So, what is film FOR? Does it have a responsibility to mirror the world and, possibly, to change it? Is it an individual act of expression?

MH Abrams used the metaphor of 'The Mirror and the Lamp' to distinguish between these two approaches.

A Marxist critic (such as those of the Frankfurt School) might see the popular media in general as what Theodor Adorno and Max Horkenheimer called 'culture industries', designed to distract an oppressed working class and to keep them docile, thus maintaining hegemony.

How realistic are these texts?




Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998)




Superbad (Mottola, 2007)



Persepolis (Paronnaud, Satrapi, 2007)



Julien Donkey Boy (Korine, 2000)



300 (Snyder, 2007)







Bowling for Columbine (Moore, 2002)



Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977)

Realism means many different things, and it's important to be aware of the different contexts in which the word is used.

First, it's common to dismiss many mainstream (Hollywood, Bollywood) movies for their lack of realism; yet, these directors do an awful lot to help the audience 'suspend their disbelief', as Coleridge put it. Indeed, the whole system of filming and editing used in Hollywood - 'classic Hollywood editing' or 'continuity editing' - is designed to create VERISIMILITUDE or 'classic narrative realism'- to make the audience forget that what they are watching is artificial - or art.

Some factors associated with the classic Hollywood style might include the use of authentic costumes, the 180 degree rule, narrative causality, match-on-action editing, shot/reverse shot and synchronised sound.



The 180 degree rule



Shot/reverse shot (amongst others)

The match on action technique can preserve temporal continuity where there is a uniform, unrepeated physical motion or change within a passage. A match on action is when some action occurring before the temporally questionable cut is picked up where the cut left it by the shot immediately following. For example, a shot of someone tossing a ball can be edited to show two different views, while maintaining temporal continuity by being sure that the second shot shows the arm of the subject in the same stage of its motion as it was left when cutting from the first shot.

Narrative causality simply means that everything that happens in one of these films happens for a reason; to get to the 'point'. Nothing is random, and actions follow in logical sequence.

You'll notice that many of these techniques aren't actually very 'realistic' at all; in life for example, stuff often happens for no particular reason, or none that leads towards a neat resolution (equilibrium or conclusion.) In this case, directors are striving to create the appearance of realsim - a forgetfulness in the audience - rather than seriously attempting to create a mirror-image of the real world.

But some directors HAVE done that. The long shots, deep focus, amateur actors and so on of the Italian Neo Realists, or the more extreme refusal to pander to 'classical' ideas shown by the Dogme 95 group are, in ways, attempts to replicate real life. This 'Realist tendency' (note the capital 'R') in film-making is commonly associated with a socialist or communist ideology dealing, as it often does, with the 'real' problems of 'real' people.

But clearly, it still isn't real. Everything we see or read is MEDIATED - thatis, passed through the respective filter of an artist's eye or brain, a camera's lens, a recording studio's sound desk. It has been changed. Processes like SELECTION mean that, when a director films something, she leaves something else out.

Given that film can't BE real, why pretend? Surrealist directors don't (always) try to replicate reality - they aim instead for PSYCHOLOGICAL realism; a reflection of the inner life which doesn't follow external, everyday rules.

So, you have the Hollywood, continuity-editing style of narrative realism; the 'Realist tendency' social realism and the psychological realism of the surrealists. Even fantasy films are 'realistic' in terms of narrative causation, consistency of characterisation, location, following external rules of physics (usually) and so on.

And what's the point, anyway? According to ideas about hyperreality, most famously associated with Jean Baudrillard, none of us in this media and image-rich society can distinguish reality from fantasy anymore. We no longer experience true emotions or sensations, simply copies or simulacra. That's getting periously close to media studies rather than film studies, though...)

More on realism here.

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