Pam Robertson recently wrote "I may be wrong but it seems all the examples
have been related to the
visual. " And Matthew Mah, "we have the camera. The camera captures
everything,
and we have to assume that it is non-biased. We have no way of confirming
this, as we do in narration, so we have to accept it."
I apologize if this touches on theoretical aspects, but it seems that the
implication of both Robertson's and Mah's statements is that there is a
definite tendency to privileging the visual over and above the verbal,
whether the verbal is textual or oral. As someone else has already noted,
the camera does not capture everything as Mah argues, but specifically
frames what the director intends. And the construction of the mis en scene
is comparable, if not synonymous, with the affect achieved by the choice of
narrators. Mah implies that "the tone of the voice, the relationship
between the narrator and the character," is only acheived through narration.
But we must take into consideration the proxemic patterns, the visual
"texts," which serve as a biased, diegetic devices also sustain a tone as
well as spatial relationships between the character, camera, and viewer.
"Jacob's Ladder" is a film in which we have nothing but the camera, but the
visual text creates a tone and there is a relationship between the camera
and the characters. As with some novels, we realize that this text, albeit
visual, is unreliable.
I agree with MIke Frank remarks that "if it is true that the camera
'captures everything' . . . or if that
what the congregation of Screen-L takes to be the case, then at the very least
we need an account of why or how this should be the case . . . the assertion
itself is hardly an argument."
Scott Furtwengler
SIUC
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