Aoyama, close ups, detached style

[Aaron Gerow]

Birgit asked,

>I have been wondering in more theoretical terms about
>the appropriateness/meaningfulness of attributing ideological,
>psychological or political functions to certain elements of cinematic 
>grammar such as
>close ups or pov-shots. Aoyama's remarks about the close up are one
>such example, Aaron's description of the "detached style" in 90s
>Japanese cinema is another.

This is a very good question and one that has been central to film 
studies since at least 1968, and even before that (e.g., Eisenstein's 
notion in the 1920s of montage as itself revolutionary or embodying 
Marxist thought).  But I should first say that neither Aoyama (I think) 
nor I are ascribing one-to-one relationships between elements of style 
and certain ideologies.  Aoyama, for instance, does use close-ups and 
point of view shots--though rarely.  I have always tried to avoid 
ascribing a particular political stance to what I call the detached 
style, even though some around me seem to desire that (a problem I've 
faced when I've delived papers at conferences).  To me, the detached 
style, while on the one hand marking a distance from non-detached styles 
(like television), is also a site of contestation over the role of 
cinema.  And this is precisely because long shots or long takes do not 
have a univocal meaning.

>While I can see a certain point in this attribution, it sort of makes me 
>wonder how far it
>can
>be actually, or is actually, taken. Just as in literature, where the use
>of stylistic devices must be viewed in the context of an entire work
>and not in isolation from page to page, so in film one would assume
>that the use of pov-shots cannot be seen in isolation of whatever
>other stylistic devices are used in segments that pov-shots form part
>of. In particular, issues of identification and resistance to
>identification with characters seem to demand a more sophisticated
>approach than simple inferences like "there's a pov-shot, therefore the 
>viewer is asked to
>identify with the character" or "there's no pov-shot, therefore the
>viewer cannot identify with the character" involve. I do not want to
>imply that Aaron's analysis of Aoyama's films is as simplistic as
>these inferences, but I am still somewhat at a loss here.

Well, in fact, a point-of-view shot in most cases is a product of 
interaction with other textual elements.  THe usual structure is: shot of 
seer, shot of what is seen, shot of seer.  Thus, you need three shots in 
order to construct the middle one as a point-of-view shot.  Similarly, a 
close up does not have its impact as a device to analyze space 
narratively unless it is surrounded by shots of greater distance from the 
camera (Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc creates a somewhat different role 
for the close up by having scenes almost entirely composed of close ups). 
 Thus I would think few would argue that any one element of film style 
can be singled out and given a "dictionary" meaning on its own.

But it is true that especially after 1968, when much of film studies was 
concerned with discerning the ideological roles of cinema, that there was 
much work that implied an inherent ideology to aspects of the cinema.  
Baudry's famous work on the apparatus, for instance, implied that the 
very operation of turning still images into motion, and of basing the 
vision of the lens on Renaissance perspective was conducive to modern 
bourgeois ideology.  It was as if the machine itself was inherently 
ideological.  Others, like Commolli, criticized the ideological nature of 
film devices like deep space; and early feminist film scholars used 
psychoanalysis to argue the scopophilic--and thus often masculine and 
sadistic--nature of the camera's gaze on the female body.  Many often 
(though not always) seemed to imply certain ideological essences to film 
devices or to the apparatus itself.

It was the perceived fact that these left-wing critiques of cinema's 
ideology ironically seemed to eliminate the possibility of an 
alternative, radical cinema (e.g., by effectively making all of cinema 
essentially bourgeois) that prompted different approaches.  A greater 
appreciation for the contradictions and polysemy of texts and their 
intertexts (new conceptions of semiotics), increased focus on the role of 
readers/viewers in meaning production (reception studies), and the rise 
of cultural studies have made these "essentialist" approaches less 
popular.  Film devices or styles can still be seen as ideological, but 
only in the sense that: they are already contradictory; they only have a 
meaning through a complex interaction with other elements that produces a 
preferred, though not inevitable reading; and the reader has been 
prepared to read the text that way (though the possibility of another 
reading always exists).

Thus I am much less concerned with relating the detached style with some 
theorization of the political situation in Japan than in understanding 
the precise articulations of this style in practice within a historical 
situation, something which involves a lot of close textual analysis and 
consideration of the reception context.  Only then can one get a sense of 
what kinds of different meanings can be applied to long takes, etc.  

I can't say for sure if Aoyama is taking the same stance, but my sense is 
that he was using the example of the close up and the emperor system less 
as a statement of the essential meaning of that device, than as a 
metaphor for a whole approach to or articulation of cinema.  That is, an 
approach to cinema that offers the illusion of knowledge over the world, 
including over the other (thus effacing the other as an unknown, separate 
identity); one that thus eliminates the act (and responsibility) of 
trying to know the other; and one that privileges passed on information 
over its critique.  One could go on, but I think the point is that the 
close up is only one element in that approach to cinema, but one that 
within certain constructions can be a dominant element.  At the same 
time, given that Aoyama does occasionally use close ups too, the close up 
can be given different articulations.  What is interesting, for instance, 
about Kitano's films is how he uses close-ups and pseudo POV shots in 
ways that deny identification and easy knowledge of the characters.

I hope these rambling thoughts make some sense.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171