The Fantastic - The Limits Of Interpretation: What Is A True Allegory?
Thoughts On: The Fantastic (Le Fantastique, 1973)
A question of truth and the interpretation of truth in narratives through Todorov's theory of genre.
I am currently reading Tzvetan Todorov's fascinating book, The Fantastic. This, like Morphology of the Folktale, which we discussed recently, is a structuralist work that seeks to investigate art (literature) via classification. It does not concern itself with a particularly broad topic, but rather specifies a very distinct genre termed "the fantastic". This is a genre of literature that is, in essence, concerned with, and immersed in, uncertainty. When both a character and a reader are submerged in events that cannot be rationalised with or fully accepted as a supernatural occurrence, the fantastic emerges as a precarious position of unknowing.
A cinematic example of the fantastic (from my understanding of the genre) would be Eraserhead. To very briefly provide an overview of this film, Eraserhead follows a man, Henry, in a desolate industrial world. He has impregnated his girlfriend and it has been delivered prematurely. This is no normal baby, however; it is seemingly a spawn of E.T and a worm, its body wrapped tightly in fabric so that we never see anything apart from its alien head. Henry and his girlfriend, Mary, try to take care of the baby, but Mary cannot take the pressure and Henry's mind and will start to wander as he dreams of a girl in the radiator and the woman across the way. Henry and the baby seem to become at enemies after Mary breaks and leaves, and in a surreal set of sequences, both seem to lose their heads - Henry's brains turned into the eraser on a tip of a pencil.
This narrative is clearly surreal, but there is never a point at which we are certain that what we are watching is akin to a horror film. Furthermore, never is there a point at which Henry indicates that he knows what is going on in his surreal world. In many horror films, a ghost is accepted as a ghost; we step into the rules of a given world and operate under them. In Eraserhead, a monster is not a monster; there are no given rules of the cinematic space in which we feel comfortable operating within: this is not a genre film understood through others like it. Simultaneously, however, Eraserhead never has a final explanation that reduces the surreal elements to rational representations or sparks of reality. This is seen in a film such as Psycho; we may think about ghosts or demons whilst watching the film unfold, and a murder investigated, but all is revealed to be based in character psychology by the end of the narrative: Norman Bates is his murderous mother, it is not her ghost that is killing people. There is no explanation of this sort in Eraserhead. In such, we are never shown that everything that has occurred is simply a dream of Henry's.
At this point, the argument for Eraserhead occupying the genre of the fantastic is rather compelling. It can be strengthened, however, with a recognition of the fact that this is an almost impossible narrative to reason with. Seemingly obviously, this film has something to do with fatherhood and motherhood. However, it cannot be described as a pure allegory as never can you unambiguously assert that any image is a definite representation of something rational and objective. We are then dared to assert that the creature that Henry tries to care for is his baby; this symbolically seems obvious, but never can we reach a space of definitive rationalisation. In tandem with this, we are never allowed to fully believe that this is just a random set of events unfurling from the mind of David Lynch and put onto celluloid for inexplicable absurdist pleasure. Thus, this film mediates between rationalisation and literalism; it is apart of the fantastic, unambiguously ambiguously and endlessly uncertain.
This, I hope, provides insight into the basics of Todorov's book. What makes this such a fascinating read, however, is not just its broader ideas, but the intricacies of its definitions. Early on in his investigation Todorov quotes Northrop Frye thusly:
This is a devilishly enthralling statement - one I believe I agree with. The basis of this assertion is that reality is different from representations of reality. Reality is truth. This is a very tricky assertion that could be philosophised over endlessly, but we shall leave it be as an attempt at suggesting that there is a basis of objectivity that we can call truth. So, again reality is truth. If reality contains truth then we can think of it to be a window of sorts. On one side of this window is truth, on the other side is ourselves. Why we are on one side and truth on the other seems to be a fault of our conscious nature. And what we, as conscious beings, so often perceive when we gaze towards reality is a glassy fog - which is to say that the glass that is reality is clouded and non-transparent. When we look up at the stars, we may then perceive that they are a few hundred miles away, unable to conceive of light years no matter how much we repeat the term to ourselves. It is maths that takes a cloth to the glass of reality and has us see through clearly. Math, not the human eye, reveals the truth that stars are however many light years away. However, just because math reveals the truth embedded in reality, it doesn't mean that math is truth. Math is a window to truth, it is a language as Frye says, and language does not manifest reality, it rather describes and organises it. We cannot then literally speak truth; we cannot say "I have a gold horse" and see one manifest before us; this is not how language works, language is not truth itself. This remains the case when we say that we have a hand; though our language expresses truth, it is not truth itself; it is not because we can speak that there is truth and reality, rather, truth and reality exists independent of our recognition of it.
This is what I believe Frye means to capture with his line 'a language in itself represents no truth, though it may provide the means for expressing a number of them'. Frye's use of 'represents' complicates his sentence. He rather should have used 'embodies' or something synonymous. After all, what is the difference between 'represent' and 'express'; the semantic debate is a difficult one. The difference between 'embody' and 'express' is clear. So let us reduce his statement to something of maximal clarity: language is not truth, though it may express it.
If we map this idea onto art, we can see it to be equal to math. Art can demystify reality. But, just because art can act as a tool of revealing truth, we cannot call art truth itself. Art is like a portal placed onto the world; once it is placed down, the truths borne of the earth may emerge. Art, on the other hand, does not cultivate and produce truth.
This may be, to some, a somewhat radical assertion. It is all too easy to turn to political doctrines and suggest that these not only are the truth, but that these are created truths. A system of governance does not then just exist in human culture; infrastructures must be built around government that allow it to develop and evolve. Laws, furthermore, must be written, and they must be written for the first time, they are not picked from fields like daisies. This introduces a conundrum. Art is also created, and we may assert that there are original creations, which means that art is cultivated and borne of the human mind - which runs contrary to the belief that art cannot produce truth.
This logic, whilst devious, is not entirely coherent. Let us turn back to law. It is true that law is written, and that laws are written for the first time, and that, furthermore, laws express truth. However, let us follow this line of thought: we can determine, to a degree, the kind of reality in which we exist in through ignorance. What this meas is that we may choose to be, or may just find ourselves in the position where we simply are, blind to truth. Furthermore, we can call our limited conception of 'everything' reality, when, in actual fact, further reality exists beyond current knowledge, which means further truth is to be discovered. The writing of laws for the first time represents the discovery of, or rather, adaptation and integration of, truth, not the creation of it. And, following this, it seems that a system of governance may inherently exist in human culture, waiting to be implemented. So, again, it remains true that truth cannot be created; it can only be discovered, therefore, it can only ever be expressed, never embodied by a linguistic structure.
We can go further into this concept of art as an expression of truth, not an embodiment, with the concept of art as mimesis. With mimesis meaning imitation, we can find that the concept runs in contradiction with our basic assertion. Art as mimesis implies that art represents and re-represents reality. One could argue from this point that art and reality can become confused, especially if the reflection is a successful one. And I believe this to be true. For instance, if we turn back to Eraserhead, we have a narrative that can arouse within us a feeling of fear and anxiety that equals the fear and anxiety a first-time parent feels. Whether or not this is true or could be measured and verified is unknown to me, but, if we entertain that the two experiences may be comparable, we can see that, with humans as the vessel of interpretation, we can define reality. That is to say that we might not be able to distinguish, with our senses, the difference between what is on film and what forms objective reality. And if this is the case, what is the different between the representation and reality?
This may seem like a silly question when we compare a surreal film about a monster to the act of parenting, but, the argument becomes far more difficult when we deal with the transcendent and the abstract. What is the difference between looking up at the sky and pondering the universe and witnessing the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey? When we look up at the sky and feel enormously small and lost, we are forced to interpret the unknown. The same is true of the end of 2001. (Forgive me for not detailing this ending closely). When reality is fundamentally unknown to us, how do we distinguish the representation from the clouded real? It is in such a context that representation and reality are very hard to distinguish and the concept of art as mimesis its most difficult to reconcile with our assertion that art is not real, is not truth.
It is under such conditions that we are forced to question the validity of our view of reality itself. When we look up at the stars, can we say we see reality if we do not understand fully what we see? Maybe we can assert, as with math, that there is a reality to what we see, just that our eyes cannot possess it. This justifies why truth is behind reality. And this is such an important note to make in regards to art. Math does not deal with the transcendent, art so often does. What this means is that math is reliable, and so can be seen to objectively and quantitatively reveal the truth. Art on the other hand never fully demystifies reality. No matter how truthful a movie about love may then appear, it cannot be considered a scientific classification of the phenomenon. Because objective truth always remains at bay of art, truth retains a transcendent quality, which is to say it always exists beyond the clouded glass, accessed briefly in faith and in faith alone. If anything, art allows us to close our eyes and reach through the glass wall that is reality and feel truth ever so briefly. We have no means of proving what occurred, but we have faith in the fact that we came into contact with truth.
With that said let us return to mimesis. Mimesis reveals not that art is equal to reality. However, mimesis reveals the means through which art attaches itself to reality. Replication in this sense, mimesis itself, becomes the tool through which truth is accessed (in faith). Let us map this onto Eraserhead. Lynch, in some form, imitates some shades and contortion of reality with his film. He may, we could suggest, be representing multiple shades or perspectives of reality at once - which is why the film is so indefinite and apart of the fantastic. Nonetheless, though Lynch may be creating an original work, he is not creating new truth. We have discussed this already in regards to law. Law is discovered, much like Eraserhead was by Lynch. Where it was found is in (behind the glass of) reality - and we know this because we can feel through the film and find truth, and truth is, ultimately, only a property of reality. Herein we find the magic of art as mimesis. Art, as it is both created and consumed, can bypass reality to express its truths; it does not have to concern itself with unclouding the glass of reality, but can rather temporarily create a hole that we can reach through with our eyes closed. However, how do we know truth, true truth, is ever found?
This is quite possibly impossible to answer. Alas, let us attempt to go as deep as we can through our conceptualisation. Below mimesis, in my estimation, is something approximating Tao. The Taoists have a profoundly brilliant idea of a Way of all being. This Way cannot be known, but it can be aligned with. And this is the only answer I can conceive of as a response to us being able to know if truth is, itself, true. A philosophy of Tao implies that Tao is within us, that truth is within us. To operate correctly is to live in alignment with Tao, with truth. Therefore, truth is accessed through proper mimesis; by being our true selves. How do we know when mimesis is correct? I can only suppose that it is a feeling justified collectively, amongst us all, and simultaneously within our individual selves. Truth is true when we know it to be; if this is not the case then nothing may as well be the case. I can better specify this final assertion, but let us not stop here and get lost.
To crawl out of this conceptual hole we have dug, let us find another quote from Todorov that is in direct communication with Frye's earlier remark:
This is another devilishly fascinating assertion (an assertion Todorov adopts, in part, from Frye). Let us pause for a moment to question what Todorov is saying here. The crux of this assertion is found in the last section: 'literature does not refer...to anything outside itself'. This is one of the most fundamental truths of all art. Art is a manifestation, and everything within its confines is contrived. This means that a film can only ever be based on true events. This is definitely true in fiction, but there is an endless debate in the realm of documentary concerning the recording of truth that we shall not fall into right now. What we shall then assert is that documentary is not a strict art, more so a craft, the difference being that art is created and a craft moulded, hence truth is discovered via contrivance by art whilst it is presented via investigation by documentary. To take a step back, however. All fiction is contrived, so even if a film is about historical reality, it must always re-represent this. As a result, though it imitates truth and reality, it does not embody it. Furthermore, because truth is not embodied, rather imitated, what is referred to in the art is not the reality, but rather, the representation of the reality.
Let us look for an example in Saving Private Ryan. This is a film about WWII, which happened. It also contains events within it, such as the Invasion of Normandy, which happened. These events are all true and real. However, what is put to film is a representation of what was real. And what is referred to in the film, and what is commented on, is the representation, not reality. Spielberg then does not take real footage of the landings at Normandy and discuss it, he rather recreates footage, however realistically, and comments on that. His references to WWII are then inextricably references to his idea of WWII.
This set of assertions does not mean that there is no truth in Saving Private Ryan - we have already discussed this. Truth is accessed with the film becoming a portal through reality. This set of assertions is concerned with how commentary is formed. Spielberg does not speak of reality; he shows a perspective of reality and speaks on this. Because he does this through film, it is the film that both creates a version of reality and then speaks about itself. What we see here, then, is art only ever being able to refer to itself; only ever being able to frame a vision of reality before referring to that as to produce commentary (which itself may express truths of reality).
Herein, we see the distinction between art and something such as a horse race. A commentator's job when calling a horse race is to translate facts. They so often provide opinions in addition to this, but what is centralised are the facts. A commentator will then say that Horse 3 is ahead of Horse 4. This can be measured objectively and so the commentary can be seen to be referring to reality. Art stages the horse race which it comments on. So, even though a commentator in a film may say that Horse 3 is ahead of Horse 4, they will only be referring to what has been written in the script, to something predetermined and already apart of the art.
It could be argued that there are rare cases in which art refers to something outside of itself. We find an example in documentary and its blend into narrative. Here, a real horse race can be filmed as objective fact and commented upon. It could be argued in this case that the documentary is referring to something outside itself - but does that make it art or a craft? (Something that can be discussed elsewhere). But, we can nonetheless sustain that fiction always alters and recreates the reality it means to imitate and so can only refer to itself and its own process of mimesis, nothing else.
The implication of this line of thought has us turn away from questioning what art is and towards a question of how we use art. We have surmised already that art allows us to access truth. However, how do we express this truth once we have come into contact with it? To re-frame this question: how do we provide our own interpretation of truth and of art that is valid?
This is a daunting question that is inadvertently posed by Todorov as he discusses allegory in regards to the fantastic. The implication that art can only ever refer to itself emphasises above all else the impossibility of inherent reality in a narrative. That is to say that, a narrative can never strictly be about the real world because it can only be about itself. In one sense, this is a liberating expression. This is then an argument against an assertion such as 'all art is politics'. If art is a manifestation of imagination, then it can only refer to imagination itself; this is what we truly mean by 'art can only refer to itself'; it can only refer to its origins. And the fundamental origin of art is not politics or ideology, rather, it is creation itself: imagination. However, this is where we find ourselves trapped. If art can only be related to itself and its origins in creation, how can we speak of it?
It is here where we must accept that we have to create art out of art in our analysis of it; interpretation an art of recycling - or is it a craft? The difficulty of interpretation is the impossibility of speaking of the true process of creating art. No one understands this fully, and it cannot be documented wholly or objectively. After all, how do you collect and record every thought that goes into first coming upon an idea for a story and then manifesting it? Because this is impossible, true analysis is also impossible - almost.
Though art can only fundamentally refer to itself, within the inevitable self-referral, an artist does draw from the real world, does attempt to refer to it. This is the most fascinating case with allegories. Allegories come from sustained metaphor. To take Todorov's quotation of Quintilian: 'a continuous metaphor develops into allegory'. An example of allegory in cinema can be seen in The Incredible Shrinking Man:
A businessman on holiday comes into contact with a strange mist. Over the following months he starts to notice that his clothes do not fit, and ever more rapidly it becomes apparent that he is shrinking. All too soon, he is the size of a doll in a doll house. His estranged wife one day leaves him at home to run an errand, and the house cat attacks him. Returning home, the wife believes her husband to be killed. In truth, he has been cast down into the cellar, and is trapped here. The man spends the rest of the film attempting to survive in this supersized world, to escape and find his wife. In the end, he fails, but comes upon the realisation that "to God, there is no zero".
The allegory drawn here is clear. The mist, as we are told at one point in the narrative, is nuclear. The man shrinking as a consequence of coming into contact with nuclear technology seems to be a clear allegory for fear in the new nuclear age of the 1950s. And so it is the looming Cold War that not only shrinks the man, but makes his everyday problems so much larger. What we see here is one minor metaphor sustained and transformed until our main character realises that life always remains difficult, that it is not the magnitude of the world that impacts suffering, but the perspective we can take of it. To see the world as suddenly so much more dangerous induces further suffering. The truth is, however, that, from an omniscient perspective, there is no zero, no end to how small or big things can get; life is life, life is suffering, this always remains true despite its size.
The allegory drawn here seems very obvious. Though this may be the case, we can take a step back and question the accuracy and veracity of our reading. Our interpretation, after all, refers to an understanding of reality (or at least, something beyond the art) whilst art can only refer to art. Questions that then seem paramount concern what the artist intended: is our interpretation theirs? How do we know the director meant to say this? However, is this a redundant question?
As Todorov points out, art (literature) can be endlessly interpreted. But, he nonetheless sustains that there are a finite amount of allegorical forms: obvious allegory, illusory allegory, indirect allegory and hesitating allegory. Each of these forms define a relationship between the author and reader: obvious allegory concerns an author with clear intentions and an understanding reader, whilst hesitating allegory concerns an unsure author whose reader cannot guess their intentions (this is the case with a film such as Eraserhead; not even Lynch knows what this film is about). These different forms imply that a truthful analysis of an allegory requires agreement between what the artist thinks his intentions are and what intentions the reader recognises.
This, I certainly sense, is a valid way to judge the limits of interpretation; if the disagreement between text, reader and author is apparent, the validity of interpretation is weak. Let it be emphasised here that there are three elements that judge whether or not interpretation is valid; the author, the reader, and also the text. The author knows what they meant (to a degree), a reader may be able to tell the author something that they don't know about themselves, and a text only knows itself. The manner in which these three entities must agree is difficult to delineate, but it should appear clearer with specific study.
That said, I am interested in the text being a window onto a reality that neither the author or reader can access. This brings us down our look into mimesis and then finally Tao. The conclusion we may then draw on the ultimately validity of any interpretation concerns the true allegory. With art in its purest form, it allows us to grip truth. To be able to speak of this truth, we must align ourselves with the ambiguous Way. The limits of interpretation are then seemingly not so strict. Whilst we may not speak truthful interpretation into existence, we can speak of the essence of truth and become a hard-line to faithful truth ourselves. So, whilst our capabilities to interpret are infinite, our ability to express truth is not. True interpretation is found when art resonates against art and fundamental truth becomes ever more true. Truth is within us, and it is only by expressing that truth that we can come to know if we understand what we know. Hence, the importance of communication; hence, the fundamental basis of all art must be defined as communicative. The true test of truth is then the friction of expression. We have asserted that truth can be expressed by art, but we will conclude that true truth can only ever be recognised via the friction, difficulty and conflict that the process of mimesis, expression and reception induces.
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A question of truth and the interpretation of truth in narratives through Todorov's theory of genre.
I am currently reading Tzvetan Todorov's fascinating book, The Fantastic. This, like Morphology of the Folktale, which we discussed recently, is a structuralist work that seeks to investigate art (literature) via classification. It does not concern itself with a particularly broad topic, but rather specifies a very distinct genre termed "the fantastic". This is a genre of literature that is, in essence, concerned with, and immersed in, uncertainty. When both a character and a reader are submerged in events that cannot be rationalised with or fully accepted as a supernatural occurrence, the fantastic emerges as a precarious position of unknowing.
A cinematic example of the fantastic (from my understanding of the genre) would be Eraserhead. To very briefly provide an overview of this film, Eraserhead follows a man, Henry, in a desolate industrial world. He has impregnated his girlfriend and it has been delivered prematurely. This is no normal baby, however; it is seemingly a spawn of E.T and a worm, its body wrapped tightly in fabric so that we never see anything apart from its alien head. Henry and his girlfriend, Mary, try to take care of the baby, but Mary cannot take the pressure and Henry's mind and will start to wander as he dreams of a girl in the radiator and the woman across the way. Henry and the baby seem to become at enemies after Mary breaks and leaves, and in a surreal set of sequences, both seem to lose their heads - Henry's brains turned into the eraser on a tip of a pencil.
This narrative is clearly surreal, but there is never a point at which we are certain that what we are watching is akin to a horror film. Furthermore, never is there a point at which Henry indicates that he knows what is going on in his surreal world. In many horror films, a ghost is accepted as a ghost; we step into the rules of a given world and operate under them. In Eraserhead, a monster is not a monster; there are no given rules of the cinematic space in which we feel comfortable operating within: this is not a genre film understood through others like it. Simultaneously, however, Eraserhead never has a final explanation that reduces the surreal elements to rational representations or sparks of reality. This is seen in a film such as Psycho; we may think about ghosts or demons whilst watching the film unfold, and a murder investigated, but all is revealed to be based in character psychology by the end of the narrative: Norman Bates is his murderous mother, it is not her ghost that is killing people. There is no explanation of this sort in Eraserhead. In such, we are never shown that everything that has occurred is simply a dream of Henry's.
At this point, the argument for Eraserhead occupying the genre of the fantastic is rather compelling. It can be strengthened, however, with a recognition of the fact that this is an almost impossible narrative to reason with. Seemingly obviously, this film has something to do with fatherhood and motherhood. However, it cannot be described as a pure allegory as never can you unambiguously assert that any image is a definite representation of something rational and objective. We are then dared to assert that the creature that Henry tries to care for is his baby; this symbolically seems obvious, but never can we reach a space of definitive rationalisation. In tandem with this, we are never allowed to fully believe that this is just a random set of events unfurling from the mind of David Lynch and put onto celluloid for inexplicable absurdist pleasure. Thus, this film mediates between rationalisation and literalism; it is apart of the fantastic, unambiguously ambiguously and endlessly uncertain.
This, I hope, provides insight into the basics of Todorov's book. What makes this such a fascinating read, however, is not just its broader ideas, but the intricacies of its definitions. Early on in his investigation Todorov quotes Northrop Frye thusly:
Literature, like mathematics, is a language, and a language in itself represents no truth, though it may provide the means for expressing a number of them.
This is a devilishly enthralling statement - one I believe I agree with. The basis of this assertion is that reality is different from representations of reality. Reality is truth. This is a very tricky assertion that could be philosophised over endlessly, but we shall leave it be as an attempt at suggesting that there is a basis of objectivity that we can call truth. So, again reality is truth. If reality contains truth then we can think of it to be a window of sorts. On one side of this window is truth, on the other side is ourselves. Why we are on one side and truth on the other seems to be a fault of our conscious nature. And what we, as conscious beings, so often perceive when we gaze towards reality is a glassy fog - which is to say that the glass that is reality is clouded and non-transparent. When we look up at the stars, we may then perceive that they are a few hundred miles away, unable to conceive of light years no matter how much we repeat the term to ourselves. It is maths that takes a cloth to the glass of reality and has us see through clearly. Math, not the human eye, reveals the truth that stars are however many light years away. However, just because math reveals the truth embedded in reality, it doesn't mean that math is truth. Math is a window to truth, it is a language as Frye says, and language does not manifest reality, it rather describes and organises it. We cannot then literally speak truth; we cannot say "I have a gold horse" and see one manifest before us; this is not how language works, language is not truth itself. This remains the case when we say that we have a hand; though our language expresses truth, it is not truth itself; it is not because we can speak that there is truth and reality, rather, truth and reality exists independent of our recognition of it.
This is what I believe Frye means to capture with his line 'a language in itself represents no truth, though it may provide the means for expressing a number of them'. Frye's use of 'represents' complicates his sentence. He rather should have used 'embodies' or something synonymous. After all, what is the difference between 'represent' and 'express'; the semantic debate is a difficult one. The difference between 'embody' and 'express' is clear. So let us reduce his statement to something of maximal clarity: language is not truth, though it may express it.
If we map this idea onto art, we can see it to be equal to math. Art can demystify reality. But, just because art can act as a tool of revealing truth, we cannot call art truth itself. Art is like a portal placed onto the world; once it is placed down, the truths borne of the earth may emerge. Art, on the other hand, does not cultivate and produce truth.
This may be, to some, a somewhat radical assertion. It is all too easy to turn to political doctrines and suggest that these not only are the truth, but that these are created truths. A system of governance does not then just exist in human culture; infrastructures must be built around government that allow it to develop and evolve. Laws, furthermore, must be written, and they must be written for the first time, they are not picked from fields like daisies. This introduces a conundrum. Art is also created, and we may assert that there are original creations, which means that art is cultivated and borne of the human mind - which runs contrary to the belief that art cannot produce truth.
This logic, whilst devious, is not entirely coherent. Let us turn back to law. It is true that law is written, and that laws are written for the first time, and that, furthermore, laws express truth. However, let us follow this line of thought: we can determine, to a degree, the kind of reality in which we exist in through ignorance. What this meas is that we may choose to be, or may just find ourselves in the position where we simply are, blind to truth. Furthermore, we can call our limited conception of 'everything' reality, when, in actual fact, further reality exists beyond current knowledge, which means further truth is to be discovered. The writing of laws for the first time represents the discovery of, or rather, adaptation and integration of, truth, not the creation of it. And, following this, it seems that a system of governance may inherently exist in human culture, waiting to be implemented. So, again, it remains true that truth cannot be created; it can only be discovered, therefore, it can only ever be expressed, never embodied by a linguistic structure.
We can go further into this concept of art as an expression of truth, not an embodiment, with the concept of art as mimesis. With mimesis meaning imitation, we can find that the concept runs in contradiction with our basic assertion. Art as mimesis implies that art represents and re-represents reality. One could argue from this point that art and reality can become confused, especially if the reflection is a successful one. And I believe this to be true. For instance, if we turn back to Eraserhead, we have a narrative that can arouse within us a feeling of fear and anxiety that equals the fear and anxiety a first-time parent feels. Whether or not this is true or could be measured and verified is unknown to me, but, if we entertain that the two experiences may be comparable, we can see that, with humans as the vessel of interpretation, we can define reality. That is to say that we might not be able to distinguish, with our senses, the difference between what is on film and what forms objective reality. And if this is the case, what is the different between the representation and reality?
This may seem like a silly question when we compare a surreal film about a monster to the act of parenting, but, the argument becomes far more difficult when we deal with the transcendent and the abstract. What is the difference between looking up at the sky and pondering the universe and witnessing the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey? When we look up at the sky and feel enormously small and lost, we are forced to interpret the unknown. The same is true of the end of 2001. (Forgive me for not detailing this ending closely). When reality is fundamentally unknown to us, how do we distinguish the representation from the clouded real? It is in such a context that representation and reality are very hard to distinguish and the concept of art as mimesis its most difficult to reconcile with our assertion that art is not real, is not truth.
It is under such conditions that we are forced to question the validity of our view of reality itself. When we look up at the stars, can we say we see reality if we do not understand fully what we see? Maybe we can assert, as with math, that there is a reality to what we see, just that our eyes cannot possess it. This justifies why truth is behind reality. And this is such an important note to make in regards to art. Math does not deal with the transcendent, art so often does. What this means is that math is reliable, and so can be seen to objectively and quantitatively reveal the truth. Art on the other hand never fully demystifies reality. No matter how truthful a movie about love may then appear, it cannot be considered a scientific classification of the phenomenon. Because objective truth always remains at bay of art, truth retains a transcendent quality, which is to say it always exists beyond the clouded glass, accessed briefly in faith and in faith alone. If anything, art allows us to close our eyes and reach through the glass wall that is reality and feel truth ever so briefly. We have no means of proving what occurred, but we have faith in the fact that we came into contact with truth.
With that said let us return to mimesis. Mimesis reveals not that art is equal to reality. However, mimesis reveals the means through which art attaches itself to reality. Replication in this sense, mimesis itself, becomes the tool through which truth is accessed (in faith). Let us map this onto Eraserhead. Lynch, in some form, imitates some shades and contortion of reality with his film. He may, we could suggest, be representing multiple shades or perspectives of reality at once - which is why the film is so indefinite and apart of the fantastic. Nonetheless, though Lynch may be creating an original work, he is not creating new truth. We have discussed this already in regards to law. Law is discovered, much like Eraserhead was by Lynch. Where it was found is in (behind the glass of) reality - and we know this because we can feel through the film and find truth, and truth is, ultimately, only a property of reality. Herein we find the magic of art as mimesis. Art, as it is both created and consumed, can bypass reality to express its truths; it does not have to concern itself with unclouding the glass of reality, but can rather temporarily create a hole that we can reach through with our eyes closed. However, how do we know truth, true truth, is ever found?
This is quite possibly impossible to answer. Alas, let us attempt to go as deep as we can through our conceptualisation. Below mimesis, in my estimation, is something approximating Tao. The Taoists have a profoundly brilliant idea of a Way of all being. This Way cannot be known, but it can be aligned with. And this is the only answer I can conceive of as a response to us being able to know if truth is, itself, true. A philosophy of Tao implies that Tao is within us, that truth is within us. To operate correctly is to live in alignment with Tao, with truth. Therefore, truth is accessed through proper mimesis; by being our true selves. How do we know when mimesis is correct? I can only suppose that it is a feeling justified collectively, amongst us all, and simultaneously within our individual selves. Truth is true when we know it to be; if this is not the case then nothing may as well be the case. I can better specify this final assertion, but let us not stop here and get lost.
To crawl out of this conceptual hole we have dug, let us find another quote from Todorov that is in direct communication with Frye's earlier remark:
... literature is not representative in the same sense that certain sentences of every day speech are representative, for literature does not refer (in the strict sense of the verb) to anything outside itself.
This is another devilishly fascinating assertion (an assertion Todorov adopts, in part, from Frye). Let us pause for a moment to question what Todorov is saying here. The crux of this assertion is found in the last section: 'literature does not refer...to anything outside itself'. This is one of the most fundamental truths of all art. Art is a manifestation, and everything within its confines is contrived. This means that a film can only ever be based on true events. This is definitely true in fiction, but there is an endless debate in the realm of documentary concerning the recording of truth that we shall not fall into right now. What we shall then assert is that documentary is not a strict art, more so a craft, the difference being that art is created and a craft moulded, hence truth is discovered via contrivance by art whilst it is presented via investigation by documentary. To take a step back, however. All fiction is contrived, so even if a film is about historical reality, it must always re-represent this. As a result, though it imitates truth and reality, it does not embody it. Furthermore, because truth is not embodied, rather imitated, what is referred to in the art is not the reality, but rather, the representation of the reality.
Let us look for an example in Saving Private Ryan. This is a film about WWII, which happened. It also contains events within it, such as the Invasion of Normandy, which happened. These events are all true and real. However, what is put to film is a representation of what was real. And what is referred to in the film, and what is commented on, is the representation, not reality. Spielberg then does not take real footage of the landings at Normandy and discuss it, he rather recreates footage, however realistically, and comments on that. His references to WWII are then inextricably references to his idea of WWII.
This set of assertions does not mean that there is no truth in Saving Private Ryan - we have already discussed this. Truth is accessed with the film becoming a portal through reality. This set of assertions is concerned with how commentary is formed. Spielberg does not speak of reality; he shows a perspective of reality and speaks on this. Because he does this through film, it is the film that both creates a version of reality and then speaks about itself. What we see here, then, is art only ever being able to refer to itself; only ever being able to frame a vision of reality before referring to that as to produce commentary (which itself may express truths of reality).
Herein, we see the distinction between art and something such as a horse race. A commentator's job when calling a horse race is to translate facts. They so often provide opinions in addition to this, but what is centralised are the facts. A commentator will then say that Horse 3 is ahead of Horse 4. This can be measured objectively and so the commentary can be seen to be referring to reality. Art stages the horse race which it comments on. So, even though a commentator in a film may say that Horse 3 is ahead of Horse 4, they will only be referring to what has been written in the script, to something predetermined and already apart of the art.
It could be argued that there are rare cases in which art refers to something outside of itself. We find an example in documentary and its blend into narrative. Here, a real horse race can be filmed as objective fact and commented upon. It could be argued in this case that the documentary is referring to something outside itself - but does that make it art or a craft? (Something that can be discussed elsewhere). But, we can nonetheless sustain that fiction always alters and recreates the reality it means to imitate and so can only refer to itself and its own process of mimesis, nothing else.
The implication of this line of thought has us turn away from questioning what art is and towards a question of how we use art. We have surmised already that art allows us to access truth. However, how do we express this truth once we have come into contact with it? To re-frame this question: how do we provide our own interpretation of truth and of art that is valid?
This is a daunting question that is inadvertently posed by Todorov as he discusses allegory in regards to the fantastic. The implication that art can only ever refer to itself emphasises above all else the impossibility of inherent reality in a narrative. That is to say that, a narrative can never strictly be about the real world because it can only be about itself. In one sense, this is a liberating expression. This is then an argument against an assertion such as 'all art is politics'. If art is a manifestation of imagination, then it can only refer to imagination itself; this is what we truly mean by 'art can only refer to itself'; it can only refer to its origins. And the fundamental origin of art is not politics or ideology, rather, it is creation itself: imagination. However, this is where we find ourselves trapped. If art can only be related to itself and its origins in creation, how can we speak of it?
It is here where we must accept that we have to create art out of art in our analysis of it; interpretation an art of recycling - or is it a craft? The difficulty of interpretation is the impossibility of speaking of the true process of creating art. No one understands this fully, and it cannot be documented wholly or objectively. After all, how do you collect and record every thought that goes into first coming upon an idea for a story and then manifesting it? Because this is impossible, true analysis is also impossible - almost.
Though art can only fundamentally refer to itself, within the inevitable self-referral, an artist does draw from the real world, does attempt to refer to it. This is the most fascinating case with allegories. Allegories come from sustained metaphor. To take Todorov's quotation of Quintilian: 'a continuous metaphor develops into allegory'. An example of allegory in cinema can be seen in The Incredible Shrinking Man:
A businessman on holiday comes into contact with a strange mist. Over the following months he starts to notice that his clothes do not fit, and ever more rapidly it becomes apparent that he is shrinking. All too soon, he is the size of a doll in a doll house. His estranged wife one day leaves him at home to run an errand, and the house cat attacks him. Returning home, the wife believes her husband to be killed. In truth, he has been cast down into the cellar, and is trapped here. The man spends the rest of the film attempting to survive in this supersized world, to escape and find his wife. In the end, he fails, but comes upon the realisation that "to God, there is no zero".
The allegory drawn here is clear. The mist, as we are told at one point in the narrative, is nuclear. The man shrinking as a consequence of coming into contact with nuclear technology seems to be a clear allegory for fear in the new nuclear age of the 1950s. And so it is the looming Cold War that not only shrinks the man, but makes his everyday problems so much larger. What we see here is one minor metaphor sustained and transformed until our main character realises that life always remains difficult, that it is not the magnitude of the world that impacts suffering, but the perspective we can take of it. To see the world as suddenly so much more dangerous induces further suffering. The truth is, however, that, from an omniscient perspective, there is no zero, no end to how small or big things can get; life is life, life is suffering, this always remains true despite its size.
The allegory drawn here seems very obvious. Though this may be the case, we can take a step back and question the accuracy and veracity of our reading. Our interpretation, after all, refers to an understanding of reality (or at least, something beyond the art) whilst art can only refer to art. Questions that then seem paramount concern what the artist intended: is our interpretation theirs? How do we know the director meant to say this? However, is this a redundant question?
As Todorov points out, art (literature) can be endlessly interpreted. But, he nonetheless sustains that there are a finite amount of allegorical forms: obvious allegory, illusory allegory, indirect allegory and hesitating allegory. Each of these forms define a relationship between the author and reader: obvious allegory concerns an author with clear intentions and an understanding reader, whilst hesitating allegory concerns an unsure author whose reader cannot guess their intentions (this is the case with a film such as Eraserhead; not even Lynch knows what this film is about). These different forms imply that a truthful analysis of an allegory requires agreement between what the artist thinks his intentions are and what intentions the reader recognises.
This, I certainly sense, is a valid way to judge the limits of interpretation; if the disagreement between text, reader and author is apparent, the validity of interpretation is weak. Let it be emphasised here that there are three elements that judge whether or not interpretation is valid; the author, the reader, and also the text. The author knows what they meant (to a degree), a reader may be able to tell the author something that they don't know about themselves, and a text only knows itself. The manner in which these three entities must agree is difficult to delineate, but it should appear clearer with specific study.
That said, I am interested in the text being a window onto a reality that neither the author or reader can access. This brings us down our look into mimesis and then finally Tao. The conclusion we may then draw on the ultimately validity of any interpretation concerns the true allegory. With art in its purest form, it allows us to grip truth. To be able to speak of this truth, we must align ourselves with the ambiguous Way. The limits of interpretation are then seemingly not so strict. Whilst we may not speak truthful interpretation into existence, we can speak of the essence of truth and become a hard-line to faithful truth ourselves. So, whilst our capabilities to interpret are infinite, our ability to express truth is not. True interpretation is found when art resonates against art and fundamental truth becomes ever more true. Truth is within us, and it is only by expressing that truth that we can come to know if we understand what we know. Hence, the importance of communication; hence, the fundamental basis of all art must be defined as communicative. The true test of truth is then the friction of expression. We have asserted that truth can be expressed by art, but we will conclude that true truth can only ever be recognised via the friction, difficulty and conflict that the process of mimesis, expression and reception induces.
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