Where is the Art(ist)?

I am pleased to align myself with Katie this week: “Film is about more than commodification and ideology. Art is about more than a system of exchange.” After reading Althusser, Comolli, and Narboni—especially on the heels of Adorno and Horkheimer—I have been lamenting the work of art as an impoverished concept. It seems I’ll never be able to (no matter how much I may want to) cling to my juvenile wish for an artist to produce a work, which the audience/reader/spectator responds to in any number of ways. Instead, art is part of a cultural machine with dubious intentions, an economic product bent upon expressing and reproducing an oppressive ideology. While reading these articles, I find myself half marveling at brilliant intellectual insights and half mourning my past ignorant self / future unhappy (because unable to escape the system while studying (someday, teaching?) its effects) self. So, right now, I am struggling to carve out a place for the artist creating a piece (novelist writing, painter painting, director filming, etc.) within this massive and endless system. In so doing, I realize I may leave myself open to criticism on the grounds of engaging in the cult of genius (or personality or celebrity). However, I am in awe of authors and directors, so I won’t apologize for being a bit star-struck and defending the roots of hero-worship.

For Althusser, as the “‘ideas’ of a human subject exist in his actions” (168), the film might be one manifestation of a person’s actions, and thus, of that person’s ideas. This seems counterintuitive, as Althusser has our actions determining what our ideas are rather than our ideas serving as the fountain of our actions. This conception might free the artist from the charge that his art springs solely from the unconscious (since the product of the work is the result of the actions that produce the ideas of the producer); nevertheless, it also places the artist in the role of a cog for the huge machine, as the only thing that matters is the product produced—the producer only matters insofar as he/she creates other products or additional producers. For Althusser, film is ideological by representing the collective worldview (imaginary relationship to the world) of all those who made the film, whose purpose is to subsume everyone into the ideological/productive machine. (Ironically enough, as Travis points out concerning Comolli and Narboni, Althusser places far enough himself out of ideology (173) to perceive and critique its effects.) Comolli and Narboni agree, as they understand film as an ideological vehicle (part of either the communications or cultural ISA) that communicates to itself in an unbreakable chain, wherein the spectator’s main role is to eat up ideology’s servings or help cook the ideology itself. While powerless to interfere with the machine’s process, the spectator is nonetheless necessary for the game to go on: “film only constitutes itself as a text by integration of the reader’s knowledge” (Cahiers, 522). Not only can the spectator never break free, but what she knows is turned against her.

Although I might not have been able to articulate my thoughts clearly (see above), I am trying to find a generous theory that allows the artist to actively produce, the spectator actively engage or passively absorb, and the critic to help out both sides. Perhaps I’m way off base.