in order to construct meaningful sentences from the individual words.[20] He further elaborates that the isolation of single words in So Is This is used to reveal that words are not meaningful in isolation, but only in context, therefore in language, like in time, nothing is ever simply present or simply absent.[21] Further, Elder expands on the notion of absence and presence to reach the notion of meaning: the words in So Is This are by themselves meaningless, since meaning is not something given but rather "constructed by an intellectual act of synthesis" as much from the traces of the absent (our memory of the words we've just read) as from the present (the word that we are currently reading). As such, meaning is "constituted by stepping out of the succession of particularized words and rising to a realm of timeless meaning"[22].

Finally, after having explored how the formal elements of Secondary Currents and So Is This function to go beyond the structural film and how the element of time in the films works to elaborate on our understanding of the nature of meaning, what is left is to see how these two converge in giving meaning to the films and how they contribute in our understanding of this meaning. In So Is This, Elder points to the structure of the film that constitutes of an introduction, a flashback of this introduction (through rephotography) and a conclusion, deeming the film as a film whose main body of text is a text without a main body. Further going on to say that this lack of main body is similar to the paradox of the non-being of meaning and presence, and that the whole film is built around this paradox.[23] As an example, he cites the portion of the film that states "There'll be not one word about El Salvador, no mention of Trudeau"[24], a paradox since the very mentioning of those words not being mentioned constitutes them being mentioned, which points to their absence by their presence. And inversely points to the presence in absence when mentioning the part about censorship ("a trace of what is censored always remains")[25]. Here we see how meaning is constructed through the choice of having or not having something mentioned, but even further by pointing out the fact of this mentioning or not mentioning, elevating it to yet another level ("why isn't something mentioned/not mentioned?"). But it is Razutis, commenting on Rose's films, which ultimately points to the significance of the text film, as a response to the "academicised debates on narrative and structure, and in spite of the hegemony of theory", there is still "excellent, inspired work being conducted", which "once again allows us to engage in visual pleasure, experience of self and world within a cinematic practice that is irreducible to paradigms or simple combinational rules"[26]. According to this, the text film's importance and meaning is a kind of escape from the binds of academicised debate and theory towards a work that does not fall within some sort of film-studies formula which, with its prescriptions, has managed to strangle even the structural film[27]. As such Rose's Secondary Currents not only escapes this discourse, but further goes to mock and burlesque it, parodying the increasing complexity of writing about film[28] ("an unrepentant dilution of constructed meaning whose meandering lucubrations foretold the essential entropy whose euphostolic processes and peregnations re-invitriafied by the subcoholate of an ecstatic generative demuneration…"[29]).

Snow on the other hand is more direct in asserting that So Is This is a comment on the "business of using the art object, in this case film, as a pretext for arguments that the writer considers of more interest", and deems this practice as "a misuse of the stimuli" referring to the feeling of "producing [a film] for other people to advance their own interests and arguments"[30]. As such, Snow's film (or rather the meaning expressed in the interview with him about the film) is one that expresses a real concern regarding the use of his films to advance an idea separate (or at least diverging) from his initial intention for his work.

To conclude, we have seen how the formal elements in Michael Snow's So Is This and Peter Rose's Secondary Currents work along with the element of time in the films in expressing meaning. We have also explored the notion of presence and absence conveyed through these two elements and how this notion brings to a better understanding of meaning. Finally we have observed how the meaning in both the films is used as a comment on the state of film theory and academic discourse at the time of their production, as well as the individual filmmaker's ways of dealing with this situation, both in their films and as expressed through interview. While this view seems valid and justified, one would hope that experimental film (and particularly the text-film) has managed since to peacefully coexist with academic discourse (such as this one) regarding these kinds of works. While one could indeed see how the films would have been deemed as "poetic justice" for "people who make a fetish of the ability to write and read sentences"[31], and similarly see how this very text could constitute the fulfillment of said fetish, one would hope that this sort of justice is not produced out of a need to go against such kind of discourse, but rather as an artistic expression not driven by a reaction to its hypothetical use (or misuse) in advancing any interest or argument other than the artist's own. Realizing that this ideal might, inadvertently constitute the death of art criticism as a whole and considering the "dog-eat-dog" nature of today's art circle, one wonders if this is in any way a realistic ideal, or if it should simply be deemed as naïve and overly idealistic, dismissing the contemplative lament on the subject in favor of a full scale defense of academic writing about film (and possibly a similar full scale attack on experimental text-film).

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[1] Scott MacDonald "Experimental Cinema in the 1980s." In A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989, Stephen Prince, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 439.

[2] Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 75.

[3] MacDonald, "Experimental Cinema in the 1980s", 439.

[4] R. Bruce Elder, Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture, (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1989), 317.

[5] Stan Brakhage, "From Metaphors of Vision", The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, P. Adams Sitney, ed., (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 120.

[6] P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-garde, 1943-2000, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 348.

[7] So Is This directed by Michael Snow, 1982.

[8] Al Razutis, "Propositions for the Deconstruction of Cine-Structuralism: An Eliptical Introduction to the Films of Peter Rose." Opsis 1, no. 2/3 (1984), 23.

[9] Scott MacDonald, Screen Writings: Scripts and Texts by Independent Filmmakers, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995),m 157.

[10] MacDonald, "Experimental Cinema in the 1980s", 441.

[11] Elder, Image and Identity, 322.

[12] Sitney, Visionary Film, 348.

[13] Patricial Mellencamp, Indiscretions: Avant-garde Film, Video & Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 90.

[14] Secondary Currents, directed by Peter Rose, 1983.

[15] MacDonald, "Experimental Cinema in the 1980s, 440.

[16] Ibid., 441.

[17] MacDonald, Screen Writings, 137.

[18] Ibid., 137.

[19] Mellencamp, Indiscretions, 90.

[20] Elder, Image and Identity, 319

[21] Ibid., 319.

[22] Ibid., 324.

[23] Ibid., 320.

[24] Ibid., 322.

[25] Ibid., 323.

[26] Razutis, "Propositions for the Deconstruction of Cine-Structuralism, 23.

[27] Ibid., 23.

[28] MacDonald, Screen Writings, 157.

[29] Rose, Secondary Currents

[30] MacDonald, A Critical Cinema, 74.

[31] Ibid., 74.

REFERENCES

Brakhage, Stan. "From Metaphors of Vision." In The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, edited by P. Adams Sitney, 172-183. New York: New York University Press, 1978.

Elder, R. Bruce. Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1989.

MacDonald, Scott. A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

MacDonald, Scott. "Experimental Cinema in the 1980s." In A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989, by Stephen Prince, 390-444. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

MacDonald, Scott. Screen Writings: Scripts and Texts by Independent Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Mellencamp, Patricia. Indiscretions: Avant-garde Film, Video & Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Razutis, Al. "Propositions for the Deconstruction of Cine-Structuralism: An Eliptical Introduction to the Films of Peter Rose." Opsis 1, no. 2/3 (1984): 16-23.

Secondary Currents. Directed by Peter Rose. 1983.

Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant-garde, 1943-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

So Is This. Directed by Michael Snow. 1982.