Filmisemiootika lugemine

Bazin, André 1997a. Filmikeele areng I. Teater. Muusika. Kino. 10, 44-47.

Montaaži saab kasutada "nähtamatult"; ameerika klassikalistes ennesõjaaegsetes filmides on see enim levinud võte. Plaanide killustamisel ei ole muud eesmärki kui analüüsida sündmust vatavalt stseenide materiaalsele või dramaatilisele loogikale. Analüüsi loogika muudabki montaaži tajumatuks, kuna vaataja mõistus omastab loomulikul kombel režissööri pakutud seisukohad, sest neid õigustab tegevuse asukoht või dramaatilise pinge raskuspunkti ümberpaiknemine. (Bazin 1997a: 45)

Fahrenheit 451s juhtub ühel hetkel see, et plaanid killustuvad väga nähtavalt, toimub järsk nihe aegruumis. See on niivõrd selgelt tajutav, jätab mulje halvast montaažist. Samamoodi rongi trepi langemine, millega kaasneb tajutav kaadrilõige.

Millised nad ka poleks, ikka on neis olemas see ühine joon, mis on montaaži enda määratluseks: tähenduse loomine, mida kujutised objektiivselt ei sisalda ning mis tuleneb vaid nende omavahelisest suhtest. Heaks näiteks on montaaži omaduste kohta on kuulus Lev Kulešovi eksperiment Ivan Mozžuhhinist, kelle naeratus tundub muutuvat sõltuvalt talle eelnevast kujutisest. (Bazin 1997a: 45)

Montaaži määratlus tähendusloomena tundub väga semiootiline. Kulešovi eksperiment - mis iseenesest on seotud mitteverbaalse suhtlemisega, on semiootika osakonnas justkui commonsense knowledge - tuleks nimega seostada, et järgmine kord kui mõni õppejõud niimuuseas seda mainib ja küsib nime, oskaks vastata.

Metz, Christian 1974. The Cinema: Language or Language system? Language and Cinema. s.l.: Walter de Gruyter, 31-91.

Nevertheless there are certain "syntactical procedures" that, after frequent use as speech, come to appear in later films as a language system: They have become conventional to a degree. Many people, misled by a kind of reverse anticipation, have antedated the language system; they believed they could understand film because of its syntax, whereas one understands the syntax because one has understood, and only because one has understood, the film. The inherent intelligibility of a dissolve or a double exposure cannot clarify the plot of a film unless the spectator has already see other films in which dissolves and double exposures were used intelligibly. On the other hand, the narrative force of a plot, which will always be understood only too well - since it communicates with us in images of the world and of ourselves - will automatically lead us to understand the double exposure and the dissolve, if not in the first film we see them, at least by the third or fourth. As GIlbert Cohen-Séat has aid, the language of film will always have the advantage of being "already entirely written out in actions and in passions important to us." (Metz 1974: 41)

Siin on päris hea tsitaat filmikeele mõistetavusest ja argument, et me mõistame filmikeelt juhul kui oleme sellega varem kokku puutunud. Teisest käest mõistame filme ka selle tõttu, et need põhinevad jagatud kogemustel - näiteks Fahrenheit 451 puhul mõistame firemani esekahtlemist, sest tajume Bradbury ümberpööramisi. Tulemehed põletavad mitte ei kustuta, toru viib üles mitte alla ja rong sõidab õhus, mitte maal.

...above all [in silent films] there was the gesticulation in acting, whose true reason for being [...] was not, as has been wrongly said, in the infirmity of the silent image, or in acting habits mechanically inherited from the theater (how to explain that in some silent pictures there is no gesticulation?), but in a subconscious attempt to speak without words, and to say without verbal language not only what one would have said with it (which is never entirely impossible), but in the same way it would have been said. Thus there came into being a kind of silent gibberish, simultaneously overexited and petrified, an exuberant gabbing whose every gesture, every bit of mimicry, stood with scrupulous and clumsy literalness for a linguistic unit, almost always a sentence whose absence, which would not otherwise have been catastrophic, became abundantly obvious when the gesticulated imitation so clearly emphasized it. (Metz 1974: 50)

Arutelu sel teemal, kuidas tummfilmides žestikulatsioon ja kõiksugused muud kehaliigutused asendasid verbaalseid väljendusi. Sealjuures nii, et sõnadele oli koht, kuid neid ei olnud. Lk 54 annab ta sellele nähtusele ka nimetuse: pseudo-verbal gesticulation.

In short, the universaility of the cinema is a two-fold phenomenon. Positive aspect: The cinema is universal because visual perception varies less throughout the world than languages do. Negative aspect: The cinema is universal because it lacks the second [double] articulation. There is a solitary relationship between the two observations that must be emphasized. A visual spectacle entails a joining of the signifier to the significates, which in turn renders impossible their disjunction at any given moment and, therefore, the existence of a second articulation. (Metx 1974: 64)

Negatiivne aspekt on siin tähistaja ja tähistatava lähedus, mistõttu filmis on intrinsic seme-d. Sama tähelepaneku (topeltartikulatsiooni puudumine) tegi mitteverbaalse suhtlemise kohta Lange-Seidl. MVS puhul saab sellest arutelust välja kasvatada instrumentaalse tegevuse käsitluse, filmide puhul pole kindel.

The concept of expression is used here as defined by Mikel Dufrenne. There is expression where a "meaning" is somehow immanent to a thing, is directly released from it, and merges with its very form. Some of Eric Buyssens's "intrinsic semes" perhaps fall under this definition. Signification, on the contrary, links from the outside an isolable signifier to a significate that is itself - this has been known since de Saussure - a concept and not a thing. There are the "extrinsic semes" Buyssens writes about. A concept is signified, a thing is expressed. Being extrinsic, signification can only derive from a convention; it is of necessity obligatory, since one would deprive it of its only support - consensus - by rendering it optional. (Metz 1974: 78)

Tuleb välja, et intrinsic ja extrinsic coding, mis mulle on tuttav Ekmani ja Frieseni kategooriatest, pärineb 1930ndatest (Eric Buyssensi kohta ei leidu internetis palju infot).

Metz, Christian 1990 [1978]a. Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Translated by Michael Taylor. s.l.: University of Chicago Press, 92-107.

In film a "house" would be a shot of a staircase, a shot of one of the walls taken from the outside, a close-up of a window, a brief establishing shot of the building, etc. Thus a kind of filmic articulation appears, which has no equivalent in photography: It is the denotation itself that is being constructed, organized, and to a certain extent codified (codified, not necessarily encoded). Lacking absolute laws, filmic intelligibility nevertheless depends on a certain number of dominant habits: A film put together haphazardly would not be understood. (Metz 1990: 98-99)

Siin on foto ja filmi erinevus see, et filmis on fotosid palju ja nende vaheldumise kaudu artikuleeritakse või konstrueeritakse denotaat. Milline täpselt on vahe kodifitseerimise ja enkodeerimise vahel, jääb siin praegu lahtiseks. Näide haphazardly put together filmist tuli meelde Banksy filmist Exit Through The Gift Shop, kus peategelane pani oma kaua-kogutud videlõikudest kokku mingi jura milles iga sekund sisaldab mitu kaadrit erinevatest aegruumidest vms, midagi täiesti vaadatamatut mille ajendil Banksy pidi väidetavalt ise (uue) filmi tegema.

Contrary to what many of the theoreticians of the silent film declared or suggested ("Ciné langue," "visual Esperanto," etc.), the cinema is certainly not a language system (langue). It can, however, be considered as a language, to the extent that it orders signifying elements within ordered arrangements different from those of spoken idioms - and to the extent that these elements are not traced on the perceptual configurations of reality itself (which does not tell stories). Filmic manipulation transforms what might have been mere visual transfer of reality into discourse. Derived from a kind of signification that is purely analogous and continuous - animated protography, cinematography - the cinema gradually shaped, in course of its diachronic maturation, some elements of proper semiotics, which remain scattered and fragmentary within the open field of visual duplication. (Metz 1990: 105)

Keele ja keelesüsteemi erinevuse kohta oli eelmises tekstis rohkem kirjutatud. Siin on lühike kokkuvõte. Väga kenasti kõlab lause, et filmiline manipulatsioon muudab selle, mis võinuks olla kõigest reaalsuse ülekanne, diskursuseks. Mul on kahtlusi puhta analoogsuse või kontinuaalsuse suhtes, kuigi selle üle vaidlemine võib minna filosoofiliseks. Proper semiotics näib Metzi jaoks olevat kokkuleppeliste märkide sfäär.

Barthes, Roland 1977a. The Photographic Message. Image, Music, Text. Edited and translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill, 15-31.

What is the content of the photographic message? What does the photograph transmit? By definition, the scene itself, the literal reality. From the object to its image there is of course a reduction - in proportion, perspective, colour - but at no time is this reduction a transformation (in the mathematical sense of the term). In order to move from the reality to its photograph it is in no way necessary to divide up this reality into units and to constitute these units as signs, substantially different from the object they communicate; there is no necessity to set up a relay, that is to say a code, between the object and its image. Certainly the image is not the reality but at least it is its perfect analogon and it is exactly this analogical perfection which, to common sense, defines the photograph. Thus can be seen the special photographic image: it is a message without a code; from which proposition an important corollary must immediately be drawn: the photographic message is a continuous message. (Bathes 1977: 17)

Siin jätkub intrinsic codingu teema. Analogon on siin denotaat ja konnotatsioonide kaudu suhtleb ühiskond oma arvamusi sellest. Kui täiuslik on foto analogon, jääb minu arvates kahtlaseks, sest ka pildistamisel mängib denotaadi konstrueerimisel rolli mitu faktorit mida Metz oma tekstis nimetas (kaamera kaugus, suund, jne). Pildi kontinuaalsus on TMKst liigagi tuttav ja kõige varasemaks selliseks arutluseks pean ikkagi Rueschi ja Keesi (1956) vastandust digitaalse ja analoogilise vahel.

The purely 'denotative' status of the photograph, the perfection and plenitude of its analogy, in short its 'objectivity', has every chance of being mythical (these are the characteristics that common sense attributes to the photograph). In actual fact, there is a strong probability (and this will be a working hypothesis) that the photographic message too - at least in the press - is connoted. Connotation is not necessarily immediately graspable at the level of the message itself (it is, one could say, at once invisible and active, clear and implicit) but it can already be inferred from certain phenomena which occur at the levels of the production and reception of the message: on the one hand, the press photograph is an object that has been worked on, chosen, composed, constructed, treated according to professional, aesthetic or ideological norms which are so many factors of connotation; while on the other, it is read, connected more or less consciously by the public that consumes it to a traditional stock of signs. (Barthes 1977: 19)

Siin suunabki Barthes ise arutelu foto denotaadi täiuslikkuse müütilisusele: foto (vähemasti ajakirjas) on läbinud töötluse, valitud, komposeeritud, konstrueeritud, koheldud professionaalide poolt esteetiliste või ideoloogiliste normide kohaselt jne. Need on tema järgi konnotatsiooni faktorid.

2. Pose. Consider a press photograph of President Kennedy widely distributed at the time of the 1960 election: a half-lenght profile shot, eyes looking upwards, hands joined together. Here it is the very pose of the subject which prepares the reading of the signifieds of connotation: youthfulness, spirituality, purity. The photograph clearly only signifies because of the existence of a store of stereotyped attitudes which form ready-made elements of signification (eyes raised heavenwards, hands clasped). A 'historical grammar' of iconographic connotation ought thus to look for its material in painting, theatre, associations of ideas, stock metaphors, etc., that is to say, precisely in 'culture'. (Barthes 1977: 22)

Kogu pildile jäädvustatud mitteverbaalne käitumine on Barthesil koondatud poosi mõistesse. Siinkohal ma ei oska öelda, mis erinevus on sõnadel pose ja posture. Selles aspektis tuleks vist arvesse võtta Poyatose (2008: 258) tähelepanekut, et filmis esineb ka dünaamilisi poose (keha püsivad konfiguratsioonid liikumises). Birdwhistellil, Kendonil ja Dittmanil oli selleks oma sõna, vististi stance.

Barthes, Roland 1977b. Rhetoic of the Image. Image, Music, Text. Edited and translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill, 32-51.

Today, at the level of mass communications, it appears that the linguistic message is indeed present in every image: as title, caption, accompanying press article, film dialogue, comic strip balloon. Which shows that it is not very accurate to talk of a civilization of the image - we are still, and more than ever, a civilization of writing, writing and speech continuing to be the full terms of the informational structure. In fact, it is simply the presence of the linguistic message that counts, for neither its position nor its lenght seem to be pertinent (a long text may only comprise a single global signified, thanks to connotation, and it is this signified which is put in relation with the image). What are the functions of the linguistic message with regards to the (twofold) iconic message? There appear to be two: anchrorage and relay. (Barthes 1977: 38)

See tähelepanek on Fahrenheit 451 suhtes oluline, sest seal vabaneti sõnadest isegi mitte-kirjanduslikes teabevahendites. Vähemasti filmis oli tahvlile joonistatud skeemidele märgitud ainult numbrid ja ajaleht-koomiksis ei olnud ühtegi sõna. Verbaalsel sõnumitel on ikooniliste sõnumitega seoses kaks funktsiooni Barthesi järgi: ankurdamine aitab valid mitmetähenduslikust pildist kindla/õige tajutasandi, nö ankurdab konnotatsiooni (paljude võimalike konnotatsioonide hulgast); relee-tekst aga lisab tähendusi mida pildis endas ei ole. Üks ja sama verbaalne kirjeldus võib täita mõlemat funktsiooni korraga, aga üks valitseb.

A pseudo-truth is surreptitiously substituted for the simple validity of openly semantic systems; the absence of code disintellectualizes the message because it seems to found in nature to signs of culture. This is without doubt an important historical paradox: the more technology develops the diffusion of information (and notably of images), the more it provides the means of masking the constructed meaning under the appearance of the give meaning. (Barthes 1977: 45-46)

Disintellectualization on kena sõna. Arvustus düstoopiafilmidest Youtube-s ankurdab Fahrenheit 451 "globaalse tähenduse" sõnadega "kirjandus on paha", mida arvustaja lausub disintellektualiseeritud juhma ilmega (justkui Fahrenheit 451 olekski suunatud juhmadele inimestele kes kirjandusest lugu ei pea).

Metz, Christian 1990 [1978]b. Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Translated by Michael Taylor. s.l.: University of Chicago Press, 108-145.

Contrary to what I believed four years ago (notably in "The Cinema: Language or Language System?"), it does not seem atl all impossible to me, today, to assume that analogy is itself coded without, however, ceasing to function authentically as analogy in relation to the codes of the superior level - which are brought into play only on the basis of this first assumption. Many of the misunderstandings and arguments about these subjects derive from the fact that no one has yet attempted to draw up a half-way complete list of the different heterogeneous and superimposed codes copresent in any cultural activity of some importance, and no one has yet tried to clarify the precise organization of their interactions. (Metz 1990: 111-112)

Midagi sarnast ütles aastakümneid Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz (1993: 157): semiootikud mõistavad jada märk-kood-kultuur, aga kui on vaja praktiliselt analüüside mitme või paljude koodide interplay'd, satuvad hätta. Võib-olla see on igasuguste koodide puhul üldine raskus? Koodide tüpoloogiaid on ju palju ja ükski neist ei tundu olevat täiuslik või lõpuni usutav. Vb mul oleks lihtsalt vaja Ecot lugeda.

Even with respect to the signifying units, the cinema is initially deprived of discrete elements. It proceeds by whole "blocks of reality," which are actualized with their total meaning in the discourse. These blocks are the "shots". The discrete units identifiable in the filmic discourse on another level - for, as we shall see, there is another level - are not equivalent to the first articulation of spoken language.
Certainly, it is true that montage is in a sense an analysis, a sort of articulation of the reality shown on the screen. Instead of showing us an entire landscape, a film-maker will show us successively a number of partial views, which are broken down and ordered according to a very precise intention. It is well known that the nature of the cinema is to transform the world into discourse. (Metz 1990: 115)

Veel kord topeltartikulatsiooni teema ja see - mis meeldib mulle väga - kino kirjeldus kui reaalsuse muutmine diskursuseks. Kõlab nagu "film tekstualiseerib elu". Metzi argument on, et kuigi võtete tahtlik konstrueerimine tähendusloomes jätab mulje topeltartikulatsiooniks, ei ole see tõene lingvistilises mõttes, sest iga (isegi osaline) võte esitab segmenti reaalsusest mis kannab tähendust iseendas, erinevalt foneemist, mis peab ühinema jadaks, et olla tähenduslik. Tal on viis mõjukat argumenti: 1) võtteid, erinevalt sõnadest, on lõputult; 2) võtteid loovad filmitegijad, sõnad on sõnastikus olemas - võtted sarnanevad rohkem väidetele/lausetele; 3) võtted on määramatu kogus informatsiooni (pilt ütleb tuhat sõna?), mistõttu isegi väite/lause analoogia on kehv; 4) võte on aktualiseerunud ühik ehk aktuaalne, erinevalt sõnast mis on virtuaalne (siin on intrinsic/extrinsic coding probleem); 5) paradigmaatika probleem - film ütleb midagi just nii nagu ta ütleb, erinevalt lausest, mida võib öelda ka teisiti.

Thus, when it reaches the level of the "small" elements, the semiotics of the cinema encounters its limits, and its competence is no longer certain. Whether one has desired it or not, one suddenly finds oneself referred to the myriad winds of culture, the confused murmurings of a thousand other utterances: the symbolism of the human body, the language of objects, the system of colors (for color films) or the voices of chiaroscuro (for black and white films), the sense of clothing and dress, the eloquence of landscape. In each these cases - and in each of the cases not mentioned here - the study (indispensable, by the way) of the properly filmic creations of the appropriate significations will provide us with no essential paradigm: for those great creative tropes of meaning and of humanity will remain imbedded in culture where only a very general semantics can illuminate them - even if their deep scattered appearance in films contributes, in return, to their partial reformulation. (Metz 1990: 142)

Siin nimetab ta erinevaid koode, mis filmis segunevad.

Barthes, Roland 1977c. The Third Meaning: Research notes on some Eisenstein stills. Image, Music, Text. Edited and translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill, 52-68.

I read, I receive (and probably even first and foremost) a third meaning - evident, erratic, obstinate. I do not know what its signified is, at least I am unable to give it a name, but I can see clearly the traits, the signifying accidents of which this - consequently incomplete - sign is composed: a certain compactness of the courtier's make-up, thick and insistent for the one, smooth and distinguished for the other; the former's 'stupid' nose, the latter's finely traced eyebrows, his lank blondness, his faded, pale complexion, the affected flatness of his hairstyle suggestive of a wig, the touching-up with chalky foundation talc, the face powder. I am not sure if the reading of this third meaning is justified - if it can be generalized - but already it seems to me that its signifier (the traits to which I have tried to give words, if not to describe) possesses a theoretical individuality. On the one hand, it cannot be conflated with the simple existence of the scene, it exceeds the copy of the referential motif, it compels an interrogative reading (interrogation bears precisely on the signifier not on the signified, on reading not on intellection: it is a 'poetical' grasp); on the other, neither can it be conflated with the dramatic meaning of the episode... (Barthes 1977: 53)

Tsitaat läheb edasi, aga point on juba koju jõudnud: mulle näib, et Barthes üritab siin käsitleda mitteverbaalset suhtlemist, seda personaalset kehade sfääri kus tähistajad tormlevad ilma tähenduseta.

By contrast with the first two levels, communication and signification, this third level - even if the reading of it is still hazardous - is that of signifiance, a word which has the advantage of referring to the field of the signifier (and not of signification) and of linking up with, via the path opened by Julia Kristeva who proposed the term, a semiotics of the text. (Barthes 1977: 54)

Siin annab ta sellele "kolmandale tähendusele", mis triivib signifikatsiooni ja kommunikatsiooni vahel, nime. Selle lugemine on Barthesile, just nagu see on kõigile teistele, hazardous, sest mitteverbaalsed nähtused - kehade olemasolu ja liikumine, interaktsioon - on raskesti kirjeldatav. See on nagu "juhuslik ankurdamine" - konnotatsioone on lõputult ja ükski pole otseselt "see".

The obtuse meaning is a signifier without a signified, hence the difficulty in naming it. My rading remains suspended between the image and its description, between definition and approximation. If the obtuse meaning cannot be described, that is because, in contrast to the obvious meaning, it does not copy anything - how do you describe something that does not represent anything? The pictorial 'rendering' of words is here impossible, with the consequence that if, in front of these images, we remain, you and I, at the level of articulated language - at the level, that is, of my own text - the obtuse meaning will not succeed in existing, in entering the critic's metalanguage. Which means that the obtuse meaning is outside (articulated) language while nevertheless within interlocution. For if you look at the images I am discussing, you can see this meaning, we can agree on it 'over the shoulder' or 'on the back' of articulated language. Thanks to the image (fixed, it is true; a factor which will be taken up later) or much rather thanks to what, in the image, is purely image (which is in fact very little), we do wihout language yet never cease to understand one another. (Barthes 1977: 61)

Jääb mulje, et Barthes üritab siin sooritada müstitsistlik-semiootilist lugemist mitteverbaalsele käitumisele Eisensteini loomingus, aga tal on suhteliselt hädised vahendid selle läbiviimiseks. Siin mõtiskleb ta selle üle kui väga verbaalse keele vahendusel on võimalik mitteverbaalsust puudutada. Seda peatükki tuleks hiljem vanema-targemana üle lugeda sügavuti.

Burch, Noël 1982. Narrative/Diegesis: Thresholds, Limits. Screen 23(2): 16-33.

One of the critical thresholds crossed in the course of this historical movement was the ban, by certain American companies around 1910, against actors looking at the camera. In teh land of Griffith, Barker and DeMille, it was recognized much earlier than in France, for example, that the glance at the camera addressed itself explicitly to the spectator as corporeal individual; produced him/her as seated in a darkened theatre looking at dancing shadows on a screen. (Burch 1982: 22)

Kaamerasse vaatav näitleja kõnetab pilguga publikut kui kehalist isikut, tekitades ("pealesurutud" selles mõttes, et seda pole võimalik ühe osapoolena kuidagi reguleerida) väga isikliku sideme justkui-kõike-nägeva-näitleja ja vaataja vahel.

Comolli, Jean-Louis 1986 [1971]. Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, Depth of Field (Parts Three and Four). Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader. s.l.: Columbia University Press, 421-443.

To pursue this particular instance further: the closeups of Hollywood stars no more "descend" from the closeups of Griffith's actors than they do from the "animated portraits" of Demeny (1891). We know they were due to the contractual conditions imposed by the star system: the number and kinds of closeups were prescribed even before shooting began, and before the film narrative was completely fleshed out. (Comolli 1986: 428)

Ma ei teadnud, et selline praktika eksisteerib... Aga meikib senssi - ongi commonsensical viis kuidas majandus tungib filmi.