Thanks for the clarifications.  Given those parameters, I would
reiterate Lynch's Mullholland Dr., in which the narrative structure,
visual technique and even specific characters' identities shift and
reconfigure throughout the film.  Lynch is all about "semantic
slippage," and one creepy scene set behind a diner's trash bin could
connect nicely to Benjamin's analysis of the prostitute figure.  
 
In general, though, Hollywood doesn't make the kind of films you've
described.
 
It's not specifically related to film, but Celeste Olalquiaga's The
Artificial Kingdom would be worth reading, as it deals with ruination,
"the commodification of eras and places," etc.
 
J. Cullum

>>> Michelle Langford <[log in to unmask]> 3/11/2009 6:19 PM >>>
Michael,
Yes I did mention Benjamin early in the thread and yes, summarizing him
is
incredibly difficult...but let's have a go.

I think the most important aspect of Benjamin's approach to allegory is
in
the way he distinguishes allegory from symbol and attempts to 'redeem'
allegory from its denigration by the Romantics (principally
Schopenhauer).
The romantics basically viewed allegory as a trivial form of rhetoric.
Benjamin is really the first to take allegory seriously since the
Romantic
period. He goes back to the Baroque age and looks primarily at the work
of
the Spanish playwrights of the 17th century (eg. Calderon), identifying
in
their work a level of submerged resistance to the court, for which they
were
commissioned to produce their dramas. 'Life is a Dream' is one play
that
sought to secretly critique authority. Additionally, however Benjamin
identifies a series of characteristics of Baroque allegory, which he
also
identifies in the work of Baudelaire. These are the ruin, the corpse,
narrative fragmentation, emblems etc. For Benjamin, one of the most
important characteristics of allegory is its dependence upon what I
call
'semantic slippage' or instability, where one thing (an object, image,
word
etc.) can mean absolutely anything else, so what we get in the most
interesting allegories is not a 1:1 relationship between object and
meaning,
but a constant slippage of an object's meaning through a text. That
is,
while at one moment an object or image might mean one thing at the
next
turn, it is transformed into something else. Allegory, in this sense
then
involves metaphors being not only extended, but constantly transformed.
This
process of unstable meaning production is different from 'symbolic'
forms,
which tend to be more stable (immutable perhaps) (eg. The image of
scales to
symbolise justice. In an allegory such an image would be used to mean
something else, quite possibly the opposite of justice). Allegories are
also
context specific and generally require knowledge of contemporary events
or
society in order to be fully understood.

Benjamin was also careful to distinguish between allegory and myth. He
says
that allegory is the 'antidote to myth'. What I understand by this is
that
while myths provide stable models for framing our understanding of
human
society, allegory works to undermine these, doing so by turning them
to
ruins. But allegory has the capacity to mask itself as myth, a useful
way of
hiding its true intentions.

Writing of Baudelaire, who Benjamin sees as a direct descendent of the
baroque playwrights, Benjamin fixes on the figure of the prostitute,
who
represents a 'ruinous' form of modern society's fetishisation of the
commodity.

This isn't quite Benjamin in a nutshell, but I hope it helps to clarify
the
background of my own work on this in cinema studies.

You might like to read the second chapter of my book "Allegorical
Images:
Tableau, Time and Gesture in the Cinema of Werner Schroeter" where I
bring
Deleuze to the party to interpret Benjamin's theory of allegory for
film.

Hope this helps,
Michelle

Dr Michelle Langford
Lecturer
School of English, Media and Performing Arts
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052 Australia
Room: Webster 311O
Phone: + 61 2 9385 4489
Fax: + 61 2 9385 6812


On 10/3/09 3:15 AM, "Frank, Michael" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> it's possible, michelle, that early on in this thread you indicated
that you
> were using benjamin's notion of allegory . . .  if you did i must
have missed
> it and have responded based on a literary  [rather than
philosophical] model
> of allegory . . . for those of us who come to these discussions from
a more
> [narrowly] frame of reference, could you give some idea of what
allegory was
> for benjamin
> 
> 
> 
> [i realize of course that summarizing benjamin is notoriously
difficult, but
> even a few clues would be useful]
> 
> 
> 
> thanks
> 
> 
> 
> mike

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