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THE CINEMATIC ART AS A MEANS FOR SEMANTIC RECONSTRUCTION OF PERSONALITY
A. I. Skrinnik
The article discusses the structure of reaction and internal action of a person upon cinematic image perception. The moving cinematic image is treated as a dominant that is transferred by the audience to the area of existential structures of a personality. The highest demonstration of cinematography's impact is connected to the phenomenon of catharsis.
Key words: cinematography, cultural dialogue, compatibility reaction, experience, catharsis, inner transformation.
The perception of cinematography by viewers of film is characterized by the fact that it is an intense, creative, and collective process for the personality. By building opinions and going the way of intellectualization, the viewer becomes a participant of the process of creation of an image together with the author. A viewer watching a movie does so in a dialogic way in the position of “being off” (a term coined by M.M. Bakhtin), imposing a special individual position, an outside point of view. The dialogic character of cinematographic images triggers the process of a viewer’s internal search for his or her own meaning for the events occurring. Engagement in this process occurs in an unconscious way, irrespectively of the viewer’s will. This thought can be found in L.S. Vygotsky’s works: “What we can’t understand directly, we can understand in an indirect way, by a parable, and all psychological action of a piece of art can be wholly reduced to this indirectness” [3]. The viewer begins an internal dialogue with the author creating an experience. Describing the process of emotional experience, F.E. Vasilyuk states that “the internal picture of human emotions engages several persons, both real and imaginary” [4]. A movie sets a time range for a person and opportunity for durability of the experience process. The images of a movie allow a person to identify his or her own psychological identity unknown to the rational mind.
The highest action of the arts on the emotional sphere of man is related to the phenomenon of catharsis. The term “catharsis” is interpreted in several ways. The classical Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato describe catharsis as a process leading from heavy and gloomy experience to a state of alleviation, release (tears and laughter), to positive, enlightened feelings. S. Freud understands catharsis as the “reaction” of repressed aspiration, which means liquidation of stresses from aspirations, a power discharge. L.S. Vygotsky thinks that catharsis guides the transfer of a direct emotion to the level of spiritual emotional relation, to the level of “smart feelings.” Catharsis as a transformation was regarded by D.A. Leontiev as a “cleaning” of emotions, being a form of experiencing catharsis by a person reflecting the process of a deep semantic reconstruction, dialectical resolution of the internal contradiction in the semantic sphere of a person at a new level [5]. The idea that catharsis is accompanied with semantic reconstruction of a person can be found in works by T.A. Florenskaya defining catharsis as a spiritual transformation. Catharsis as Florenskaya believes it is impossible without understanding the initial situation from the perspective of
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social values adopted by the person. “The emotional transformation, i.e., transformation of negative emotions into positive ones, is important for us not as field of psychology of feelings, but due to a total transformation of a personality, overcoming of sufferings, and the change of them into joy... Catharsis is not just a ‘transformation of feelings,’ rather it is a spiritual transformation of a personality” [6]. Catharsis reflects social attitudes and ideas, and is not reduced only to its emotional component engaging cognitive procedures. Therefore, we can regard catharsis as a process performing the work of experiencing and at the same time developing the personality. Catharsis triggered by a piece of cinematography is a real experience created by perception of a virtual critical situation. The possibility to feel emotional states and hear hidden dialogic states allows the viewer to experience old problems, obtain a new sense, and leave the crisis.
Experiencing cinematography is related to intellectual engagement (possibility to find sense) and creative emotional personality responsiveness which characterizes “deep experience,” in the terms of F.E. Vasilyuk. “By its tendency toward a semantic integration, the deep experience searches to find and define itself within the broad horizon of life and reality, and it is why it has a philosophical character. By the tendency to personal engagement the deep experience is poetic (if we understand poetry as a gift of creative personal responsiveness to life” [4]. Taking into account that catharsis is related to spiritual transformation of a personality, we can regard cinematography as an aesthetic means of personal growth aimed at establishment of certain moral and social values of the personality. As through the act of perception of an image the action starts to be controlled, cinematography can impact the assessment process, behavior of the person, and changes in the value component of his (her) mentality. Cinematic images allow the internal world of the personality to be expressed, and watching them allows understanding of what they provoke, what they impact. The internal content of the viewer is provoked, therefore proves itself, and thereby allows “to be seen.”
Not all movies are pieces of cinematographic art and not any movie can give rise to cathartic experience. If commercial cinema is aimed at the interests and values of customers and offers a person ideals to be aspired to, then cinematography lacks any assessments. It is a play of senses, a lack of a critical approach. The image of cinema is being built “here and now,” during viewers’ interaction with the author’s cinema text, contrary to primitive and entertainment-oriented images of commercial cinema. The ambiguousness of cinematic images contain different versions of how the personal ego must be, and catharsis gives an impetus for a person to search for his (her) own ego. The art of cinema offers a person the possibility to complete the cathartic experience based on his or her own resources, beyond the reality of arts. L.S. Vygotsky sees the essence of aesthetic catharsis in “destruction of the content by the form.” “It is the form that allows an artist to achieve the effect when the content is destroyed, ‘quenched’ [3]. The art of cinema is created by an author (personality) for whom the cinema is a message addressed to the viewer for reproduction of his or her own senses, and for seeking them through images. The totality of the mechanisms of a piece of cinema is used by the author for creation of his own realty: there occurs an effect of engagement, an effect of influence. Andre Bazin regards “the cinema as a means of expression
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that has been created by intuition. This is why we can affirmatively hope that the cinema would express the force (ability) that created it” [7].
The art of cinema stimulates expression of such psychic elements that are hidden inside the viewer, and he or she receives an opportunity to see and understand his or her own problems; by being aware of them, he or she obtains the freedom of action and ability to make decisions in his or her life. This idea is shared by Y.S. Shevchuk, who emphasizes that “as catharsis is a social and psychic phenomenon with the mandatory component of moral feeling, the cathartic feeling can influence attitudes, positions, relations, which in turn lead to a change of this experience in the behavior of the subject” [8].
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Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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