The Make-Believable Meaner Magician (My Personal Theory on Film)
summary: That “magic” we ascribe to film is real though perhaps not tangible. It is meaningful only to the extent that that we make it meaningful. We might choose to disbelieve in certain realities/truths depicted onscreen simply because they have no existential reference to the external world. Truth, however, is not merely a rolodex of cold facts, but also gains its meaning in relation to the quality of values presented onscreen. We can be cinematic skeptics or believers. In the end, however, we choose to see heaven, hell or purgatory in all of the films we watch; chalk them up as rubbish or revere them as sacrosanct.
theoreticians: Immanuel Kant, Werner Heisenberg, Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Schatz, Franz Kafka, Stephen Prince
film practitioners: Georges Méliès, Ingmar Bergman, Kim Ki-duk, Michel Gondry
buzz words/phrases: magical realism, “believing is seeing,” reality is perception, from skeptic to believer
view of text: hides or reveals truths/meaning according to the sensitivity, imagination and active level of participation of the spectator.
view of spectator: may or may not believe in the realities depicted onscreen or see textual truths as meaningful because of cultural biases. Nevertheless, can uncover truths the creator did not intend.
view of creator: is the “make-believable meaner magician”—one who intends for subtle truths to be found within a text and hopes to change others by persuasion from disbelieving skeptics to zealous believers.
view of “reality”: If we recast our customary notion of what we think reality is, widen its breadth beyond scientific concretes, we will find that the term “reality” refers not just to existential objects, but embraces both visible and invisible worlds of perception. This means that the imagination is just as real, if not more so, than what is visible to the naked eye. Although we may not always believe in the realities beyond our physical grasp, they are there, just like the intangible qualities of number and feelings, waiting for us to awaken to them, waiting for us to acquire the eyes to see and ears to hear.
determinant: extracting meaning where perhaps the meaner did not mean to mean…know what I mean?
transcendence: Atheists and agnostics are often skeptical about the reality of things like God, mermaids and ferries because they limit their definition of “reality” to scientific concretes. Theirs is the cold and sterile maxim, “Seeing is believing.” Film, however, has the power to make us all believers in what we once thought was supernatural, impossible, absurd or just plain wrong. If we can cinematically learn to play “make-believe,” then we can think up worlds and beings not yet extant that might one day become living realities. Film not only can convert us to believe in the magical realities beyond our physical grasp, but reveals that with enough imagination “believing is seeing.”
bête noir: those who deny the power of imagination and magic.
