CAMS 202 Between Reality and Magic

What is particularly upsetting about this scenario is the fact that, as the OP recognized, the French New Wave’s intention was to challenge its audience, operate as non-commercially as possible, and always deal with the world with a truckload of irony. It’s a bit like reducing another famous French movement, the Existentialist movement, down to being a snooty thing to do with your smokes and your café friends.

It hardly needs to be said, when a movement or an idea is deliberately undermined, there’s usually a way someone is profiting from that. In this case, Icona Pop is benefitting from utilizing the movement’s reputation for sophistication and timelessness— but more importantly, the media industry is benefiting from these associations without actually honoring the philosophies of the movement. When things are parsed to their smallest components, it is easier to remove the parts that make it a threat. Here, this homage to the FNW heavily romanticized the sixties and removed the techniques of the movement from their context. Existentialism has become a caricature of itself, interchangeable with nihilism in the public eye. When someone, especially a politician, is having an existential crisis, it is an idea played up for amusement or scorn; the Republican Party doesn’t know what to do now that the debt relief budget has passed, they’re having an existential crisis.

In their original form, the FNW and the existentialists presented a problem to the powers that be, in that both were created to challenge the colonialist, moralistic narrative we keep today. Without second-guessing our identities— what we must do in life, who we must be— and/or how we identify with the characters meant to represent us onscreen— the female character’s narrative versus the male’s narrative versus the person of color’s narrative and the roles they assign us— then we fall into a trap. Both French movements were created to make us question our roles in life. But as they are now, they are neutered versions of their revolutionary roots.

In a world where our self-identity continues to be shaped around who we sympathize with on the screen, using FNW techniques to separate ourselves from the image and be aware of what’s happening behind the camera is even more important. We’re surrounded by media input, all of which continues to tell the same hero’s journey. In fact, there was a very interesting TEDx about rising trend of “epic violence” in teen and young adult films. These stories, more often than not, focus on young people, destined to overthrow some Big Bad in the style of Star Wars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which isn’t to say that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it teaches something marketable rather than something radical. People expect to find their destined love or their destined purpose and they expect their evils to be large and violent and incomprehensible. But evils usually come from the idea that… you are destined to do something, that you’re untouchable and on solid moral ground. That you’re a hero. The people who have been most assured in their worst actions are the people who felt their purpose was clear and just (and that they were like the heroes of legend, too! a Percival or a Galahad…). It’s where the cult of the personality/messiah figure comes from as well, which has given people the unquestioned power they need to commit atrocities.

Real revolution comes from questions. The FNW and the existentialists understood that everything must be questioned, exposed to inquiry, and investigated. Between the decentering techniques and the political messages embedded in deconstructing film/narratives/characters, the FNW revolutionized sixties’ cinema. As in, brought the revolution to the world of film; they made you question the structure of the movie itself, what it was teaching you, who you were in it. It’s still important to do this and not lose the message of doubting and questioning in “homages” like this one, full of romanticized, neutered images. It’s not that FNW film is purposeless— they weren’t nihilists— but it is film that questions its own existence.

Thanks for the wonderful blog-post![1] Indeed, the period of late 1950ies and 60ies – the time of the French and other New Waves – was a unique precedent all over the world, in which cinema occupied a particular space for the convergence of politics, social movements, and theories. Recognized as an ideological apparatus, cinema provided a space for deconstruction of reality, reflection and resistance. So, the question of how we remember and rethink the FNW in 2013 is of crucial importance. The original blog-post talks about the trend in popular culture to over-romanticize the FNW by using its traits (“Wave iconography, with shots against walls, cafes, and, of course, plenty of cigarette smoking”) as signs of something hip and cool. And yet these signs become “pure placeholders”, while the FNW – superficial and commodified.

I would like to discuss another contemporary trend in relation to FNW, which might be unknown to some of the Western audiences. Unlike what one may expect, in my home country Georgia, the FNW and its prominent devotee, Jean-Luc Godard are quite famous. However, the slight reference to Godard in a conversation has in itself become a sign of coolness and ‘hipster’-ness, and thus, of pretension and elitism. About two years ago, an amateur Georgian group of comedians called “daviti da agmasheneblebi” shared a video on youtube, titled “ Godard”[2]. In the video a group of men sit around a table with stern faces, smoking and discussing Godard, except that all they do is actually conjugate his last name and here and there throw in a couple of empty phrases, such as “oh yes, Godard…of course…so interesting…his views…oh well, of course…I will repeat myself again, that Godard….well, Godard!…”. The video ends by men standing up with their hands up in the air, as if praying to Godard, the idol, repeating his name over and over. It is surely quite funny and witty, and probably reveals some truth about certain type of ‘artsy’, elitist crowd that uses big names or words just for the sake of using them. Though different in style and content, this youtube video is similar to the Icona Pop music clip discussed in the original blog-post  – at the end of the day, neither of them does justice to the FNW. If the former makes the FNW inaccessible, the latter almost turns the entire movement along with France/Paris into fetishes.

The two trends are certainly unfortunate as the FNW was in fact ideologically against both elitism and the mainstream pop culture/Hollywood of the time that served (and still serves) the purpose of (capitalist) brainwashing. After all, the FNW as such, and Godard in particular, (though also Agnes Varda and Chris Marker from the Left Bank) were essentially leftist. Indeed, I find the “punk movement” analogue, from the original blog-post, very apt.

I understand that any revolutionary movement runs the risk of being elitist and perhaps, it has been such in some cases. But labeling Godard elitist is just too easy. Frankly, no matter whether you are a film theorist, a cinephile or just another Earthly spectator with little experience of cinema, it is most likely that you will not understand Godard’s film (particularly the later ones, such as “Film Socialisme”), or at least, not all of it. However, difficulty is not enough of a reason to discard the FNW; Jean-Louis Comolli – one of the influential figures of the FNW as both a filmmaker and an editor-in-chief of Cahiers du Cinéma from 1966 to 1968[3]  – reminisces in his book, “Cinema, the Counter-Spectacle”, a type of cinema that conceives of and constructs a spectator, who is not only able to see and hear, but also capable of seeing the limits of seeing and hearing the limits of hearing[4]. The cinema that Comolli describes is, in its essence, confrontational and inventive in form, which is exactly how Godard’s individual and collaborative work (“Dziga Vertov Group”), particularly since 1967, can be described. Just because it puts more strain on your brain, such cinema is not inherently elitist. Rather, it serves critical and emancipatory purposes. Significantly, you don’t need a degree in Film Studies or, for that matter, a college degree, to be able to be affected by intelligent films, to reflect and question. And you certainly don’t need to be able to fix the meaning of every single scene.

Finally, here is one last thought: Peter Wollen claims: “It [counter-cinema] can only exist in relation to the rest of the cinema. Its function is to struggle against the fantasies, ideologies, and aesthetic devices”.[5] The FNW or any counter-cinema can never become the mainstream, but can only exist as an alternative – there lies its vulnerability, but also its strength and creativity.