Paradox:A visual essay

AliaaEl Kalyoubi

“ To understand paradoxes is to

be able to hold two conflicting

ideas in your head at the same

time. And maybe to give both

equal credibility. ”

“ To understand paradoxes is to

be able to hold two conflicting

ideas in your head at the same

time. And maybe to give both

equal credibility. ”

The world, and how we view it, is malleable.

To understand paradoxes is to be able to hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. And maybe to give both equal credibility. It’s about merging two things that seem incongruent into something that, some how, makes sense. To me, it’s probably the highest act of creativity and is the most ready manifes-tation of curiosity and understanding. It’s mental dexterity made tangible, and it produces the creative output I respect the most. To know how square pegs can go into round holes is to understand that the world, and the perception of it, is a play thing.

Paradoxes are greater than the sum of their parts. If one and one is three, that last third is the conceptual leap that connects them. It’s where insight lives, and it’s what causes my delight. It’s why Seinfeld is, and will always be, funny. It’s why Jennifer Daniel is clever (and funny). It’s why I miss the old Simpsons. It’s about curation, choosing wisely, and presenting an audience with something new. “Here, look at this thing you didn’t notice.” “Here, consider this thing in a way you haven’t before.” A good paradox broadens our scope as people. It makes us question, but I think it also allows us to accept.

“ What a pity that youthmust be wasted onthe young.”

“ What a pity that youthmust be wasted onthe young.”

- George Bernard

the creative output

I respect the most.”

“ It’s mental dexterity

made

tangible, and it produces

– Frank Chimero

the creative output

I respect the most.”

“ It’s mental dexterity

made

tangible, and it produces

How do we sort out the paradox that even though the our consumption lifestyle is causing global warming, most people are unlikely to change their buying habits? Or the paradox that we make deci-sions that fill our lives with more minutia, but the more bits we’re surrounded with, the poorer deci-sions we make? Or how about the paradox that even though our hyper-connected world exposes us to more conflicting view points, we actually become more narrow-minded because we choose places where others only agree with us?

There is a reach to knowledge and skill. You know what you know, and through time and effort and diligent focus, you’ve also come to realize a few of the things that you don’t know. You begin to understand that those unknowns are within reach if you stretch a bit. That’s learning. And then the thought occurs to you that puts the fear of God in your bones: there are things out of your reach, (Im-portant things! Crucial things!) that you will never know that you don’t know. It’s a darkness too dark to pierce.

It feels a bit like walking through a cave with a really crummy torch. The torch gives enough light to see a couple feet in front of you. We’re told that’s enough to get out, but I’m always left wishing I could see a little further into the future, because I’ve got a pretty good hunch this cave is massive. If only we could make our torches burn a little brighter.

There is a reach to knowledge and skill.

“ Paradoxes are greater than the sum of their parts. If one and one is three, that last third is the conceptual leap that connects them.”

– Frank Chimero

There is a serious methodological point here. How, after all, can you be sure that the fea-tures of technique or narrative that you’re picking out distinguish Hollywood? Perhaps we fi nd the same features in French or Brazil-ian fi lms. The reply is that we did rely on our intuitive experience with other traditions to come up with some broad contrasts with oth-er modes of fi lmmaking (e.g., Soviet montage cinema, contemporary art cinema). Moreover, especially in the pre-video era, a system-atic and fairly comprehensive cross-national study of this sort wasn’t practical. Kristin and I have gone on to try to trace alternative styles,endnote6 but fi lm studies is still very far from a complete comparative study of aes-thetic traditions in international popular cin-ema. That is largely because most scholars do not pursue analysis of form and style.

If we have taken the realms of style and pro-duction as primary, it is not because we consider the concrete conditions of recep-tion unimportant. Certainly conditions of consumption form a part of any mode of film practice. An adequate history of the reception of the classical Hollywood film would have to examine the changing theater situation, the history of publicity, and the role of social class, aesthetic tradition, and ideology in constitut-ing the audience. This history, as yet unwrit-ten, would require another book, probably as long as this one is.

The jump to socio-cultural explanation is always tempting, and nearly every historian before us had suc-cumbed. Part of our point was to show that a great many questions can be answered satisfactorily by examining what Sartre called mediations—the processes and social formations that in-tervene between an art work and the broader society. In our case, the mediations were the institutions in and around film production, as well as the discourses those institutions generated.

“There are more

paradoxes than any

other point in time.”

– Frank Chimero

What we propose is not an-

other study of an outstanding

individual, a tre

nd, or a genre.

The Classical Hollywood Cin-

ema analyzes the broad and

basic conditions of American

cinema as a historical institu-

tion. This project explores the

common idea that Hollywood

fi lmmaking constitutes both

an art and an industry.

We

examine the artistic unique-

ness and the mass-produc-

tion aspects of the American

studio cinema.

Moreover, we show how

these two features funda-

mentally depend on one

another. On the one hand,

this cinema displays a unique

use of the fi lm

medium, a

specifi c style. This makes

Hollywood cinema amenable

to being considered a group

style, comparable to Vien-

nese classical music of the

eighteenth century or Parisian

cubist painting of the early

twentieth. On the other hand,

we can see the specifi c busi-

ness practices of the Hol-

lywood industry

as initiating

and sustaining its distinct fi lm

style. The history o

f Holly-

wood is thus the coalescence

and continuation of a fi lm

style whose supremacy w

as

created and maintained by a

particular economic mode of

fi lm production.

The opposition in the fi lm,

contrary to expectation, is

not between the ineffi cient

and the eco-friendly, n

or

even between capitalism

and justice. No distinction is

made: pollution and disease

are attributed to manufac-

tured goods in general, and

the possibility of a green city

is implicitly rejected. Instead,

the confl ict at the core of

the fi lm is between natu-

ral and artifi cial order. The

natural order fl ourishes in

the tranquility

of true peace.

Its governing authority rules

by law and not by tr

ibunal:

when the Lorax threatens

that nature will avenge the

massacre of the tre

es, ven-

geance comes as a direct

consequence of the act, n

ot

from a thunderbolt or mys-

tic guardian. In the artifi cial

order of the commercial

utopia, tranquility

fl ows from

total consumer autonomy:

the town is walled in and the

air stinks, but this does not

matter so long as there are

new diversions and un-pur-

chased goods. Thneedville,

the fi ctional town, is the ex-

pansion of Snow White’s evil

queen into a society. Totally

divorced from the natural

order in the pursuit of power

and luxury,

Thneedville

has become

the locus of

life by glutting

itself on the

surrounding

region. The

industrialist

who created

the city gives it

his own artifi -

cial concept of

nature, a fusion

of extreme

laissez-faire-

ism with social

Darwinism,

which results

in a society

turned in on

itself, with man

as the giver of

his own law

and the sole

object of his

pursuits.

“ I think one of

the most odd

things about

learning is the

moment where

you know

enough to realize

how much you

don’t know. ”

– Frank Chimero

Some people objected

to using the word “classi-

cal” to describe the studio

style. Did it make us seem

conservative theorists? In

a word, no. The word was

already circulating in French

and English-language fi lm

talk. On the fi rst page of the

book we pointed out that it

dates back at least to the

1920s. Did it commit us to

a “neoclassical” aesthetic,

believing in adherence to

rules and academic can-

ons? In the same word,

no. We used “classical” as

shorthand description, and

it carries no deep commit-

ment to a worldview or an

aesthetic. All of three of us

have written about “un-

classical” cinemas. The

worry about terminology

recalls a point made by

Karl Popper.

In science, we take care

that the statements we

make should never de-

pend upon the meaning

of our terms. Even where

the terms are defi ned,

we never try to derive

any information from the

defi nition, or to base any

argument upon it.

There are more

paradoxes than any

other point in time.

Maybe the most

paradoxical thing

is that we need to

create even more

to understand the

ones that are

already there.

Paradox is all

around us.

I think one of the

most odd things

about learning is

the moment where

you know enough

to realize how

much you don’t

know. It’s scary

as hell, because

of how vulnerable

it makes you feel.

The sensation of

this virgin thought

might only be on

par to when you

are a child and you

realize you only

have a one and

only life, or when

you are a little

older and realize

that other people

can hurt you in a

way that no one

else can see, and

you can do the

same to them. Un-

derstanding these

things is a weight,

and it makes you

feel very tiny. So

small, like that

particle.

“To under-

stand para-

doxes is to

be able to

hold two

confl ict-

ing ideas in

your head

at the same

time.”

“To under-

stand para-

doxes is to

be able to

hold two

confl ict-

ing ideas in

your head

at the same

time.”

– Frank Chimero

Paradoxes are greater than

the sum of their parts. If

one and one is three, that

last third is the conceptual

leap that connects them.

It’s where insight lives, and

it’s what causes m

y delight.

It’s why Seinfeld is, and w

ill

always be, funny. It’s w

hy

Jennifer Daniel is clever

(and funny). It’s why I m

iss

the old Simpsons. It’s about

curation, choosing wisely,

and presenting an audience

with som

ething new. “Here,

look at this thing you didn’t

notice.” “Here, consider this

thing in a way you haven’t

before.” A good paradox

broadens our scope as

people. It makes us ques-

tion, but I think it also al-

lows us to accept.

What the hell w

ere they

doing with a car on the

moon? You’re on the

moon already! Isn’t that far

enough?

—Jerry Seinfeld

Amusem

ent is one of the

best parts of paradoxes,

but their application is wider

and more im

portant. I think

an increased tolerance for

paradox is a crucial re-

quirement for a person to

The Classical Hol-

lywood Cinema went

through two major

phases of develop-

ment. Kristin and

David had been

thinking about a

project on Hollywood

fi lm style

for a while.

Janet, who had for a

seminar with Douglas

Gomery writte

n a pa-

per on early screen-

writing and divis

ion of

labor, joined them in

the runup to her Ph.

D. comprehensive ex-

aminations in spring

of 1979. That sum-

mer all three of us

went to Washington

to watch fi lms and do

research.

Janet spent the rest

of 1979 and the

calendar year 1980

at her home in Cleve-

land doing research

and writing. D

avid

and Kristin bounced

around more. They

were in New York

City, where David

taught at NYU, dur-

ing the fall of 1979.

After returning to

Madison in the spring

of 1980, they w

ent

to Los Angeles for

a long stretch of the

summer (enjoying the

unstinting hospital-

ity of Ed Branigan

and Roberta Kim-

mel). Fall and spring

1980–1981 they were

teaching at the Uni-

versity of Io

wa.

Janet defended her

dissertation in May

of 1981. During the

summer of 1981, all

three of us met to

read the book aloud

to one another and

revise each other’s

work. We fi n

ished a

1350-page version of

the manuscript and

sent it to Princeton

University Press.

What we propose is

not another study o

f an

outstanding individ

ual,

a trend, or a genre. The

Classical H

ollywood

Cinema analyzes th

e

broad and basic con-

ditions o

f American

cinema as a histo

rical

institution. This p

roject

explores the common

idea that Hollyw

ood

fi lmmaking constit

utes

both an art and an in-

dustry. W

e examine the

artistic uniqueness

and

the mass-production

aspects of th

e Ameri-

can studio cinema.

Moreover, we sh

ow

how these two features

fundamentally depend

on one another. On the

one hand, this c

inema

displays

a unique use

of the fi lm

medium, a

specifi c style.

This makes H

ollywood

cinema amenable to

being considered a

group style, comparable

What we propose is

not another study o

f an

outstanding individ

ual,

a trend, or a genre. The

Classical H

ollywood

Cinema analyzes th

e

broad and basic con-

ditions o

f American

cinema as a histo

rical

institution. This p

roject

explores the common

idea that Hollyw

ood

fi lmmaking constit

utes

both an art and an in-

dustry. W

e examine the

artistic uniqueness

and

the mass-production

aspects of th

e Ameri-

can studio cinema.

Moreover, we sh

ow

how these two features

fundamentally depend

on one another. On the

one hand, this c

inema

displays

a unique use

of the fi lm

medium, a

specifi c style.

This makes H

ollywood

cinema amenable to

being considered a

group style, comparable

to Viennese classical

music of th

e eigh-

teenth century or P

a-

risian cubist

painting

of the early

twentieth.

On the other hand, we

can see the sp

ecifi c

business

practices of

the Hollywood industry

as initia

ting and sus-

taining its disti

nct fi lm

style. The histo

ry of

Hollywood is

thus the

coalescence and con-

tinuation of a fi lm sty

le

whose supremacy w

as

created and main-

tained by a partic

ular

economic mode of fi lm

production.

“It’s about curation,

choosing wisely, and presenting

with something new.”

an audience

– Frank Chimero

From one angle, this objection entails a dif-ferent set of questions than we chose to focus on. For some decades before CHC, most serious works of fi lm studies cinema con-centrated on auteurs or genres. In contrast, we aimed to bring out the norms or implicit stan-dards that Hollywood fi lmmakers as a com-munity practiced. We did try to suggest that these norms formed a set of options, a para-digm from which a fi lm-maker might pick. One implication of our proj-ect was that we might be able to characterize a fi lmmaker’s originality more exactly by not-ing what choices were favored in the body of work. It’s nonethe-less fair to say that we emphasized the menu over the meal. Accord-ingly, readers more interested in empha-sizing the originality of fi lms or directors would fi nd our work at best preliminary.

A more complicated methodological ques-tion comes up here. We decided to select two batches of fi lms. One consisted of a hundred titles gen-erated by using a random-number ar-ray; this we called our “Unbiased Sample.” (It wasn’t strictly random, since not every fi lm we initially listed survived, and so didn’t have

There’s an old joke. Two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of them says: “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know, and such small portions.”Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and mis-ery and suffering and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.— Woody Allen, in An-nie HallGood jokes. Good concepts. Good design. I think all three share a fi rm foot in the realm of paradox.To understand paradox-es is to be able to hold two confl icting ideas in your head at the same time. And maybe to give both equal credibil-

an equal chance of being picked.) The second batch con-sisted of another two hundred fi lms we picked because of renown, acknowl-edgment in the trade literature, and other factors. This we called the “Extended Sample.” Through these two bodies of fi lm we deliberately moved from auteur aspects of the fi lms we studied.

This isn’t the only way, or even the most common way, to study a group style. Research-ers often study a group style by pick-ing infl uential works and valued creators. Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style, for in-stance, concentrates on Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven for the simple reason that they created the style and were from the start its most accomplished and infl uential exponents.

ity. It’s about merging two things that seem incongruent into some-thing that, some how, makes sense. To me, it’s probably the high-est act of creativity and is the most ready man-ifestation of curiosity and understanding. It’s mental dexterity made tangible, and it produc-es the creative output I respect the most. To know how square pegs can go into round holes is to understand that the world, and the perception of it, is a play thing. The world, and how we view it, is malleable.

“There is a reach to knowledge

and skill.”

“There is a reach to knowledge

and skill.”

– Frank Chimero

But Hollywood fi lm

style did not originate

or sustain itself in this

fashion. There is no

single creator or cadre

of creators to whom

one can attribute the

style. Griffi th is often

considered the central

innovator, but his fi lms

are in many respects

untypical of what would

become the classical

cinema. When Kris-

tin and I asked Dore

Schary about what

fi lms infl uenced stu-

dio fi lmmakers of the

1930s, he said there

was no single fi lm, but

everybody who made

fi lms wanted some of

the lively energy of the

play version of The

Front Page.

That’s an interesting

point, but it doesn’t

identify the sort of

breakthrough works

one fi nds in schools

of literature or paint-

ing.

Twenty-fi ve years

later, and after

studying a lot more

movies from the era,

I still think that we

are dealing with a

collective invention.

It’s an academic

style without much

of a canon. In this

respect (and to

revise the formula-

tion in our proposal),

classical fi lmmaking

isn’t a well-punctu-

ated group style like

Viennese classical

music or Impres-

sionist painting.

It develops more

in the manner that

visual perspective,

or, to take a musical

analogy, Western

tonality did. Certainly

there were powerful

fi lmmakers who took

the received style in

fresh directions, and

sometimes those

creators infl uenced

others. But in its

totality, the classi-

cal Hollywood style

is an instance of an

“art history without

names.” It is the re-

sult of many routine

iterations, accompa-

nied by both strik-

ing innovations and

minor tweaks. It was

maintained for de-

cades by a host of

creators both major

and minor, famous

and anonymous.

Gathering data

from fi lms en masse

seems to suit a col-

lective trend.

What’s in a name?

Some people ob-

jected to using the

word “classical” to

describe the studio

style. Did it make

us seem conserva-

tive theorists? In a

word, no. The word

was already circu-

lating in French and

English-language

fi lm talk. On the fi rst

page of the book

we pointed out that

it dates back at

least to the 1920s.

Did it commit us

to a “neoclassical”

aesthetic, believ-

ing in adherence to

rules and academic

canons? In the

same word, no. We

used “classical” as

shorthand descrip-

tion, and it carries

no deep commit-

ment to a world-

view or an aes-

thetic. All of three

of us have written

about “unclassi-

cal” cinemas. The

worry about ter-

minology recalls a

point made by Karl

Popper.

“If only we could make our torches

“If only we could make our torches

– Frank Chimero

burn a little brighter.”

“How should I live?”

Usually, the most effective portray-als of philosophical issues in film can be found in narratives about ethical dilem-mas. It is extremely difficult (some might say impossible) to dramatize thought itself. The inher-ently private nature of cognition makes its representation on the screen very chal-lenging. But ethics is that branch of phi-losophy concerned with action; “What ought I to do?”, “How should I live?” etc.. Being concerned

with actions, ethical questions can make a relatively easy transition from text to film medium (one thinks of popular films like Do the Right Thing, Broadcast News, Amistad and Schindler’s List). Other philosophical traditions, like meta-physics and episte-mology, are not so easily tied to dramatic characters or plot narratives. Nonethe-less, exceptional films can shed light on these more abstract areas as well. The Ridley Scott film

“What ought I to do?”

Blade Runner, for ex-ample, can be used very successfully to engage metaphysi-cal and epistemo-logical issues.

“Absurdity often se

ems a pale

imitat

ion of paradox”

“Absurdity often se

ems a pale

imitat

ion of paradox”

– Frank C

himero

“Here, look at this thing you didn’t notice.”

– Frank Chimero

Often times paradox and absurdity are mistaken for one another. I think there’s a subtle, but important differ-ence. Absurdity is paradox’s immature little brother. Ab-surdity is spineless. Two in-congruent things are placed side-by-side. The supposed value is amusement from the randomness.

Absurdity often seems a pale imitation of paradox. The Simpsons is paradox. Fam-ily Guy is absurdity. There’s a

big difference between saying “Sleep, that’s where I’m a vi-king!” and showing a chicken fight scene for 5 minutes. Paradox has insight, absur-dity lacks it. Paradoxes have meaning. (Which is confusing, in and of itself.)

Paradoxes are greater than the sum of their parts. If one and one is three, that last third is the conceptual leap that connects them. It’s where insight lives, and it’s what causes my delight. It’s

why Seinfeld is, and will al-ways be, funny. It’s why Jen-nifer Daniel is clever (and funny). It’s why I miss the old Simpsons. It’s about curation, choosing wisely, and present-ing an audience with some-thing new. “Here, look at this thing you didn’t notice.” “Here, consider this thing in a way you haven’t before.” A good paradox broadens our scope as people. It makes us ques-tion, but I think it also allows us to accept.

“ classical narration progresses always through psychological motivation ”

“ classical narration progresses always through psychological motivation ”

– Frank Chimero

Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narra-tive, are terms used in fi lm his-tory which designate both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American fi lm industry between 1917 and 1960. This period is often referred to as the “Golden Age of Holly-wood.” An identifi able cinematic form emerged during this period called classical Hollywood style. Classical style is fundamentally built on the principle of continu-ity editing or “invisible” style. That is, the camera and the sound recording should never call atten-tion to themselves as they might in fi lms from earlier periods, other countries or in a modernist or

postmodernist work.The style of Classical Hollywood cinema, as elaborated by David Bordwell, has been heavily infl u-enced by the ideas of the Re-naissance and its resurgence of mankind as the focal point.Thus, classical narration pro-gresses always through psycho-logical motivation, i.e. by the will of a human character and its struggle with obstacles towards a defi ned goal. The aspects of space and time are subordinated to the narrative element which is usually composed of two lines of action: A romance intertwined with a more generic one such as business or, in the case of Alfred Hitchcock fi lms, solving a crime. Time in classical Hollywood is continuous, since non-linearity calls attention to the illusory work-ings of the medium. The only permissible manipulation of time in this format is the fl ashback. It is mostly used to introduce a mem-ory sequence of a character, e.g. Casablanca.

“ Descartes’ skepticism puts

us in a serious

puzzle when we think about

the minds of the people

around us. ”– Frank Chimero

The fi lm recognizes that all these intellectual powers are still not enough to bestow “person hood” to a machine. So, the fi lm, again mimicking the philosophical tradition, poses the possibility of “emotions” as a criterion for person hood. Descartes argued that non-human animals were brutes incapable of thought and therefore incapable of having basic rights and respect.

We are forced to contemplate whether empathy might be a sound criterion for inclusion or exclusion from the category “person.” And this refl ection takes us beyond the dramatic storyline, for we can le-gitimately ask this same question of the people around us. There appear to be levels of empathy in human beings--highly sensitive individuals and cold-blooded killers. Does less empathy mean “less human”? When we talk of the emotionless individual, we say that he is “cold” perhaps even “inhuman” and so forth. Is com-passion for other beings a defi ning feature of what it means to be hu-man? Does the inability to feel some-one else’s suffering, make us less of a person--more like a machine?

There appear to be levels of empathy in human beings

Bibliography:

Image scans from:

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KIDBy James R. Silke50 years of fighting, working, and dreaming at Warner Bros.Little, Brown and Company1976Boston – Toronto

Text scans from:

Type & TypographyBy Phil Baines & Andrew HaslamWatson Guptill Publications2002New York

Text content from:

http://www.thinkingforaliving.org/archives/3220

http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/classical.php