Notes on: Vila,
J. (2013) 'The Power of Political, Militant,
"Leftist" Cinema. Interview with Jacques
Rancière', trans H Vilalta. Cinema
Comparat/ive Cinema 1(2): 9-17
Dave Harris
Rancière can be seen as pursuing 'in–
disciplines', such as the history of workers and
cinema.
Q. Has there been an aesthetic turn from
workers history to aesthetics?, Or was aesthetics
always at the heart of your work? You have
talked about political subjectivation as 'an
interval to be occupied between two
identities'(10). Do art works illustrates
such intervals?
A: I have no general theory of
subjectivation. Instead, I'm interested in
'the phenomena of un-identification and in the
material and symbolic intervals that authorise
them'. In Proletarian Nights, the
interest was in the interval between the imposed
identity of worker, and the gap introduced when
workers occupied different universes, those of
culture but also ways of speaking and of 'affects
that weren't made for them' (11).
Implications for the political subject appeared,
in contrast to those accounts stressing solidarity
and belonging. In turn, this led to an
interest in how the arts can present interference
with standard identities, especially if they have
'an uncertain status' as does cinema - mechanical
reproductions of the world, bringing
together art and entertainment. This is why
radical cinema emerges as symptoms of cultural
upheaval like May 1968. In particular, there
were two new waves, one focusing on a new kind of
youth living a more liberal life, but then
radicalized by making 'a figure of ironic
distance', as in the characters played by
Jean-Pierre Leaud. Godard made him represent
the 'Chinese' militant, for example, admittedly a
posture, but one which 'corresponded to a certain
political subjectivity important at the
time'. Such figures did play an important
role in political subjectivation.
Q: You do not claim to be a film theorist, just a
cinephile. You say that your position is
best understood as 'the "politics of the
amateur"'(11), and then claim this as a
theoretical position after all - 'cinema as a
crossover of experiences and knowledges', and a
political one - 'cinema belongs to all, not only
to specialists'. Does this tie in with the
notion of the emancipated spectator? If so,
is there still a role for theorists [one of whom
is Deleuze]
A: The politics of the amateur denies that cinema
can be understood by any academic specialist as
such, because there is no agreed definition, nor
an agreed set of objects for study. The most
essential problems nonetheless are those which
cross disciplines, combinations of 'the genre of
discourse, of action, of spectacle and, finally,
of human beings. The notion of the amateur
was already developed in my interventions in
social history 'without holding a passport'.
The position seems particularly important when
discussing spectacle and a combination of pleasure
and judgment. Cinephilia reclaims cinema for
the spectators and therefore alters the notion of
taste. We see this with early valorizarion
of popular genres like the western or the musical,
against dominant tastes. All this took place
before the development of academic departments and
critics. Critics have their place, but
cinema is not 'the sphere of homogeneous objects
that depends on the same form of rationality'
(12). The effects depend on such matters as
theories of movement, learning the use of the
camera, different techniques, different forms of
narration, and the feelings that the audience
bring, and the notion of movement images as in
Deleuze. There used to be a debate about
whether we could construct a cinematographic
language, but it was soon seem to be too
restricted. Cinema was not just a language,
but an entertainment, an art form and an
industry. Theories are best seen as
'circulating in that world', investigations of
segments of, it or bridges between its
'different realities' (13). Selection begins
already with describing effects as words.
Reviews and theories also themselves produce
cinema by connecting different realities.
Q: So is this about the link between entertainment
and politics? Can we apply the politics of
the amateur to less popular arts, such as opera or
theatre?
A: The division between popular and elitist art is
not constant. For example, opera is now a
spectacle for the wealthy, but various forms of
classical work including operatic melody appeared
in various 'lyrical theatres', where a variety of
music was offered. Some still appear as
soundtracks for films or advertisements.
19th century theatre was also a mixture. I
have commented before on how this mixture itself
affects 'the meaning and effect of the works'
(12), and I have also shown how a new artistic
sensibility appeared in theatres combining poets
and popular performance, and how this in turn
'influenced so strongly the art of theatre and
performance later on' (13). The cinema
developed some of these effects. The early
cinema escaped official regulation as well.
Cinema audiences 'could feel a certain emotion
without the need to decide if it was art or
entertainment', and they could also 'unfold their
passion for art' in works officially designated as
entertainment: 'undisciplined spectators'.
This is actually necessary for cinema to
develop. Later specializations in cinema
have attempted to re-regulate the power of
amateurs by 'predetermining the relationship of
the films to their spectators'
Q: You have distinguished Brechtian and
post-Brechtian paradigms in cinema, with the first
attempting to display the tensions and
contradictions, to sharpen the gaze and judgment,
but to support Marxist explanations. The
second offers no such resolution of
tensions. Is there a connection with the
shift in politics from the 60s to the 70s, shown
in, say, the change from Dziga Vertov to
Straub-Huillet?
A: There were experiments after 1968 to bridge the
gap between specialists and the people, or by
offering cameras to those in struggle, for
example. This was based both on Marxism and
'on the material existence of those
struggles'. No one has ever shown that
Brechtian distance, or militant films by Dziga
Vertov have actually produced an increased
awareness or fed into the struggles of the
1970s. When material and ideological
circumstances changed, the bases for these
approaches crumbled. Critical distance was
applied to Marxist critique itself. This is
what we see in Straub-Huillet [the example cited
is History Lessons]. There is
another shift of emphasis from showing the reasons
of oppression to encouraging the capacity of the
oppressed [lots more examples from Straub-Huillet,
14]. Here, the deliberately artificial and
distancing factors are attempting to 'show the
elevation of thought and of language to which the
common people can aspire', not to give a lesson
about society but to express a 'sensible
capacity'. This corresponded 'to a thought
movement and to the politics of the last decades',
the construction of new sensibilities rather than
an analysis of domination.
Q: You have described Eisenstein [The Old and
the New] as showing a faith in a new system
as well as in a new filmic language. Are
there any equivalents today? Should any
filmic language be avoided at least? What do
you make of the current ones like Occupy Wall
Street?
A: There is no simple correspondence.
Eisenstein and Vertov both wanted to use the new
medium to develop the construction of a communist
world, but this direct connection 'pretended to
suppress the mediation of images'. Their
project is unthinkable today with the technical,
commercial and artistic developments in
cinema. The question now is how to represent
new situations and conflicts, but not 'with the
dominant logic of representation'. For
example, how to break with the figure of the
immigrant as victim, or the stereotypes of the
Middle East as ruins [and some examples of
Palestinian cinema are given]. These
experiments have broken the barriers between
documentary and fiction. However, there are
also many images circulating on the Internet, and
with video. The old constructivist cinema of
the Soviet era is no longer possible, since the
images can no longer be ignored. 'Internet,
social media and the videos that circulate through
these channels are rather used as a great common
tissue that serves to bring together people and,
at the same time, to extend such union via its
images' (15) [in a positive radicalizing way?].
Q: You have discussed the political power of
images in an interview, distinguishing European
cinema and American cinema [the first one
apparently focuses 'on the mythological order, the
affects of the real on the code of
representation', while the latter focuses on 'the
order of legends and their genealogy'].
American cinema often refers to some unified
originating community, but European fiction would
find this impossible.
A: I was not opposing European to American
cinema, but rather showing different sorts
of figures of the nation or people. This was
not an historical account.
Q: But is any distinction still valid today?
And what of other fictions of the nation in other
cinemas?
A: The point then was to intervene in a French
situation, when the culture of the left was being
reestablished during Mitterrand. There was a
cosy family image of collectivity, and I wanted to
contrast this to the American model based on some
foundation, as in the Western, with collectivity
emerging from conflict between mythological
figures. That particular moment
passed. The landscape of the American legend
also altered with things like spaghetti westerns,
or aggressive critiques [Heaven's Gate].
The powerlessness of law and the impotence of
community has also often been demonstrated.
Meanwhile, European cinema, driven by the market
has exploited this particular vein, sometimes as
comedies about French customs, or traditions, or
even the 'out-there family tale a la
Almodovar'(15). New Asian cinema has
introduced a new complexity, with tensions between
urban and traditional culture, the intrusion of
American life, relations between the imaginary in
the real in particular forms of religiosity and
others.
Q: You have argued that leftist cinema offers an
artificial 'nationalist imaginary through the
workers struggle' which glosses over
contradictions of that struggle. What about
current films [with examples, the only one could
recognize was Michael Moore's films]
A: it was also a distinction between films made
for the wider audience, supporting leftism and
films actually made for militants including
documentaries of actual strikes, designed to show
the reality of collectivism [Tout va Bien?].
There were popular until the workers' defeats in
the 1980s. Today the dominant form seems to
be the documentary, usually about catastrophes and
how particular systems produce them. There
are also 'vain manifestations of "critical" self
satisfaction, as in the case of Michael
Moore'(16). It can give insightful analyses,
say of the financial system, but even the authors
know they will not generate revolt. Moral
indignation has 'been able to display a renewed
force', but, by definition, does not address the
laws of the system. Fatalism combines with
'the constitution of the sentiment of what is
intolerable and in the sharing of that
sentiment'. The new collective sentiment is
intolerable of the dominant order, and also
promotes a communal trust. The appeal takes
the form of 'the sort of common bet on the union
of anonymous peoples and in the power of
images'. Whether images are really
rehabilitated is still an important question, and
one that probably makes more radical uses of
cinema less relevant.
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