The Experience of Art

I should have learned by now: never announce an article that is not yet written. I will not answer (for now) the questions raised at the end of my last article. I want to write about videogames, but strangely every time I begin an article on the subject, I struggle with my ideas and come back to what I’m more comfortable with: cinema, authors, nature of art, Spielberg, etc. Maybe all those numerous re-definitions of what games are (or not) are confusing me, and now I just can’t grasp the concept anymore? I don’t know, but for now, I have an article on my favorite subject, criticism, which is going to lead, hopefully, to another one on videogame criticism, and we will then be a little closer to the subject – but it’s another not-yet-written text, so I’m not going to promise anything…

If it wasn’t clear already: I come to cinema and videogames through the perspective of art. Without directly addressing the “videogame as art” question, I’ll just say that I believe all videogames have the potential to be art, and in the end it’s all that matters. Likewise, not all movies can be described as artworks, but cinema has the potential to produce artworks, so for me all movies should be considered on that level. I don’t even understand what would be the point of doing otherwise, unless you have a very low opinion of criticism and just want to know where to invest your entertainment money. I guess many people are looking just for that, a consumer’s guide, but they’re the ones we should convince that there is more to cinema and videogames than a good way to spend some time. And I guess, also, that for most people this consumer’s guide approach makes more sense with videogames: after all, the first thing we associate with games is “fun”, as if there’s nothing else to look for in a game, or rather as if everything else is tangential to the “fun” factor (it’s partly true for cinema also, but we’re more accustomed to the idea of movies as something more than pure entertainment). Videogames are still struggling to be considered as a “serious” expressive medium, but in order to achieve this, the first step would be to offer good criticism; we have to prove that we can write about games seriously before we can convince an outsider of their value. All this has been said before in the last decade, and it’s not difficult nowadays to find meaningful videogame criticism, but I think we still lack a proper theoretical framing akin to what was auteurism for cinema, something that could reach outside of the (relatively) small videogame community. One could argue that this is exactly what New Games Journalism did in 2004, and while it is undeniable that Kieron Gillen’s manifesto inspired some important pieces of videogame criticism, I’m not sure it really helped to show how videogames can be important for people who are not a New Games Journalist.

Author as Style

What is an author? Or rather: how does the idea of “author” fit into an interpretation of a work of art?

 

Let’s begin by the obvious: The Death of the Author, by Roland Barthes, published in 1968, a famous essay arguing against intentionalism, or what we can call biographical criticism, i.e. interpretation relying on the author’s intentions, or what we know of the author’s life. For Barthes, on the contrary, the coherence of a text comes first and foremost from the reader, who provides its meaning to the text, the author himself being nothing more than the person who happens to write the text. This person, the artist, the facts of his social life or his opinions expressed outside of his texts, all this is trivial, only the work itself matters (although the context of its publication is still important). Analysis must then concentrate on the writing itself, on the style, because “the language speaks, not the author”. But then, what about my two articles on Spielberg, which tried to define him as an author? Surely I must think Spielberg is able to impose his will, or his intentions, on his creation, because what would be the point of analyzing his whole body of work if the fact that these movies were all made by an individual who goes by the name of Steven Spielberg is ultimately irrelevant? And, if we follow the logic of anti-intentionalism to its extreme, if we effectively kill the notion of author in interpretation, how can we even make the difference between a man-made work of art and a pile of garbage aimlessly thrown together by the wind, since both of them are created without intention?

Coming soon

Well, I never finished my Spielberg’s articles, and now I feel too far away from them to be able to write a proper conclusion. But I just want to clarify one thing before moving forward: although I first intended to, I didn’t include Spielberg’s dramas in my analysis, mainly because it was already long enough and I didn’t want to linger longer on the subject. This omission may seem like they are, in some ways, lesser movies, or that they’re not concerned with the same ideas than their more spectacular brethren, but all of Spielberg’s movies are, indeed, interrelated, and a proper, complete, picture of his cinema isn’t possible without them. Maybe I’ll come back to it someday (when I'll finally see Lincoln?)

Now, for what’s coming next: I will slowly come to the subject of videogames, as the subtitle of my blog says I should, by first developing a bit about the notion of the author I lightly touch upon in one of my previous article, before trying to see how it can fit in the context of videogames. Both my analysis of Welles and Spielberg were means to implicitly introduce the critical approach I want to apply to videogames: both filmmakers laid down in their movies their aesthetic philosophy, which I tried to outline, while using myself a somewhat similar approach to the one I tried to describe (at least that was the intent). These are two of my closest friend-filmmakers, not so much because of what they think, but more essentially because of how they think. This is probably still vague for now, but I’ll try to make it clearer, starting soon enough.

The Cinema of Steven Spielberg (2): Behind the Images

If the first part of Steven Spielberg’s career can be summarize by a general movement toward the lights in the sky, like Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, from the 90’s and forward his cinema is exemplified by characters trying to flee artifices that have become dangerous: now, they have to get out of Jurassic Park’s island.

I wouldn't follow those lights...

This change of course came gradually: it was clearly in effect in Jurassic Park (1993), the second major stepping stone in Spielberg’s cinema after CEot3K, but it was first introduced at the end of Always (1989), where Richard Dreyfuss (Pete) has to learn the responsibilities he eschewed as Roy Neary. Dorinda (Holy Hunter) is constantly trying to keep her aviator lover (Dreyfuss) on the ground, or at least to stop his dangerous behavior. “You’re not a movie hero” she says to him at one point, “you’re not saving any life here”, so no need to seek these narcissistic adrenaline thrills because you got some responsibilities, here with me. Or, if you will, no need for this pure entertainment, or to revel in your own technical virtuosity: cinema has a duty towards reality, and images should not be used to escape from or to hide the real world (as Jaws already implied). In the last sequence of Always, Dorinda’s plane crashes in a lake where she lets herself drown, hoping to leave a reality she doesn’t want to participate in anymore. This time, Dreyfuss (remember he’s Spielberg’s alter ego) takes her hand and brings her back on the ground, back to her earthly responsibilities, thus correcting his own decision at the end of CEot3K. This time, we need to stay with our two feet on the ground, not in the sky or at the bottom of a lake. And if it wasn’t clear enough, when Pete and Dorinda are walking together in one of the last shot, we distinctly hear in the music the characteristic notes used in CEot3K to communicate with the aliens.