Film Like/As

Like any good semiotician or poststructuralist, Eco leaves out the embodied experience of film—meaning, for Eco=thought (the presumption here is that the body cannot have or create meaning). I would agree with Jason that Semiotics is a self-fulfilling prophecy, yet adding that this is true of any method. In this “meta” seminar we are able to step back and see that any particular mode of analysis more often than not creates what it purports to describe. Really the only way out of this is (1) “self-reflexive” theory—theory that looks back on the observer (systems theory, Latour looking at Scientists as they work, etc), (2) recognizing the limited use of a particular theory--that a THEORY can never be all-encompassing, or (3) attempting to piecemeal several different theories together, pointing out the flaws in each.

So, for me anyway, the main flaw of Eco’s theory (and, for that matter, any poststructuralist theory) is that he ignores embodied experience (affect, emotion, etc). An extension of this ignorance is Eco’s view that all is digital. I would argue, against this, that all is analog. The body, movement, life itself-- is continuous, fluid. If we blow up an old photograph we see only curves—analogy. So, yes, Eco, if we blow up a digital image we see grids, choices to be made, but humans cannot see that way. So even things that are encoded digitally, to be perceived by humans they must be formatted into the analog (this is true of digital sound as well). If anything, I’ll concede that possibly there is some overlap, so all is analog with some digital. But to say all is digital is just plain wrong in my book.

What I’m getting at is that, Eco, like all poststructuralists, looks at a frozen moment of time. When you look at a frozen moment of time—back then, in the past, you will always see binaries, the either/or, the digital. But life is not experienced that way. Lived experience is analogical, fluid, moving, both/and (basically what I'm saying is that I'm a phenomenologist and not a poststructuralist).

As long as we keep in mind that when using Eco’s method and that of others like him we are looking at the past, the “that-has-been,” we’ll be ok. Beyond that, I think we need to ask what does conceiving of film as metaphorically a language accomplish? So—we can ask this of any metaphor, how does the metaphor open up for us new ways of thinking? If we were to say, “Film like/as Art,” we have placed Film in the Art context, which placement enables us to see film from a particular point of view. As long as we keep in mind the limitations of this point of view, we can see that looking at Film as Art can be helpful (again, helpful, not all-encompassing). Analogically, we can set up this metaphor any number of ways. Film as Math. Film as Consciousness. Film as Computer. Film as Tool. Film as Network. Film as Literature. Film as Narrative. Film as Information. Film as Communication. Film as Language. Any and all of these metaphors can be helpful tools for thinking about Film. The crux here is the difference between like/as and is. Eco and Metz struggle and get too much caught up in the is (Film is language), when then productive aspect of this metaphor is the as (Film as language).