chris@sloth.bc.ca (Chris Brougham) (06/12/91)
Part 1 Ideology and Cinema Sound Technology
Chris Brougham 1991
Generally, production of sound tracks in the dramatic narrative
cinema of Hollywood follows a course that strives towards "perfect"
reproduction of acoustic events within a realist aesthetic. In this
Hollywood context, "perfect" refers to: synchronous voice and image
constructs which clearly articulate all dialogue, sound effects which
are logical and synchronous in relation to the visual images, and
music which operates on the perceiver by highlighting emotional and
dramatic moments. Film theorists, such as Doane (1980, 1985) and
Altman (1980), suggest that this drive towards a seamless sound-image
construct is the consequence of a larger tendency of bourgeois
ideology to efface production and position social relations (of which
cinema is one) in the uncritical category of Nature. A primary concern
for these theorists is determining the site of bourgeois ideology. For
both Doane and Altman bourgeois ideology is largely located throughout
the sound production process including the practice of sound editing.
Since the practices themselves require certain technologies for
realization, bourgeois ideology is also seen as located within the
technology.
The development of the view that the instruments of cinema,
historically considered as scientific (Lebel) or developing along
natural evolutionary lines (Bazin), are ideological came about in the
early 1970's through the writings of various French film theorists,
specifically Baudry (1980) and Comolli (1990), adopting the core
theories of Althusser and Lacan. The reasoning here is that film
technology, as a whole, cannot be abstracted from an inherently
ideological position and contemplated neutrally since: (i) this is the
tendency of an uncritical bourgeois ideology and since these theorists
are concerned with developing a materialist theory of cinema this
would run the general risk of reifying technology, and (ii) the design
features of cinematic technology have specifically been developed to
aid the continuation of the dominant system of representation while
repressing other competing systems of representation.
This paper will examine the dual thesis that the sound-image
construct articulates bourgeois ideology and that the design features
of that technology help promote that ideology. Through an examination
of the concept of ideology outlined by Althusser and two seminal
articles that articulate the concept of cinematic ideology, Doane's
(1985) "Ideology and the Practice of Sound Editing and Mixing" and
Comolli's (1990) "Technique and Ideology" it will be suggested that
ideology is defined too broadly and ahistorically to provide an
adequate account of the interrelations between the technology of film
sound, filmic event, and perceiver. An alternative conceptual
framework to understand ideology will then be offered and applied in
the analysis of two highly important instances of film sound
technology: Nagra magnetic tape sound recording and Dolby noise
reduction technology. It will be suggested that ideology can reside
in cinema technology in the narrower form of a "professionalism,"
which is specific to Hollywood cinema.
Ideology
The pejorative usage of the term ideology seems to have been
derived from a contemporary re-working of Marx's and Engels' original
concept. The science/ideology opposition, the actual material life
forces that operate on humans and those notions and predilections that
obscure the material world, articulated by later Marxist scholars
(Althusser, Hall et al.) does not seem to be what Marx had in mind
when he discussed ideology, nor did Marx conceive ideology as an
exclusively neutral term associated with the realm of ideas in
general. Rather, ideology, according to Mills and Goldstick (1989), is
a synonym for the social superstructure itself. That is, ideology, in
the original sense, is a blanket term that covers legal, political,
artistic, and philosophic areas and includes the practitioners,
ideologists, in those areas (Ibid: 427). The pejorative, "false
consciousness," understanding of the term, coined by Engels, is
applied to those who fail to appreciate the role of the material and
economic in shaping the social sphere (Ibid: 425). The problem with
this "correction," would seem to be that it revitalizes the
economistic and undialectical base/superstructure model, thus
rendering the work of contemporary Marxist theorists, concerned with
the function of ideology, to defensive positions in explaining how
they came to this fundamental mis-reading of a supposedly core concept
in the original texts. The present purpose is not to engage in this
debate, but to consider the research of Mills and Goldstick which
introduces potential problems facing the usage of the concept of
ideology, and to suggest that the usage of the term has verged on
equivocation. If the core concept of ideology is equivocal then the
first problem for film theorists, those, anyway, who are ostensibly
engaging in a materialist project of inquiry, is to define adequately
what they mean by bourgeois ideology before pronouncing that "from
Marx we derive our awareness of the dominant ideology-the ideology of
bourgeois capitalism-as an insidious all-pervasive force capable of
concealment behind the most protean disguises, and the necessity of
exposing its operation whenever and wherever possible" (Wood, 1985).
Carroll (1988) has engaged the question of ideology in film theory but
has been criticized of applying positivist schemas to materialist
projects and thus failing to appreciate the intricacies of the
arguments (Buckland, 1989). However, Carroll's major objection is that
the term has been applied too broadly (equated with culture) to have
any real meaning and this, it may be suggested, is the result of
Althusser's influence. To explore this it is necessary to trace the
development of the concept of ideology in film theory.
In contemporary cinema studies ideological articulations are
thought to run deeper than the explicit meaning of the text. Ideology
is involved in the structure of the film on the level of form. To
explore these ideological readings film theorists draw on a notion of
ideology deeply influenced by the methodology of psychoanalysis rather
than the materialist methodology of Marx. Specifically, Lacan's notion
of subject construction that Althusser adopts in his conceptualization
of ideology which, generally, states that "ideology is a system (with
its own logic and rigour) of representations (images, myths, ideas or
concepts, depending on the case) endowed with a historical existence
and role within a given society" (Althusser, 1969: 231). Moreover,
ideology operates on an unconscious level: "They are
perceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects and they function on men
via a process that escapes them" (Ibid: 233). Ideology can be
separated from science (knowledge) only through the application of
theory to empirical or common sense (what Althusser considers
ideological) data. This will not engender knowledge about the world
itself but will correspond to a "concrete-in-thought" which
sufficiently approximates actual material reality which Althusser
calls "the real-concrete" (Ibid: 184-86).
An important component in Althusser's (1971) schema is his
expanded notion of production which sees a chief function of ideology
as aiding the reproduction of ideological continuity across
generations of society's subjects. "Ideological State Apparatuses,"
the educational, legal, and cultural systems, operate not on a
coercive level but through the discursive process of "interpellation."
For Althusser the individual (subject) is a product of economic,
historical, and other societal determinants without any inherent or
essential qualities. This extreme tabula rasa view of humans would
likely lead members of the society along the path of existential angst
if it were not for the ability of ideology to speak to (interpellate)
the subject so that the impression of a significant relation to
society is maintained. However, this impression is no more than an
Imaginary misrecognition similar to what the child experiences during
the "mirror stage" of psychosexual development elaborated by Lacan.
That is, individuals have a misrecognition of themselves as having a
significant relation to society much the same way the child perceives
(and is constituted by) a misrecognition of itself. Through this
process it is easy to see that the knowledge effect of ideology is,
therefore, nil; ideology does not give society's subjects a clear
picture of the concrete-in- thought.
There are a number of difficulties with this notion of ideology.
Althusser's understanding of the function of scientific inquiry is not
in itself contentious since much of science operates in this way, and
Marx certainly emphasizes the point of looking below surface
appearances, but Althusser wishes to maintain that all real science
functions in this way and that any common sense observation is always
ideological. Lovell (1980: 34-35) has outlined how adoption of this
idea results from Althusser's adherence to a rigid definition of
science, for Althusser science is counter-intuitive and ideology is
obvious, and this in itself is not a sufficient criterion to
distinguish science from ideology. Moreover, this bifurcation of
science and ideology is discussed by Benton (1977) who stresses that
since material reality can only be known indirectly (the
concrete-in-thought) it verges on a neo-Kantian reliance on the
thing-in-itself which can never be immediately apprehended. Vilar
(1973) contends that this is, in a sense, self-evident since we only
know anything through thoughts in our minds, but it verges on a
rationalism that positions actual reality in a true illusory realm.
Vilar has lamented this preoccupation for theory and total disregard
for empiricism:
"[T]he abyss of empiricism is only separated by a
hair's breadth from the abyss of idealism. Too great a
revulsion from 'examples', too strong a wish to isolate
the 'Holy of Holies of the Concept' and one risks being
'precipitated ' (or catapulted) into a world that is no
longer that of Marxism" (Ibid: 75).
Lovell has also pointed out that this exclusive positioning of
empiricism within the realm of ideology has lead to problematic claims
that all realist offerings in the arts are ideological. And finally,
Carroll (1988) considering film, and Lovell on Althusser, correctly
maintain that the unconscious and therefore intangible nature of
ideology as well as its all-pervasiveness in all representations,
except the second-order knowledge (concrete-in-thought) obtained
exclusively through Theory, creates a conceptual framework of ideology
that is too broad to contain any meaning.
Ideology in Cinema
Within this schema cinema is ideological. It is then a matter of
"degree," and the interesting question becomes "How much ideology is
in cinema?" This inquiry was initiated by Cahiers du Cinema editors
Comolli and Narboni in 1969:
"[T]he question we have to ask is: which films, books
and magazines allow the ideology a free, unhampered
passage, transmit it with crystal clarity, serve as its
chosen language? And which attempt to make it turn back
and reflect itself, intercept it and make it visible by
revealing its mechanisms, by blocking them?" (Comolli &
Narboni, 1990: 59)
This seminal statement has informed much of the discussion of
ideology in contemporary film and was followed by an intensive
research programme that continues to influence film studies. An
important dimension of this debate, having profound implications for
the claim that film sound practice and technology are ideological, was
the outline of the ideological effect of Quattrocento perspective.
According to Oudart (1990), the representational system developed by
Brunelleschi and others departs significantly from previous pictorial
systems because it includes the viewer within its spatial structure,
since the method requires that to view a work "properly" one must be
in alignment with the work's vanishing point. The ideological effect
of Quattrocento perspective is realized when one appropriates aspects
of Althusser's reworked concept of ideology, especially the process of
interpellation: viewers becomes unconsciously "interpellated" within
the signifying system of the picture and misrecognize their
relationship to the work. Moreover, since the actual materiality of
the perspectival representational system is constructed from
signifying codes that repress their articulation in order to maintain
the illusion of three dimensionality, the ideological effect in
Quattrocento perspective is now doubly guaranteed.
End of part 1
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chris brougham
chris@sloth.bc.caadamsd@crash.cts.com (Adams Douglas) (06/15/91)
They're gonna give you a grade for this? I picked the wrong job! [Moderator's note: Again, this is an example of a posting that I would ordinarily have returned to the author, as it does nothing, in my view, to promote serious discussion of the essay that it refers to. However, since the charter of rec.arts.cinema is currently up for discussion, I am posting to the newsgroup all articles I receive in order to give readers a chance to make up their own minds on what is and is not appropriate for this newsgroup. Please send any comments you might have (no flames, though). -- MKT]