This paper will address the representation of various levels of ‘reality’, especially the psychological, in postmodernist cinema, particularly in the work of Jean-Luc Godard. Various theories of realism will be addressed. Reference will be made to dramatic structure, acknowledging art cinema’s debt to theatre, particularly the theories of Aristotle, Artaud, and Brecht. For instance, Godard clearly has been influenced stylistically by some of the tenets of Brecht’s Epic Theatre, such as his emphasis on presentation versus representation. The main argument of the paper is that postmodernist cinema, marked by excessive stylization in its presentation of various levels of reality, in fact manages to capture the ‘real’ in a deeper way than observational cinema and so-called ‘reality TV’

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Psychological reality is quite different from physical reality though not
less bizarre; in the words of one of the torchbearers of Imaginal
Psychology (IP): “Psychological life as a reality of reflection is
psychological life as metaphorical reality” (Romanyshyn, 2001).
Whereas with Structural Realism (SR), we try to identify the
mathematical structure of physical reality (Worrall, 1989); with IP we
try to identify the metaphorical structure of psychological reality. The
key is that both structures reflect two different yet interrelated
realities, and to say reflect we mean that each structure/reflection is
not exactly the same as what is being reflected, that is, reality. A
person in front of a mirror is not identical to her figure because the
reflection is a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional
being. However, the reflected image is to be taken as seriously as the
source of the image because it can be a glimpse into some aspects of
the metaphorical structure of said person’s psychological reality.
Abstract Structural Realism
This paper will address the representation of various levels of
‘reality’, especially the psychological, in postmodernist cinema,
particularly in the work of Jean-Luc Godard. Various theories of
realism will be addressed. Reference will be made to dramatic
structure, acknowledging art cinema’s debt to theatre, particularly
the theories of Aristotle, Artaud, and Brecht. For instance, Godard
clearly has been influenced stylistically by some of the tenets of
Brecht’s Epic Theatre, such as his emphasis on presentation versus
representation. The main argument of the paper is that postmodernist
cinema, marked by excessive stylization in its presentation of various
levels of reality, in fact manages to capture the ‘real’ in a deeper way
than observational cinema and so-called ‘reality TV’.
Psychological Reality
As is clear so far, we are dealing with a multi-layered reality, whether
physical, psychological, philosophical, or spiritual; film handles these
layers of reality in different ways. With film, we try to construct or
identify the dramatic structure of cinematic reality. Aristotle laid
down the early rules of dramatic structure in The Poetics (Butcher,
1911) more than two millennia ago; many screenwriters as well as
screenwriting gurus today still follow them—knowingly or
unknowingly—as exemplified by the clear-cut three-act structure of
beginning, middle, and end that we see in most films.
Dramatic theorists did not necessarily see eye to eye when it came to
the purpose of drama. Aristotle thought that plays should move
audiences on an emotional level, Antonin Artaud—a surrealist and the
founder of the Theatre of Cruelty—, millennia later, was more for a
visceral/gut-level experience, and Bertolt Brecht—a Marxist and a
proponent of the Epic Theatre—was far more interested in a dialectic
between plays and audience members on an intellectual level. In the
world of theatre, there are two broad categories for how reality can
be handled on stage, through representation or presentation. Put
simply, representation means trying to replicate ‘real life’ on stage
and presentation means having an artistic license with how real life is
stylistically and structurally presented on stage. In film, melodramas
and documentaries would belong to the first category, while more
experimental and avant-garde films—esp. surrealism with its historical
affinity with psychodynamics—would belong to the second category,
but honestly there have been many films, too, that combine elements
from both, they can be labeled as trans-genre (Kaplan, 2005). All of
these different styles differ on the purpose of drama or its effects. For
instance, to Aristotle the purpose of tragedy was catharsis, or the
purging of emotions through pity and fear, which usually happens
when audience members empathically identify with the protagonist
and her struggles as if they were their own. This sense of shared
suffering can be healing or therapeutic but it can also be numbing as a
form of escapism from our own suffering as we project our suffering
onto film characters, or repress our suffering altogether. Brecht saw it
as the latter through the lens of Marxism, to him the illusion of
recreating reality on stage is a deceptive capitalist mechanism that
does not challenge us, so he wanted his theatre to have the opposite
effect (Brecht, & Willett, 1964).
Even though Brecht had little respect for cinema, his influence on
some filmmakers—namely, Jean-Luc Godard—has resulted in
impressive results. ‘Brechtian cinema’ follows some of the
conventions of dialectic theatre, such as the alienation effect, or A-
effect.
Dramatic Structure Conclusion
To conclude, I would like to reflect on how all of these layers of
reality can inform cinema structurally, and how filmmakers can
approximate reality on the big screen as informed by SR. Possibly, we
could contemplate something like quantum cinema. This may seem
like a completely foreign concept and it is, but it is based on a literary
genre called ‘quantum fiction’ that has become recently popular, and
which is defined as: “Any tale in which synchronistic adventures
(entanglement theory), multi-dimensional reality, interactive
metaverses, nonlinear time, or consciousness as a participant in the
creation of physical reality are central to the story” ("Quantum Fiction
Literature & Books", n.d.). Based on this definition, one can imagine
all sorts of surreal science fiction films that are based on the findings
of quantum mechanics; a recent one that comes to mind is the non-
linear almost three-hour long film Cloud Atlas (Tykwer, Wachowski, &
Wachowski 2012), which features multiple plotlines set across six
different eras with reincarnation acting as the over-arching thread
that units the whole film.
References
•Brecht, B., & Willett, J. (1964). Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic. London: Eyre
Methuen.
•Butcher, S. H. (1911). Aristotle's theory of poetry and fine art: With a critical text and translation
of the Poetics. London: Macmillan.
•Caouette, J. (Director). (2003). Tarnation [Motion picture]. USA.
•Chalmers, A. F. (1999). What is this thing called science?. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub.
•Edwards, M. (n.d.). A Brief History of Holons. Retrieved April 21, 2013, from
http://www.integralworld.net/edwards13.html
•Godard, J. L. (Director). (1960). À bout de souffle [Motion picture]. France: Les Films Impéria/Les
Productions Georges de Beauregard/Société Nouvelle de Cinématographie (SNC).
•Keiser, C. C. (n.d.). Poly Solipsism. Retrieved April 21, 2013, from http://www.modern-
thinker.co.uk/9g-comment02.htm
•Kaplan, M. A. (2005). Transpersonal dimensions of the cinema. The Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology, 37 (1), 9-22.
•Lynch, D. (Director). (2006). Inland empire [Motion picture]. France/Poland/USA: Studio Canal.
•Lynch, D. (Director). (2001). Mulholland dr [Motion picture]. France/USA: Les Films Alain
Sarde/Asymmetrical Productions/Babbo Inc./Canal+/The Picture Factory.
•Marker, C. (Director). (1983). Sans soleil [Motion picture]. France: Argos Films.
•Quantum Fiction Literature & Books. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.velocityebooks.com/quantum/index.html
•Romanyshyn, R. D. (2001). Mirror and metaphor: Images and stories of psychological life.
Pittsburgh, P.A: Trivium Publications.
•Tykwer, T., Wachowski, A., & Wachowski, L. (Directors). (2012). Cloud atlas [Motion picture].
Germany/USA/Hong Kong/Singapore: Cloud Atlas Productions.
•Welles, O. (Director). (1973). F for fake [Motion picture]. France/Iran/West Germany: Janus
Film/SACI.
•Worrall, J. (1989). Structural realism: The best of both worlds?. Dialectica, 43(1-2), 99-124.
•Zahedi, C. (Director). (2005). I am a sex addict [Motion picture]. USA: Reinventing the Wheel.
Contact
Robert Beshara
PhD student in Consciousness and Society
rbeshara@westga.edu
Psychology Department
The University of West Georgia
1601 Maple St.
Carrollton, GA 30118
SR is a middle ground, between naïve realism and irrealism, that looks
at the mathematical structure of reality, and in that sense it is formal.
Also, it humbly tries to approximate reality as opposed to suggesting
that one can have direct access to, or no access at all, to objective
reality. According to SR, two incompatible theories could imply the
same structure regarding the object of study, e.g., light as vibrations,
and have predictive power, but still differ in terms of representation;
such was the case with the theory change from Fresnel’s equations to
Maxwell’s equations (Chalmers, 1999, p. 244-245). It seems impossible
to know the nature of the universe, or its ontology, independent of
our minds; however, to avoid the trap of idealism, the author of this
paper is sympathetic to this view known as, poly-solipsism (Keiser,
n.d.), that frames humans as perhaps inter-idealists, who co-
construct a shared reality. It is hard to write about reality without
thinking about truth. Which theory of truth would contain SR? Perhaps
a Neo-Kantian coherence theory of truth, wherein there is a noumenal
world/objective reality, and a phenomenal world/subjective reality.
How can we study the former ‘objectively’ if we are entirely
embedded in it? The latter is our interpretation of the former filtered
by our limited senses, processing abilities, experiences, etc. as
humans, but how reliable are we in terms of measuring reality, with or
without scientific instruments? SR, as a Middle Way, looks at the
structure of reality through the lenses of inter-subjectivity and inter-
objectivity à la Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, wherein an
observer affects observed reality, hence, blurring the line between
subject and object… transcending false dualisms in the process.
I find that postmodernist cinema ironically captures reality through
the use of artificial techniques—which it is at least aware of and does
not try to completely hide—more authentically than, let us say,
observational cinema, e.g., direct cinema or cinema vérité, wherein
the documentary filmmaker is supposedly a ‘fly on the wall.’ In other
words, observational cinema is not more objective than postmodernist
cinema because any film—observational or not—is made up of specific
angles and is edited in a particular way, so clearly the filmmakers’
intersubjectivity enters into the equation of the filmmaking process,
with or without our awareness of that fact. Postmodernist film
auteurs are guilty of the same intersubjectivity but they do not try to
hide it; in fact, there is often a sense of self-reflexivity at work, such
as in David Lynch’s cryptic critique of the Hollywood system using the
surreal mise en abyme structure of a film-within-a-film, e.g.,
Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001) and its sequel INLAND EMPIRE (Lynch,
2006). Metafilms are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem A Dream
Within A Dream as well as Arthur Koestler’s notion of holons or “[t]he
idea of hierarchy and of their constituent part-wholes” (Edwards,
n.d.), a concept popularized by integral theorist Ken Wilber. Other
examples of postmodernist cinema that are worth highlighting here
include the film essays, e.g., F for Fake (Welles, 1973) and Sans Soleil
(Marker, 1983), and confessional cinema, e.g., Tarnation (Caouette,
2003) and I Am a Sex Addict (Zahedi, 2005).
Postmodernist Cinema
Robert Beshara
The University of West Georgia
Postmodernist Cinema, and Questions of ‘Reality’
ARISTOTLE BRECHT GODARD
À bout de souffle (Godard, 1960)
1963
2010
The E8 Lie group, a perfectly symmetrical 248-dimensional object and possibly the
structure that underlies everything in our universe.
Courtesy John Stembridge/Atlas of Lie Groups Project