In Defence of Fictional Incompetence Dan Cavedon-Taylor dan.cavedon.taylor@gmail.com Treat as DRAFT Abstract The claim that photographs are fictionally incompetent (i.e. that they only depict those particulars they are appropriately causally related to) is argued by Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie and Nigel Warburton to be falsified by the existence of fictional works of cinema. I firstly argue that it does not follow from cinema having a capacity for the representation of ficta that necessarily photography has a capacity for the representation of ficta. Secondly, and inspired by the work of Roger Scruton, I develop an account of how it is that cinema represents ficta—arguing, contra Carroll, Currie and Warburton—that this primarily is a matter of dramatic/theatrical representation rather than photographic representation. With this being so, I argue that the claim that photography is fictionally incompetent is compatible with fictional cinema. 1. Introduction Photographic representation is standardly thought to be causal in a way that representation via painting and drawing are not. Surveying the philosophical literature on photography one finds this idea and its alleged consequences expressed in a myriad of ways. So, for example, Kendall Walton holds that the causal nature of photography is a significant factor in allowing perceivers to literally, though indirectly, being able to see the subject of a photograph when looking at such pictures.1 Paintings and drawings, by contrast, since their creation is mediated by the image maker’s intentional mental states, are alleged by Walton to be opaque barriers between perceiver and depicta. 1 Walton (1984). 1 Another alleged consequence of the causal nature of photography, and which will be my focus here, is that whereas there can be paintings that depict particulars, fictional entities, and abstracta, photographs, precisely because of their causal dependence upon reality, may only depict particulars. Jonathan Friday for instance writes that “with regard to the choice of subject matter, the photographer (unlike the painter, sculptor or poet) is limited to a particular real or existing object or state of affairs.”2 And Rob Hopkins writes of photographs that “Such pictures only depict those particulars which they are causally related to in an appropriate manner, and they only depict those particulars which have been efficacious in the generation of the surface.”3 Notoriously, this line of thought plays a key role in Roger Scruton’s theorising about photographs as well.4 Scruton holds that because photographs are related to what they depict causally, such pictures lack what he calls ‘fictional competence’; they only depict the particulars they causally relate to and, moreover, this (in part) rules it out that photographs, and thereby works of cinema as well, can be representational works of art. An aesthetic interest in a photograph, Scruton holds, is necessarily an interest in the particular causally responsible for the photograph. I won’t be concerned too much here with this latter claim—although I will have a few things to say about it—which has been subject to a great deal of scrutiny and is thought by the vast majority of Scruton’s commentators to be in error. Instead I intend to defend Scruton’s idea that photography differs significantly from painting insofar as it is a fictionally incompetent means of making pictures from the objection that fictional cinema shows this line of thought to be mistaken. I will not say much in defence of the fictional incompetence claim, I aim only to show it compatible with 2 3 4 Friday (1997). Hopkins (1997: 74). Scruton (1981). 2 fictional cinema. Moreover, I do not claim that fictional competence is the only way photography differs from painting and I do not claim photography’s fictional competence has the anti-aesthetic consequences that Scruton claims it does. Lastly, I shall interpret the claim that photography is fictionally incompetent as not simply the view that photographs cannot depict ficta, but also that they cannot depict abastracta or any particulars they fail to be causally related to. As I shall understand it, to defend photography’s fictional incompetence is to defend the idea that a photograph can only be of those particulars it causally relates to where this is, in the usual case, those particulars situated before the camera and which are not obscured from its view when the shutter falls. 2. The argument from cinema Reflection upon the existence of fictional works of cinema is often thought to show that the above line of thought is grossly mistaken and that photographs do not in fact lack for anything when it comes to fictional competence. Nigel Warburton, for example, writes that cinema shows photography to be “fictionally competent, adept even” and that to hold otherwise “involves a serious distortion of the nature of cinema.”5 Gregory Currie and Noël Carroll similarly claim that cinema shows photography to have a capacity for fictional representation.6 The former explicitly argues against the Scrutonian idea of photography’s fictional incompetence by claiming that it is not plausible to deny that in cinema we fail to find representation of the story’s (potentially fictional) characters,7 and the latter argues that cinema becomes “utterly mystified and confused” if Scruton’s line of thought is right, complaining that its consequence is that “Films seem to become records of actors and actual places; their fictional referents 5 6 7 Warburton (1998). Currie (1995), Carroll (1996; 2008). Currie (1995: 76). 3 dissolve.”8 Thus, Carroll, Currie and Warburton, as I read them, are claiming that fictional cinema involves the photographic representation of fictional entities, and so Scruton’s claim that photographs are fictional incompetent is seemingly mistaken. Put simply, the argument seems to be as follows: 1. There are fictional works of cinema. 2. Cinema is a photographic medium. (So) 3. Photography is fictionally competent (contra Scruton, Friday and Hopkins). Call this ‘the argument from cinema’. There is clearly something to this argument; it is undeniable that there are fictional works of cinema and it is also true that cinema is (for the most part) a photographic medium.9 Still, it seems to me there is likewise something to the Scrutonian idea that photographs are causally related to, and rooted in, reality and this precludes there being photographs of anything other than concrete particulars that were causally efficacious in the generation of the photographic image. In what follows I will argue that someone attracted to both these claims is able to hold them simultaneously without fear of contradiction, and so the argument from cinema is in error. Showing that this is so firstly involves pointing out where precisely the argument from cinema goes wrong, and secondly requires we have the right idea about the role that photography plays when it comes to cinema’s potential for fictional representation. 3. Against the argument from cinema 8 9 Carroll (1996: 46). Although advancements in CGI show that cinema is not essentially photographic, however. Indeed entire works of cinema can now be made solely from CGI. In what follows I will be interested in photographically based cinema alone. 4 The central problem with the argument from cinema is that it commits the fallacy of division. As Carroll himself notes, when replying to Scruton’s claim that because photography is not a representational art then neither is cinema, photography is but one part of the cinematic whole. Carroll rightly complains of Scruton’s argument against cinematic aesthetics that even if it is true that photography is not a representational art, this is insufficient to establish that cinema is therefore also not a representational art since there is more to cinema than (merely) photographic representation. There is editing—an extremely significant feature of cinema—sound, and more besides. Carroll writes: Film... has many more dimensions than the photographic one. So even if photography/cinematography was as sullied artistically as the skeptic insinuates, it would still not follow that cinema is comparably incapacitated as a player in the art game (2008: 31). Carroll is surely right here; it is illicit of Scruton’s argument against the possibility of cinematic aesthetics to infer cinema’s lack of some feature, x, on the basis of photography’s (assumed) lack of x, since there is more to cinema than photographic representation. Thus, even assuming the truth of Scrutonian scepticism about the possibility of photographic aesthetics it remains open that cinema has aesthetic value thanks to its non-photographic elements. But note that it would also be a mistake, for exactly the same reason, to infer photography’s possession of some feature, x, on the basis of cinema’s (assumed) possession of x. For this would be to commit precisely the same error; it would similarly be to assume that photography is the sole element of cinema, when it is one among many. As far as I can see this is precisely what the argument from cinema does, however, in claiming that cinema’s capacity for fictional representation falsifies 5 the claim that photographs are fictionally incompetent. Carroll, Currie and Waburton’s argument, I suggest, no less that Scruton’s argument against the possibility of cinematic aesthetics, mistakenly assumes that cinema is wholly photographic. But since cinema is not wholly photographic, then, just as Scruton’s argument against the possibility of cinematic aesthetics fails, so too does the argument from cinema. The argument from cinema supplies no compelling reason for us to think that it is the photographic component of cinema which endows it with a capacity for fictionality. Thus, I believe that Scruton’s argument against cinematic aesthetics commits the fallacy of composition, while Waburton, Currie and Carroll’s argument from cinema seemingly commits the fallacy of division; the latter illicitly assumes that cinema can represent ficta only thanks to its photographic elements but provides the defender of photography’s fictional incompetence no argument for thinking this is so. Cinema undoubtedly deals with the fictional, but this is not enough to show that photography is fictionally competent since it is open that cinema does not inherit its capacity for fictionality from its photographic elements, but from elsewhere instead. 4. A Scrutonian account of fictional cinema It would be absurd to deny that there are cinematic works of fiction. But now I feel my interlocutor will protest as to how we might even begin to account for this if not in terms of cinema’s photographic elements? I propose that explaining how cinema accrues fictional content will make some reference to photographic representation, but that photography’s role here is a minor one and does not automatically make it the case that there are literally photographs of ficta. Getting clear about this role requires we have a more perspicuous and practical understanding of how fictional cinema operates than is found in the argument from cinema. With this 6 understanding in place we will see how it is that the claim that photographs are fictionally incompetent is compatible with the existence of fictional works of cinema. It seems to me that Scruton’s frequently overlooked positive account of cinema’s fictionality supplies a plausible picture of how there can be cinematic works of fiction. Firstly, Scruton, as I understand him, does not deny that cinema has a capacity for fictional representation when he writes, for example, that “A film is a photograph of a dramatic representation.”10 I read Scruton here are suggesting that we think of cinema, not as involving the photographic representation of fictional entities, but rather as involving the photographic representation of objects which in turn nonphotographically (dramatically) represent the ficta. I should stress right away that our interest in this claim of Scruton’s is not in its alleged aesthetic consequences, for the consequences Scruton draws from this claim seem mistaken and for exactly the reasons Carroll adduces. Scruton argues from the claim that cinema is a photograph of a dramatic representation that: “It follows that if there is such a thing as a cinematic masterpiece it will be so because—like Wild Strawberries and La Regle dujeu—it is in the first place a dramatic masterpiece.”11 This anti-aesthetic argument, as we have seen above, is fallacious. Our interest in Scruton’s claims about the dramatic or theatrical nature of fictional film is simply as a plausible way of thinking about how fictionality enters into the content of cinematic representations in way that contrasts with Carroll, Currie and Warubrton’s claim that cinema gives us photographic representations of fiction, something which we need to separate from Scruton’s claim about photography and cinema’s purported lack of aesthetic value.12 10 11 Scruton (1981: 577). Ibid. 12 Agreeing with Scruton that photography may be fictionally incompetent, but disagreeing that this entail photographs cannot be 7 Scruton’s claims concerning dramatic and cinematic representation are worth quoting in full: A film is a photograph of a dramatic representation, and whatever representational properties belong to it belong by virtue of the representation that is effected in the dramatic action, that is, by virtue of the words and activities of the actors in the film. Ivan the Terrible represents the life of Ivan not because the camera was directed at him but because it was directed at an actor who played the part of Ivan. Certainly the camera has its role in presenting the action, much as the apparatus of production has its role on the stage. It directs the audience’s attention to this or that feature… [P]hotography permits the extension of dramatic representation into areas where previously it would not have been possible… Nonetheless, the process of photography does not, because it cannot, create the representation. As all must agree, representation in the cinema involves an action in just the way that a play involves an action (1981: 598). Emphasis my own. As I understand him, Scruton is here arguing that cinema is, we might say, ‘meta-representational’, involving the (photographic) representation of a (non-photographic/dramatic) representation. Understood one way, these remarks needn’t necessarily be taken as disagreeing with Currie’s claim that in cinema we find representation of the story’s fictional characters, but it would seemingly be to deny that this is something that is achieved via specifically photographic means of representation. Rather, on the above account, a work of aesthetic objects is what Warburton (1996) calls the weak response to Scruton’s scepticism about photographic and cinematic aesthetics. Weak or not, it seems to me the response is response enough. 8 cinema’s means of representing fictional characters is to be explained in terms of an actor’s, or a set’s, or a prop’s, dramatic or theatrical representation of the fiction, and cinema’s then photographic representation of the actor, set or prop. On the view now being considered, cinema photographically represents actors, sets and props which in turn represent other things, e.g., fictional entities, types and other numerically distinct particulars, and where this second type of representation, unlike the first, is non-photographic in nature. If this is right, then contra Carroll, Currie and Warburton, cinema does not give us photographs of Pegasus, Flash Gordon, Darth Vader, and so on, but gives us photographs of actors, props and sets that dramatically (non-photographically) represent those things. Cinema is seen here as merely ‘pointing’ or ‘directing’ us to the site of an already ongoing fictional representation (the actors and props and so on) rather than creating the fiction. The fictional representation involved in cinema, via actors and sets, is construed on this view something already in existence and prior to the act of photographically representing those actors and sets via the camera. On the Scrutonian account, cinema thus gets any fictional content in the first place thanks to the actions of the actors and their involvement with the sets and props and not thanks to the actions of the cameraperson, which is seen as merely a delivery system for the pre-existent fictional representation.13 5. Why favour the Scrutonian account? 13 I do not claim the above is an accurate reconstruction of Scruton’s view. Indeed this is likely not to be the case since his use of ‘representation’ and ‘dramatic representation’ are technical and idiosyncratic (indeed the point of his paper is precisely to deny there is, strictly speaking, such a thing as ‘photographic’ and hence ‘cinematographic’ representation). Needless to say, however, the view above has interest independent of it being one that Scruton would agree to in all details. Nothing important turns upon whether what I have said above is literally Scruton’s view or not. 9 We now have two competing pictures concerning cinema’s fictionality. One claims that cinema can be said to literally give us photographs of ficta and other entities not causally responsible for the photographic image, and the other says that strictly speaking cinema only gives us photographs of particulars that nonphotographically (dramatically, theatrically, call it what you will) represent the ficta. At this point it is worth stressing that the differences between these two proposals are not merely verbal. Carroll, Currie and Waburton’s position appears to be that fictional cinema involves photographs that are of, and which photographically represent, fictional entities (if this were not their claim, i.e., if they think photographs non-photographically represent ficta, it is difficult to see how they think fictional cinema could possibly pose a threat to Scruton’s fictional incompetence claim). To highlight the opposition between these claims, consider a photograph of a model dressed up as St. Anne. Currie writes of such a photograph that it is “merely prejudice” to say that it fails to be a photograph of St. Anne and is, instead, say, “a representation of a representation.”14 Here Currie is precisely arguing against the Scrutonian meta-representation account I presented above and is seemingly claiming that the photograph photographically represents St. Anne, rather than photographically representing someone who in turn non-photographically represents the Saint. The Scrutonian is in a position to reply that their prejudice is well founded, however, claiming that we should not think of the picture as being a photograph of St. Anne since the photograph’s means of representing the Saint are not fundamentally photographic, instead they are dramatic. The model, by virtue of being dressed up at St. Anne, is the one seemingly doing the representing of St. Anne and this therefore supplies us with grounds for denying the picture is 14 Currie (1995: 76). 10 really a photograph of St. Anne instead of a photograph of a model who in turn dramatically represents St. Anne. I concede at this point that I have not offered anything like a definition of dramatic representation, and nor do I intend or hope to. For it suffices for the above argument that dramatic representation (whatever it involves) is not photographic representation. And we can see that this is so by appreciating that, intuitively, how actors, sets and props represent is different from how photographs do. Plays, for instance, are seemingly dramatic, rather than photographic representations; the former are not depictive representations, for instance, while the latter are. Of course I do not wish to deny that there are lots of important and interesting differences between cinema and theatre.15 I merely rely on the point that while there may be some subtle (and not so subtle) differences between cinema and theatre, and between what good screen acting calls for and what good theatre acting calls for, both cinema and theatre intuitively involve the same kind of behaviour on the part of the actors; namely, acting. So much for attempting to disambiguate the two competing views. Is there any reason one should prefer the Scrutonian account over Carroll, Currie and Warburton’s? Here are two. Firstly, the Scrutonian account preserves ordinary thought and talk about what a photograph is ‘of’, while Carroll, Currie and Warburton’s is unacceptably revisionary. Suppose it is reported in the news that historians have unearthed a photograph of Shakespeare (one must also suppose that the history of photography, as we currently know it, is wrong). As Susan Sontag notes, “Having a photograph of Shakespeare would be like having a nail from the True Cross.”16 Suppose the picture is then revealed by the reporter to be a still from the film Shakespeare in Love. Intuitively, we would feel cheated. The news reporter has surely misled us. The Scrutonian account explains 15 16 See Woodruff (2008: 43-44). Sontag (1977: 154). 11 this response: The still is not a photograph of Shakespeare, but is a photograph of someone playing (i.e. dramatically representing) him. Carroll, Currie and Warburton’s response would presumably have to be that what the reporter said was literally true (nails from the True Cross abound!) and so feeling mislead is an inappropriate response here. But this is surely absurd. The still from Shakespeare in Love is no more a photograph of Shakespeare than a photograph of the Mona Lisa a photograph of Lisa herself, say. Both the latter pictures are intuitively best described as photographic representations of particulars which are, in turn and in their own different ways, nonphotographically representing other things (Shakespeare, Lisa), which is precisely what the Scrutonian account urges. Secondly, the Scrutonian account accords well with the practice of film-making in a way that Carroll, Currie and Warburton’s appears not to. On the Scrutonian view the film-set is the site of an already existing, ongoing fictional representation rather than it being the case that the fiction is something only added to proceedings once the scene is viewed through the camera or the film is in the editing room, say (as Carroll, Currie and Warburton’s view appears to have it). The Scrutonian account thus stresses the non-photographic, dramatic/theatrical, nature of cinema in accounting for the medium’s potential for the representation of ficta. This seems right because is surely the actions of the film actors (in a sufficiently rich context, of course) who are the ones representing the fiction, rather than the photographer or cameraperson, say. Actors are the ones who seemingly do the representing of the fictional characters; they work hard in order to do so; they work hard to convincingly represent the fiction, as do set and prop builders. Fictional cinema, the Scrutonian holds, involves the actors and set/prop builder skilfully representing the fiction; the cinematographer must skilfully represent too, but it is not the fiction that they must skilfully represent, but the particulars already representing the fiction. Now this is not to deny that through 12 the use of certain shots the cinematographer or camera person may creatively and artistically assist this process of representing the fiction, but it is to deny that the camera is what, strictly speaking, generates the fictional representation, as if the fiction were something overlaid on top of the acting by the camera’s presence or certain editing techniques. Carroll, Currie and Warburton’s claim that cinema gives us photographs of fictional entities, rather than photographs of particulars non-photographically representing the ficta, seemingly ignores the role that dramatic/theatrical representation plays in fictional cinema, while the Scrutonian view places it at the heart of cinematic representation, which is surely where it belongs. At the very least it is unobvious what Carroll, Currie and Warburton’s view has to say about how the art of acting relates to a cinematic work’s representation of the fiction. 6. Conclusion I have argued, in Scrutonian spirit, that cinema’s capacity for fictional representation is not really due to its photographic element, but is a product of its photographic element representing objects which nonphotographically represent ficta. Photography, I have suggested, can represent fictional characters, stories and all the rest, but contra Carroll, Currie and Warburton, it does so non-photographically. Perhaps it might be objected that on this view there is therefore still a sense in which photography may be said to be fictionally competent, but this sense is surely particularly thin and is, crucially, not what Carroll, Currie and Warburton seemingly want (recall Currie’s remarks on photographs of St. Anne). Cinema, I have claimed, does not give us photographs of ficta, but photographs of particulars (actors, sets and props) independently, and crucially nonphotographically, representing the ficta. The photographic elements of cinema are mere delivery channels or a conduit for, rather than a means of generating, fictional representation. The fictional 13 representation involved in cinema is fundamentally theatrical/dramatic representation and such representation is prior to the act of photographic representation. Another objection to the Scrutonian account of fictional cinema which is worth considering is whether it risks trivialising the category ‘documentary works of cinema’, since the view appears to have the consequence that all fictional works of cinema are documentaries, but documentaries of actors, props and sets. Recall for instance Carroll’s objection that if photographs are fictionally incompetent then “Films seem to become records of actors and actual places; their fictional referents dissolve.”17 But is it really absurd to regard fictional film as records of actors and actual places? There seem nothing objectionable about the idea that aspiring actors may legitimately watch fictional works of cinema not because of any interest in the fiction, per se, but rather to study how great actors and set/prop builders represent the ficta. Also, it is worth stressing that on the Scrutonian account films are not simply records of actors and actual places, but records actors and actual places which in turn represent other things. Film’s fictional referents thus do not wholly ‘dissolve’; the Scrutonian view does not entail that works of cinematic fiction are documentaries tout court, only that they have documentary elements embedded in them. I believe the example of the aspiring actors suggests that this idea is much less objectionable than it might first appear. Lastly, it should be stressed that the Scrutonian view is compatible with someone using a photograph of x to represent y, as in when someone may place a passport photograph of the General on a map to represent the location of a particular battalion, say, the Scrutonian just says that this is not a matter of such a picture photographically representing an Army. 17 Carroll (1996: 46). 14 Thus, photography’s fictional incompetence, the claim that photographs are only of those particulars they are causally related, is compatible with their being fictional works of cinema since the latter, contra Carroll, Currie and Warburton, do not involve photographs of ficta, but photographs of the particulars they causally relate to nonphotographically representing ficta. Whatever challenges face photography’s fictional competence, the argument from cinema is not one of them. References Carroll, N. (1996). Theorizing the Moving Image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Carroll, N. (2008). The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. Oxford: Blackwell. Currie, G. (1995). Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Friday, J. (1997). “Digital Imaging, Photographic Representation and Aesthetics.” Ends and Means 1 . Hopkins, R. (1997). Picture, Image and Experience: A Philosophical Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scruton, R. (1981). “Photography and Representation.” Critical Inquiry 7: 577—603. Sontag, S. (1977). On Photography. London: Penguin. Walton, K. (1984). “Transparent Pictures on the Nature of Photographic Realism.” Critical Inquiry 11: 246—277. Warburton, N. (1996). “Individual Style in Photographic Art.” British Journal of Aesthetics 36: 389—397. Warburton, N. (1998). “Pixels and Pictorialism: A Reply to Jonathan Friday.” Ends and Means 2 . Woodruff, P. (2008). The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 15