language, metaphor & film east & west in film & print
TRANSCRIPT
Language, Metaphor
& Film
East & West in Film & Print
Language & Truth
Language is extremely imprecise
Language at best approximates reality
It is a system of signs (signifiers) that represent or connote “meaning” (signified)
Words work best at describing objects that can be verified by the senses
Words become less accurate and more metaphorical when attempting to describe other spheres of reality
Basic Concepts
THE MEANING OF MEANING
Two Views of Language
Idealists
Romanticists
Mystics
Archetypal
Basic Concepts
THE MEANING OF MEANING
SIGNIFIED
SIGNIFIER
Two Views of Language
Idealists
Romanticists
Mystics
Archetypal
Basic Concepts
THE MEANING OF MEANING
SIGNIFIED
SIGNIFIER
Postmodernists
Poststructuralists
Constructivists
SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIER
The Power of Metaphor
Metaphor is the basis of language and thought.
Basic Concepts
THE MEANING OF MEANING
The Power of Metaphor
There are no absolute truths.
Basic Concepts
THE MEANING OF MEANING
The Power of Metaphor
All we can say about anything is that it is sort of like this...
Basic Concepts
THE MEANING OF MEANING
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LANGUAGE (1849)
1. Words are signs of natural facts.
2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.
3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.
How Language Means
NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LANGUAGE (1849)
“Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind...We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature.”
How Language Means
NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LANGUAGE (1849)
“It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope.”
How Language Means
NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LANGUAGE (1849)
“The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”
Power of Metaphor
NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE
T. S. Eliot
OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE (1919)
“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked."
Power of Metaphor
EVOKING OF EMOTIONS
Robert Frost
EDUCATION BY POETRY
“I have wanted in late years to go further and further in making metaphor the whole of thinking."
Power of Metaphor
METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING
Freiderich Nietzche
WHAT IS TRUTH?
“What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors..."
All philosophies rest on the shifting texture of figurative language.
Power of Metaphor
METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING
Milan Kundera
“Metaphor is a means of grasping, through instantaneous revelation, the ungraspable essence of things.”
Power of Metaphor
METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING
Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
CINEMATIC REALISM
Cinema and photography are media that an artist can utilize to review the deeper meanings behind the phenomena of existence
Close observation of natural phenomena reveal planetary consciousness
The spirit behind the “real” object
Long takes (long hard gaze)
Film Theory
METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF CINEMATIC TRUTH
Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“ We know that under the image revealed there is another which is truer to reality and under this image still another and yet again still another under this last one, right down to the true image of reality, absolute, mysterious, which no on will ever see.”
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky
Krzysztof Kieslowski
“ In Blue Kieslowski is attempting to render complex and difficult emotional states and situations from within the confines of the cinematic language he has at his disposal. Indeed, I would certainly contend that he stretches that language as far as possible so as to open the ground of new cinematic vistas (the sugar cube receding in the coffee, the mysterious flautist). “
Krzysztof Kieslowski
“There are details in Blue that seem to convey a proximity to hell, despair, dread and damnation. What Kieslowski is trying to do is to find a cinematic language that can express Julie’s dilemmas (in much the same way that Shakespeare, for example, stretched the written and spoken word to express the dilemmas and passions of his characters).”
Richard Rushton, Reading Three Colours: Blue,
Senses of Cinema
The Power of Metaphor
There are no absolute truths.
Language is imperfect.
Metaphor is the basis of all thought.
Film and literature are the highest forms of experiental “knowledge.”