My symposium paper on phenomenology and Mormon film

So here it is, copied and pasted, my presentation from the Mormon Media Studies Symposium on the 11th. Hope it’s interesting, that you’ll forgive my lack of diacritics, that you can get all the way through, etc. So I’m working on this book on LDS film, and this is approximately a third of the final chapter, or that’s what I expect it to be, though some of it might be moved into the chapter on documentary and propaganda. The final chapter is on phenomenology, and I’ll be making the case that that is the type of criticism most germane to Mormon theology. Here in this presentation I kind of make that case and then leave it hanging without any suggestions of how to utilize an open space to help foster spiritual experiences; in the book I hope to address that question, with more actual examples and less of a Film Theory 101 tour of people like Balazs and Bazin. So if you can get through that part of it I hope your interest is piqued enough to want to read the finalized book when it’s done. It’s a small forum in which to make an assertion like this one, but I really do think my proposal to view the cinema screen as a veil rather than a frame, window, or mirror could be Mormonism’s–and my–greatest contribution to film theory. Here’s the paper:

The World through a Veil: A Phenomenology of Mormon Film

I am thoroughly heartened by this conference. Such a gathering of critics, scholars, producers, and participants in Mormon media would have been inconceivable as little as ten years ago; that today we have over thirty panels and presentations speaks not only to the growth of Mormon media but of Mormon studies as well. And I personally do not believe that such burgeoning critical discussion is extraneous to the creation of high-quality media. Spencer W. Kimball’s “The Gospel Vision of the Arts” is admittedly ubiquitous in discussions of Mormon art and media, and it is usually cited for his predictions of remarkable future accomplishments, for instance that Mormon-themed “masterpieces should run for months in every movie theater, cover every part of the globe in the tongue of the people, written by great artists, purified by the best critics.”[i] But while LDS filmmakers, in this case, have reason to rejoice in this prophetic benediction, it is my firm belief that the most important point is the final one, that the best critics must purify our films and, by extension, other media. That is precisely what is happening here today and tomorrow.

For those of us thus aspiring to become “the best critics,” it may be beneficial to examine what forms of criticism might be the most beneficial to producers and consumers in the creation of a robust Mormon cinematic culture. I hope it does not seem inappropriate, therefore, if I begin my own presentation by glancing at the chief schools of thought in the history of film criticism and how they relate to Mormonism. Specifically, my goal is to plumb traditional film criticism to determine how Latter-day Saints—or any others—can best create films that foster spiritual experiences in their viewers. (While it is debatable if this should be considered the sole purpose of Mormon cinema, I am choosing to focus on spirituality today as a primary concern of any religiously based filmic movement.) I hope to show that not only is phenomenology the most germane form of criticism to LDS theology, but that through phenomenology Mormon film criticism can even contribute to the entire field of film theory.

On Film Criticism

In order to do this, we must first look at the purposes of film criticism. In general, as Dudley Andrew has said, the function of film theory is “to formulate a schematic notion of the capacity of film,” to gain “a comprehension of the cinematic capability.”[ii] Interestingly, in a tradition essentially dating back to Plato’s cave, this inquiry has often dealt with how images of all types of visual media relate to “reality.” In the early Christian era this generally meant an ineffable divine reality that remained invisible to physical eyes. “But by the Renaissance the medieval belief in the pervasive presence of God, that is, of invisible meaning, [gave] way to a fascination with the possibility of surfaces.”[iii] By the time photography and then motion pictures arrived, the range of political, academic, psychological, and philosophical viewpoints had multiplied to the point where nearly every spectator could find his own meaning in films.

Thus the “ontology of the photographic image,” as André Bazin calls it, became the chief locus of debate in film theory. Frequently contention arose not because of disagreements regarding the nature of the cinematic capability but because of those regarding the nature of reality, as Marxists, feminists, existentialists, Christian apologists, and others all saw the world through vastly different eyes.

Chief among the schools of film criticism relevant here are formalism, realism, and structuralism. Formalism was the first discipline applied to cinema: in the 1910s and 20s filmmakers, art critics, philosophers, and intellectuals like Hugo Munsterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Sergei Eisenstein, and Bela Balazs responded to the common belief that film was tawdry populist fare and not worthy of being called art by taking up the gauntlet and attempting to prove that motion pictures had inherent properties unique to them and no other art form—the defining characteristic of art in the age of modernism. The Soviets’ theories of montage, for instance, emphasized the narrative meanings that could be created by juxtaposing two shots, while Balasz, Arnheim, Paul Rotha, and Raymond Spottiswoode focused on the image, claiming “the only test of art was the extent to which the filmmaker had changed reality.”[iv] This framing of reality in the film image gave rise to a convenient and appropriate metaphor of the cinema screen as a frame: what was included within it was art, and anything outside it was irrelevant. To their credit, these critics helped change the perception of film from industrial process in the 1890s to fine art by the 1930s.

The response to this came in the 1940s and 50s with a new school of realist film critics. If film was now largely considered a formalist exercise, writers like André Bazin and Sigfried Kracauer wanted to return attention to “the ability of film to capture a new reality rather than vary an old one.”[v] Extreme deviations from reality, like those in German expressionistic productions of the 30s, could even be morally dangerous. Instead of the visual and psychological distortions of a picture like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, film was meant to not only record but reveal physical reality anew; as Kracauer said, the filmmaker’s “creativity manifests itself in letting nature in and penetrating it”[vi] as in the films of Charlie Chaplin, Robert Flaherty, Jean Renoir, or Vittorio De Sica. Thus a new metaphor for the film screen arose: that of a window, through which reality could be recorded and revealed, focusing viewers’ attention on details they had never before beheld.

The next major change in film theory had to do with the introduction of semiotics, structuralism, and psychoanalysis since the 1960s. After Jean Mitry attempted a universal synthesis of previous film theory, new critics like Christian Metz saw the only way forward as a scientific inquiry into the functioning of film. Taking French linguistics as their model, these critics analyzed the codes and systems of cinema in hopes of discovering its method of signification. In doing so writers like Jean-Louis Baudry gradually turned inward to examining how films reflected principles of Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly in how film spectatorship, like dreaming, was a psychologically regressive practice, suturing viewers, like Plato’s cave-dwellers, into the spectacle of the moving image with artificial wish fulfillment of pre-verbal desires. Thus a third analogy for the screen was born: it was actually a mirror, directing a spectator’s gaze back at the inner recesses of his own psyche.

LDS Visions of Reality

One’s opinions of these theories—formalism, realism, and psychoanalysis—and metaphors for the cinematic screen—as frame, window, and mirror—depend entirely on what one believes about the nature of reality: the ontology of the cinematic image depends upon the ontology of the universe. Latter-day Saints assuredly have diverse beliefs about these issues, but I would like to briefly examine one realm of thought that might find much common ground. Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught, “The adverb really is used only twice in all of scripture, and then only for exceptional emphasis. The great poet-prophet Jacob underscored the manner in which the Spirit teaches us the truth ‘of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be.’”[vii]

This statement comes from Jacob 4:13, arguably the most important scripture in creating an LDS theory of ontology and the nature of reality. It reads:

“Behold, my brethren, he that prophesieth, let him prophesy to the understanding of men; for the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls.”

In discussing this verse, Elder Maxwell continues:

“Jacob’s declaration about truth is, of course, consistent with the definition of truth given by the Lord to a later prophet, Joseph Smith: ‘And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.’ (D&C 93:24) . . . The true religionist is actually the ultimate realist, for he has a fully realistic view of man and the universe; he traffics in truths that are culminating and everlasting.”[viii]

These truths are not necessarily those that can be seen by the physical eye. “All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes” (D&C 131:7); “And [Enoch] beheld also things which were not visible to the natural eye; and from thenceforth came the saying abroad in the land: A seer hath the Lord raised up unto his people” (Moses 6:36). LDS doctrine teaches of a continuation of this physical reality into other realms of more refined matter that are merely kept hidden by a veil of invisibility that the Lord can choose to part at will. Thus “the veil was taken from off the eyes of the brother of Jared, and he saw the finger of the Lord” (Ether 3:6); of the Kirtland temple Joseph Smith said, “The veil was taken from our minds, and the eyes of our understanding were opened. We saw the Lord standing upon the breastwork of the pulpit, before us” (D&C 110:1); and the two travelers on the road to Emmaus spent a great deal of time with the Savior without recognizing him, until he blessed bread and “their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight” (Luke 24:31).

Such a parting of the veil, symbolized most dramatically in ancient and modern temple worship, should be the goal of every disciple of Christ: “The days will come that you shall see him; for he will unveil his face unto you, and it shall be in his own time, and in his own way, and according to his own will” (D&C 88:68); “And again, verily I say unto you that it is your privilege, and a promise I give unto you that have been ordained unto this ministry . . . the veil shall be rent and you shall see me and know that I am—not with the carnal neither natural mind, but with the spiritual” (D&C 67:10).

This extension of our quotidian physical reality into the tangible but unseen spiritual realm may properly be called a “spiritual reality.” That reality and the eternal, unchanging truths described by Elder Maxwell constitute what Jacob meant when he spoke of “things as they really are.”

Phenomenology

Although a vital concept, spiritual reality is, of course, not a new one. As mentioned, before the Renaissance the entire purpose of devotional imagery, architecture, and music was, as Alma puts it, to “cite [people’s] minds forward to the time” (Alma 13:1) and place where these truths are physically as well as mentally present; spiritual reality was in fact de facto reality until the Enlightenment. Even in the age of reason and science examples still surface in art and film criticism. For instance in 1948 Catholic film critic Felix Morlion discussed how Joris Ivens’ film Rain moves beyond the lush physicality of Amsterdam’s streets “to express a deeper reality, a human spiritual reality superior to [the] limited nature [of the photography]: that hymn of quiet joy which shines in the human soul, through and above the impact of a turbulent atmosphere.”[ix] Three years earlier Bela Balasz wrote of Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc: “We move in the spiritual dimension of facial expression alone. We neither see nor feel the space in which the scene is in reality enacted.”[x]

More recently, the Australian theologian Michael Bird has explored the revelation of spiritual reality through film to Mircea Eliade’s concept of hierophany, the “act of manifestation of the sacred.” Bird explains:

“This concept is particularly valuable for those explorations that begin with the everyday raw material of existence, for a hierophany is a disclosure of the transcendent or sacred precisely through the material of reality, ‘the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural ‘profane’ world.’”[xi]

A manifestation of this spiritual reality comes exclusively in individual experiences; there is no other way to examine the personal dispensation of the divine, in film or through any other means. Thus this places us firmly in the realm of phenomenology, the study of events or phenomena, particularly as readers or viewers work their way through an individual text. Phenomenology as a discipline arose in direct and conscious response to the dehumanization of semiotics and structuralism; its chief practitioners in film studies, after the pioneering work of Bazin, were Amédée Ayfre and Henri Agel, followed in America by Dudley Andrew. At the most basic level phenomenologists assert that viewers are intelligent, active, and often resistant; they cannot be completely sutured into the cinematic apparatus like into a dream. As Noel Carroll writes, film viewers always “are aware that there is a screen, and that they are watching a movie. Thus, their status, epistemologically, is exactly the opposite that of Plato’s prisoners.”[xii]

If spectators are, therefore, aware of the presence of the screen it cannot be truthfully analogized as a mirror; if the objects it depicts are, like icons, means of drawing viewers’ attention away from surface details to another spiritual reality, then neither a frame nor a window is a fully accurate metaphor as they both reveal only what is immediately physically present or arranged. Thus we are in need of a new metaphor to describe the screen as a way to reach an unseen but real spiritual reality. I would therefore like to propose that we look on the screen as a veil, a similarly flat field which can occasionally be parted—not by the filmmaker or the viewer but by a third party, in Mormonism’s case the Holy Spirit—to reveal truths and realities that cannot be presented on the screen. After all, as we discuss media we generally forget that it is the plural of the word medium, which simply means something through which something else passes; it is not revolutionary, therefore, to suggest that the motion picture screen, whether fabric or electronic, is a potential conduit for the Holy Ghost.

Bazin, Agel, and Ayfre did not use Mormon terminology, of course, but their writings about cinema as inducing insights and epiphanies sound close to Joseph Smith’s on receiving the first intimations of revelation or flashes of divine communication. As Andrew summarizes:

“Art, [Bazin] says, ‘unveils a world’ which was hidden and which will always be hidden to the cold logic of analysis. This world is ‘expressed’ (not ‘communicated,’ as semioticians would prefer) by the ‘epiphany of the sensible.’ In other words, the hidden depth of the world is suggested by the vision art gives us of its true sensual surface. Mikel Dufrenne has called the whole enterprise of art ‘the progressive thickening of a surface’ through which we experience the expression of a full and vibrant world or a way of being in the world.”[xiii]

Terryl Givens has written eloquently about how Joseph Smith’s theology collapsed the sacred distance between the ineffable and the physical. Dufrenne’s “thickening of a surface,” creating an image pregnant with possibility for the intervention of the Holy Ghost, seems to be a new perspective on Givens’ analysis. What this means for Mormon film spectators is that every film has the potential to reveal a spiritual insight, to part the veil just a little. Every film is potentially part of the corpus of spiritual cinema—or even, if you prefer, of Mormon cinema. I have had spiritual experiences with the most unexpected of films, such as Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, and even Teletubbies. Also, in discussing the phenomena of how films give us spiritual or emotional insight, we must remember that experiences will vary with every viewing. Two people watching the same film simultaneously will have vastly different experiences—my reaction to 25th Hour, for instance, derived largely from the scenes shot in a New York City park where I had previously had strong spiritual experiences. And as anyone who has ever read the scriptures twice knows it does not have to be the same message for every person, every time, in every situation. Spiritual messages are so important because they are malleable, allowing the Holy Ghost to send the appropriate inspiration to each person individually.

In this sense films are no different from sermons, music, parables, poetry, or vicarious ordinance work. It is common, for instance, that while a sacrament meeting speaker discusses the importance of hometeaching a mother in the congregation receives an insight into how to help her struggling daughter. Though the message is completely unrelated, the Holy Ghost is better able to send the inspiration when someone or thing establishes an atmosphere of spiritual contemplation. Nephi’s visions were different from his father’s, but they came in quiet moments when he was pondering upon what had already been presented.

Heavy-handed propaganda on spiritual themes is often antithetical to, or at least ignorant of, the fact that the Holy Ghost is an autonomous entity. Since it is futile for filmmakers to try to force an emotional or spiritual experience, they should instead strive to create that environment where viewers, like Nephi, can seriously ponder on sacred things and then possibly receive their own revelation. The best a film can ever hope to be is a catalyst in a spiritual experience, not one of the reacting agents.

Phenomenologists both inside and outside the Church have proposed roughly the same thesis. Bird, for instance, summarizes Agel’s criticism of Eisenstein thusly:

“Eisenstein’s films, for all their majestic drama and technical beauty, are works that seek to create experience rather than engender it.  The spectator’s encounter with reality or its ground is undermined by an art that overwhelms nature, as in the case of so many of the supposedly religious films in which an arsenal of cinematic devices is called upon to ‘create’ supernatural happenings.  Like Agel, [Alain] Bandelier warns, ‘the image is not reality, it only gives the illusion….’”[xiv]

And in his summary of Ayfre’s discussion of Robert Bresson Bird comes significantly closer to describing the screen as a veil behind which a spiritual reality may be revealed:

“Bresson’s actors . . . according to his dictates concerning realist cinema refrain from acting at all.  Instead they pose as transparent figures through or behind whom a spiritual significance is discerned. ‘They open up a literally endless perspective on themselves, on the universe, even on the whole of existence. In fact there is always something fundamental and mysterious in them which escapes us.’ . . . The significance of the mystery of characters for Bresson’s style may be precisely that his style suggests his self-understanding as an artist, who is ‘not a god, but a mediator’ (Agel), who lets his own experience of the awesome distance from the Absolute become that of the spectator.”[xv]

Although the phenomenologists Bird discusses never invoke Mormon rhetoric and state that the Holy Ghost can “pass through” (or contact us via) the medium of film, he himself comes close: “ . . . For Agel, Ayfre, and Bazin, cinema offers a self-reflection indicating the limits of the film maker as artist, yet attests to his potential role in pointing to an initiating presence which comes from the ‘other side’ of reality, and which is met in an open encounter.”[xvi]

Where does this leave us? First, it should be noted that this conception of the screen as a veil through which extra-filmic material can be transmitted may be Mormonism’s strongest contribution to world film culture. Second, as a caution we must remember that the potential for spiritual encounter with any film may lead us to fallaciously believing that all films are created equal. They are not. There are certain techniques that filmmakers can employ that will foster spiritual viewing and increase the odds of the veil being parted. Again, as Bird says:

“While many films have portrayed ostensibly religious subjects, these films have too often erred precisely in their disregard for the medium’s stylistic virtues.  Rather than the ‘biblical blockbusters’ and insipid trivialities that are frequently offered under the guise of ‘religious films,’ what is required in a cinematic theology is a consideration of how the style of film can enable an exploration of the sacred (one recalls here . . . that it is style, not subject matter, which is of primary significance).”[xvii]

Tom Lefler, Gideon Burton, and other Mormon scholars have begun to evaluate what some of these styles might be for a specifically LDS cinema, while Mormon phenomenologists like Sharon Swenson and Dean Duncan have examined the interactive potential of film in more detail than I have done today. There is no time now for an in-depth exploration into new styles and functions that might best foster spirituality, but I do think that our filmmakers will do well presenting reality rather artifice on the screen. My favorite Mormon films—films like The Faith of an Observer, New York Doll, and Joseph Smith the Man—are all based in a documentary physical reality and use symbolism, costume, music, and other means to prompt me to ponder a reality beyond the actions on the screen in front of me.

Perhaps the best example I can think of in my own experience—one that might not translate for others—came in Volume One of the Legacy West documentaries about modern Church members reenacting the 1847 pioneer trek. Though the film is uneven, there is at least one moment that struck me deeply. A nine-year-old girl named Heather St. John is participating in the trek with her family, each member of which has been assigned to walk vicariously for a different ancestor who crossed the plains. Heather has been given the name of her great-grandmother Alice Klegg, who was also nine when she walked to Utah. But Heather, off camera, hit her head on the side mirror of a reversing car, fell underneath it, and had the car back over her foot: she is therefore now crossing the plains on crutches. All of this is told in interviews with her and her mother and, for me, did not have any great effect, but then there is a lengthy tracking shot of Heather, her great-grandmother’s name strung around her neck, hobbling her way westward. In this one shot I learned and felt more of the genuine efforts of the original pioneers than in all the dozens of other films I’ve seen on the subject.

Interestingly, when I watched the film again as research not only was I unable to repeat the spiritual experience but I found the sequence was quite different than I recalled, and have just described, it. Far from discrediting the theory that the Holy Ghost can use motion pictures to give us inspiration, this strengthens my belief in the truly veil-like qualities of the film screen. Examining the screen as a veil will surely be one of the most profitable means by which we as critics and spectators can help advance Mormon cinema. It can also have a tremendous effect on our own personal spirituality. It seems that the hierophany is always there waiting to be beheld, if only we as observers can, like Elisha’s servant searching for the chariots of fire, have our eyes opened that we may see.[xviii]

[i] Spencer W. Kimball, “Education for Eternity,” Educating Zion, ed. John W. Welch and Don E. Norton (Provo: Brigham Young University, 1996), 61.

[ii] Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 5.

[iii] Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame: What We See in Films (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1977), 25.

[iv] Braudy, 31.

[v] Braudy, 32.

[vi] Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film, excerpted in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 5th ed., ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 182.

[vii] Neal A. Maxwell, Things As They Really Are (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1980), 1.

[viii] Maxwell, 1.

[ix] Felix A. Morlion, O.P., “The Philosophical Basis of Neo-Realism,” Springtime in Italy: A Reader on Neo-Realism, ed. David Overbey (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1978), 119.

[x] Bela Balasz, Theory of the Film, excerpted in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 311.

[xi] Michael Bird, “Film as Hierophany,” Religion and Film, ed. John R. May and Michael Bird (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), 3.

[xii] Noel Carroll, Mystifying Movies, excerpted in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 793.

[xiii] Andrew, 245.

[xiv] Bird, 16.

[xv] Ibid., 17, emphasis mine.

[xvi] Ibid., 20.

[xvii] Ibid., 3, 14.

[xviii] 2 Kings 6:17: “And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.  And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”