Cinema Canada (Apr 1979)

Jarvie is part of the intellectual pendulum that swings between the study of the content of films and their impact on audiences and the aestheticians who study the art, often independent of content. Jarvie is no Don Quixote; he is part of a larger, ongoing academic examination studying the infrastructure of film, the industry (Balio’s The American Film Industry), the mass communications implications of the art (Jowett’s Film, the Democratic Art), and the sociology of popular culture (Gans’ Popular Culture and High Culture). The focal point of these studies has, in the past decade, been television, but thanks to the work of Jarvie and his spiritual colleagues, questions are again being asked about the social-psychological implications of film. Jarvie focuses his attention on the Hollywood film. He provides us with a historical perspective to the socio-psychological approach to film. Are films good or evil? Are they propaganda? What are their effect on children? His chapter “The Social Psychology of Movies” provides an intelligent and intelligible analysis of the literature of the last fifty years. Jarvie is particularly valuable in his separation of the pro-censorship group of social psychologists from the pro-media people (“‘the catharsis school’’), and, in turn, from the blend of the two, i.e. Paul Lazarfield and Elihu Katz, who, in their book, Personal Influence, feel that it is the opinion leaders within peer groups, or society, that are influential, rather than the media. As to Jarvie’s position, he seems to lean toward the view that film is an important reflection of the society’s psyche at any particular time. “For the moment, then, America’s movies are critically self-aware. It is an uncomfortable state, but one never ceases to be surprised by America’s capacity to experiment.” American film, according to Harvie, is an ongoing self-exploration and an integral part of the society’s maturing process. Jarvie is an admirer of American film, and the book itself speaks to American films and the society. But his insights go beyond the forty-ninth parallel. When he comments on the courage of the Hollywood film industry, he is speaking of its diverse subject matter, ranging from Our Daily Bread to The Manchurian Candidate. The question arises, what issues do we in Canada deal with in our films? Are we leaders or followers in the cultural articulation of society’s goals and fears? _ Jarvie’s book has shortcomings, but before I deal with them, I should like to mention two other insights. Neither are startling, but they do add to a current understanding of the nature of the film medium. Firstly, Jarvie is one of the few writers on mass media who acknowledges that the film industry has broken down and evolved away from the studio system and its product. The industry now services, not one large mass, but numerous and varied sub-cultures. And films are made in 1979 to cater to a sub-culture. Does film remain a mass medium? Or is it going the way of magazines, where there are one to two mass circulation titles, but the majority moves toward more and more specialization? Secondly, Jarvie differentiates film from television by highlighting the group experience in the film theatre, i.e. the excitement of a shared experience, as opposed to the fragmented and usually more isolated television exper-\ ience. Other writers have suggested filmviewing is different (Hugo Mauerhofer and Siegfried Kracauer), but their emphasis has been more psychological. They have dwelt on the escapist possibilities of film, the dream-like quality, the illusion of reality. Jarvie tries to explain or justify escapism as a positive experience: Might it not be that there is a human need to fantasize in the same way that there is a need to sleep, or a need to dream; that coping with reality can only go on if occasionally there is a respite from it, a respite where we imagine a world with other problems, or no problems, and where the childish fantasy or omnipotence can prevail? What we do is then to act out the problems of real life in an unreal way. That they work out at all may release tension, as dreams are thought to do. More importantly, the world of movies, unlike dreams, is one where resolution comes no matter what we do. Thus we are able to rehearse emotional and intellectual reactions to something that happens beyond our control. What happens in movies has, however, a shape and perhaps a meaning. The book is not without its weaknesses. Jarvie spends a great deal of time justifying his approach and the seriousness and importance of his examination of film. He doesn’t have to. Although the thrust of film study has been toward a more subtle film aesthetic, no one in this era would seriously question looking at film from any perspective. Ian Jarvie and Christian Metz can co-exist. Jarvie is drawn to re-examine the liberal themes of post-world War II film — racism, marital breakdown, antiauthoritarianism. All these themes have rational roots in the society, but they have been dealt with fully by black writers, or feminist writers, with a perspective that is less voyeuristic and more interior. Consequently Jarvie’s insights on these themes are distant and less revealing. Jarvie also mistakes commercial decisions for content decisions in the production of many American films. Otto Preminger did not make Such Good Friends or Anatomy of a Murder, for that matter, for any other reason than their commercial potential. Jarvie also gives weight to commercial and artistic failures, Marriage of a Young Stockbroker, for example, a film that hardly would have been seen by a fraction of the people who saw Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice. Finally Jarvie seems to rely on the “Middle-brow” film as his yardstick. Frequently these films are revealing of on-going social themes and concerns, but more often it is the “art film,” even within the Hollywood system, that makes the myths concrete, reiterates society’s archetypes and has a powerful impact on the public imagination. These artistic advances are not the same and some recognition must be given those films. I understand that “art” and “elitism” have become equally unpalatable terms for the student of popular culture, but surely without the artistic advances film would be nothing more than television on a larger screen. Kenneth Dancyger Kenneth Dancyger is a lecturer in film at York University and has taught film in the U.S. and Canada since 1968. His film The Class of ‘75 won Best First Film at the International Experimental Film Festival in Buffalo, and he has since worked ona number of film projects as director, producer, production manager and scriptwriter. Cinema Canada/35