The cinematic experience is essentially twofold. The purpose of this entry is to delineate between its two binary elements, splitting the signifier ‘cinematic experience’ down the centre, and to then discuss Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart (1936) in terms of this deliniation. To wit, this entry is an attempt to answer the following question: what happens when an eclipse takes place, or, more concisely, what happens when cinema is eclipsed, leaving only its experience?
The cinematic experience, as a whole, takes the form of a cinematic heterotopia which
is constituted across the variously virtual spaces in which we encounter displaced pieces of films: the Internet, the media and so on, but also the psychical space of a spectating subject that Baudelaire first identified as 'a kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness,' (Burgin, 2004, p. 10) [my emphasis].
At the centre of this disparate convergence is the film itself. The film is what constitutes the cinematic in cinematic experience, whereas the experience is made up, mostly, of peripheral fragments – posters, advertisements, reviews, cast, memories, and so on – which are both variable and transitory. These fragments maintain the existence of the heterotopia, and the film maintains theirs.
Because of the way the cinematic heterotopia is structured, the film and its fragments have a parallax relationship to and with one another: the subjects (cinematic fragments) each have different and differing positions from which to observe the object (the film), presenting
constantly shifting perspective[s] between two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible. Thus there is no rapport between the two levels, no shared space – although they are closely connected, even identical in a way, they are, as it were, on the opposed sides of a Moebius strip, (Žižek, 2006, p. 4).
This irreconcilable space between subjects is the heterotopia; this space is what constitutes the experience in cinematic experience.
Rose Hobart is a film which effectively translates the cinematic experience into celluloid. The object of this experience is East of Borneo, a B-grade jungle film which, in this case, is the binding force of its own heterotopia (that which we call Rose Hobart). Rose Hobart obscures East of Borneo, removing the cinematic, leaving just the experience. More specifically, Rose Hobart depicts what takes place between the parallax views which make up the heterotopia.
Such is borne out across two different parallax axes: the synchronic and the diachronic. By this I refer to the space between the cast and the viewer; and to the space between the viewer as they first experience the film and the place it occupies in their mind thereafter.
The former is exemplified by the eponymous actress and the relationship the viewer has with her and her role, and the relationship she has with the role she plays. As Rose constantly gazes off-screen – as though to glance out of Borneo and into the cinema – it appears as though she is conscious of her own role. In Rose Hobart, we are no longer watching Linda played by Rose Hobart, but Rose Hobart playing Linda. Consequently, Linda becomes the focus of two views: that of Rose Hobart and that of the viewer, both of which are drawn together – and filmed – by diluting Linda and foregrounding Rose.
The latter is characterised by the film’s aesthetic quality. As a result of the silent-speed projection, the asynchronous yet repetitive soundtrack, and the deep blue tinting which Cornell applied to Rose Hobart, its “characters move with a peculiar, lugubrious lassitude, as if mired deep in a dream,” (Frye, 2001). Instead of a simple collage cut from East of Borneo, Rose Hobart becomes something very much akin to the fractured and dreamlike memories to be found in a viewer’s sub- and unconsciousness.
As I have claimed Rose Hobart consists of experience without its cinematic instigator – the subjects without their object – it appears as though I imply that East of Borneo has been effaced at the advent of its own experience. This is incorrect. Instead, I wish to state that cinema and experience are mutually edifying: there must always be a film to generate this sort of experience in its totality; and this sort of experience will, in some form, always be generated by a film. In short, without East of Borneo, there would be no Rose Hobart.
Such brings to mind Rose Hobart’s antepenultimate shot: the eclipse. In this shot, the peripheral fire of the sun is blazing in full view while its centre is blacked out. Yet the sun is still present, for without it there would be no fire. Instead of vanishing entirely, it has been obscured, thrusting its peripheral fire into the fore. In terms of the cinematic experience, cinema will almost always marginalise its experience, and only when it is hidden does the experience become apparent in its entirety. Only do we notice the surrounding fire when we bear witness to an eclipse.
Works Cited:
Burgin, Victor. The Remembered Film. London: Reaktion Books, 2004.
Frye, Brian. “Rose Hobart”. Sense of Cinema, November, 2001. Retrieved 12 August. 2007 from <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/17/hobart.html>
Žižek, Slavoj. The Parallax View. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2006.
1 comment:
interesting discussion re the eclipse; i wonder how often though, with the huge, widespread availability of movies and fast-paced, short-concentration span society in which we live, the experience eclipses the movie? More and more it seems that (with or without the existence of trailers, posters etc which build up the experience pre-cinematic viewing) once a movie has been seen and the lights come on, we move on with our day and stop thinking about the movie in order to check our mobiles and think about what we'll have for lunch. Relishing the experience, in many cases, seems to have been eclipsed by such pressing concerns as these in our modern time.
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