Hermeneutics & Documentary
-OR-
My Death to Modernism and Rebirth into Post-Modernism
There is something formless yet complete
That
existed before heaven
and earth.
How
still how empty!
Dependent
on nothing, unchanging,
All pervading,
unfailing.
One
may think of it as the mother of all things
under heaven.
I
do not know its name,
But I call it “Meaning.”
(Lao
tzu, 1891)
~
This morning,
while taking a shower, I was
visited by the ghost
of Martin
Heidegger. “Don’t forget the context” he told me. This bit of cryptic wisdom helped me with an issue I’d been having for
several weeks. As
my
age and credit hours suggest a move on to the realer
world
is eminent, I had been experiencing an inexplicable
discomfort with the direction I was
headed intellectually. After
25 years of acting the good Mormon boy, about a year ago I finally
experienced that rebirth I
had always
heard about. I realized I am
spiritually terminal, and admitted that when it comes to the most important
aspects of my sojourn on
earth I am completely powerless.
The
desire to become, as Fleet Foxes
put it, “a functioning cog in some great
machinery,
serving something beyond
me,”
welled up within me.
With the daunting prospect
that
where I fall among the disparate voices of academia may
determine my usefulness in God’s
kingdom, I searched for
the opportunity to
nail some things
down. It slowly dawned on me that my former
plan of immersing myself in research,
hoping to come out the other end years later with some
profound insights to
leave as my legacy, did not take into account the Bible’s
warning against leaning on
my
own understanding and
its vision of one-day-at-a-time discipleship.
Being lost in theory-land while the
world of practical concerns goes on without me is reasonable for
a day or a week,
but maintaining this detachment for the rest
of my life now seemed unbearable.
Ready to
abandon my rational mind for more humble
pursuits, my ears perked as
a professor
presented hermeneutics as an intriguing alternative to mainstream psychology. Compelled by a need
to understand this
new word, I committed
myself to writing a paper entitled “The Hermeneutics
of Documentary,” whatever that
means. After consulting several helpful sources, I had
made many connections, but little progress
on the actual writing of
the paper. Now three days past due, it sat on my laptop in the form of three detailed
outlines, each taking an entirely different
approach, and
none leading to a discernible
conclusion.
Looking back,
this is understandable considering the
nature of hermeneutics, which is often thought of as
circular. Martin Packer’s Entering
the
Circle notes “axiomatic
reconstructions
and
empiricist brute-data
building blocks are both Rube Goldberg devices
designed to enable people to escape from what
they fear is a
vicious circle: the circle
of interpretation, the hermeneutic circle” (Packer,
1989). Packer goes on to explain that, whereas modernist epistemologies
have building blocks upon
which understanding is constructed,
for
the post-modernist hermeneuticist,
such foundations need not exist. Inescapably surrounded by
meanings and interpretations,
we need only a jumping in point. As long as it sheds light on the
whole circle eventually, one jumping in point is as good
as
another.
So I took
Heidegger’s
call as
an injunction to risk being annoyingly “meta” and
jump in with my own experiences leading up to,
and including,
the writing of this very paper. I hope to demonstrate how
my quest for truth and
usefulness (which are inexorably connected
for “neuts”)
has often paralleled
the historical discussions that lead
to the hermeneutic
tradition.
We
will see how, from this perspective, storytelling
becomes the most valid means of
understanding and
explaining the universe. And
we
will look at the implications
of this philosophy on the rich storytelling tradition
of documentary.
Before we begin, a word on
this paper’s arrangement:
The ideas discussed in the next seven pages will at first appear to be
unrelated to documentary. As you push
on (maybe take a
snack break), you
will see how these nitty-gritties are essential
tools for understanding the
discussion of documentary that
follows.
~
Last night, to pump ourselves up for our weekly dumpster
dive, my friends and I watched
a lovely documentary about the “freegan” lifestyle called The Gleaners
and I (Varda, 2000). In
the film, director Agnes Varda provides a compelling account
of those who find meaning and sustenance in
the
trash of others, considering the
implications of such reverence for garbage on
her own ephemeral
nature. Afterward, having caught the introspective bug, I somehow got
into a discussion with my friend
Victoria about how one can contribute to academia without
getting caught in
what Martin Buber
would call, the I-It mode (Buber,
1937). When in I-It mode, true brotherhood with those around you is eschewed for the pursuit of self—the academic manifestation
of self being the drive to
be right and
have all the answers.
As we
then did the dumpster rounds,
“diving” with youthful
abandon, I left
the paper, the film, and
the discussion behind and instinctively focused on
the task at hand. Perfectly plump black-berries?! Unopened
rice pudding?!
Are
those security cameras? Can yogurt go bad? We had to be picky with the
produce, because there was more than
we
could ever use.
In
his influential work Being and Time,
Heidegger describes two attitudes toward the
world we demonstrated
that night. “Present-at-hand” mode is the attitude of the
scientist or theorist (Heidegger, Being and Time,
1953).
As Victoria and I tried
to conceptualize
my
role within academia—as if it
had some kind of intrinsic, objective nature that could
be combined with other
concepts to elicit a logical
truth somewhat like the
reaction produced by combining
two chemicals—we were in
the
present-at-hand. In such
a pursuit, the realm of thought
floating between
us represented a
laboratory,
free from immediate concerns
and
the compromising variables
which abound in the outside (or “lived”) world. Heidegger
points out, and we will review this
further later on, that objects
and thoughts cannot be understood in such a
contextless environment.
The alternative,
which we dove into that night, is the attitude of
ready-to-hand.
Without
theorizing or conceptualizing,
we engaged
with the things
around us with the intention of achieving something. Heidegger
says
this is the more primordial
attitude in that it is closer to our everyday experience
(Heidegger, Being and Time, 1953). It
is also the more
accurate way of perceiving things
because it automatically incorporates their context, which
is inseparable from their
reality.
As we shimmied
dumpster lids, opened trash
bags, and
exhumed
cartons, theorizing was not necessary. In fact, if
we
were to stop and consider
these objects as present-at-hand, our ability to dumpster dive would have been seriously impeded. We saw
each bin
not as
a collection of molecules,
but as portals to an exciting world of
free food; our actions
not as essentially
conceptual,
but as means to a fruitful
end.
Greek
Yogurt – Empiricism, Rationalism,
and
the Scientific Method
To understand this
night’s significance,
let’s rewind about twenty
years. From the time I first became aware of a world around
me I
recall searching for the best way to
process
it all. I wondered
if my senses gave me
access
to some truth, all truth,
or any truth, and
what it might
mean for something to be true that could
never be perceived. Intrigued
by
the intuitive logic
of the sentence 2 + 2
= 4, I pondered
whether such rationality could ever be contradicted. I recall
marveling at my own
ability to doubt
almost anything, including my own existence. Of course,
this is my grown-up rendering of thoughts that originated in a child’s vocabulary,
but
I believe most
children consider
such
ideas in one way or
another. As kids lack the means to express
or defend themselves,
such seemingly nonsensical
thoughts
are easily thrown out by well- intentioned parents and teachers.
Most adults are understandably compelled
to direct such youthful
confusion
toward the perspective that
makes
sense to them, and
so a
regular dose of “Greek yogurt”
is provided.
The tart substance
to which I refer
began
with the bacteria of Platonic ideals
and fermented in the culture of objective/subjective dualism. The idea is
that
the
world is “out there,”
unchanging and
separate from us. We look out
at this objective world through distorting lenses. This dualism is so pervasive
that pointing it out often
elicits
an “Of course, what else
could it be?” reaction.
We
instinctively see that the expression
“time flies when you’re having fun,” is
not meant literally; that time, “in
reality,” remains constant, but
our perception
of time, when having fun, is distorted.
But alternative conceptions of time and reality have existed in the West since
the ancient Hebrews (Boman, 1960), not to mention the multiple and
rich notions of the East, presumably appearing just as sensible and intuitive to them as our Greek
conception
appears
to us.
Empiricism claims
that the only things
we can
know for sure are those we can
see. Rationalism,
recognizing that
our senses can be tricked,
claims that the only things we can know for sure are those grounded
in logic. Thus, by observing the interaction of these building blocks in increasingly complex structures,
laws are identified, the goal
being
to predict what will happen
given certain circumstances. By controlling the conditions
with a knowledge of the rules, we can
ensure certain
outcomes.
I remember
well being taught
the
process: a hypothesis is
devised, the prescribed conditions are established, the outcome is compared
to the original
theory and it is declared either
corroborated or falsified. The scientific method combines
rationalism
and empiricism, translating observables into
data from which conclusions can
be drawn using logic. The goal is to
avoid any kind of bias. Once this has been accomplished, the reasoning
goes,
there will be nothing left but “pure,” uninterpreted
reality.
I spent
most of my undergraduate degree viewing interpretation
as a second-class
citizen
to the objective truths
identified
by
the scientific method. As a student of film, I of
course gloried in the profundity of
stories, but believed them beautiful manifestations
of the underlying
principles that were of fundamental importance; distractions
made by those who
could not get the hang of the
detached, unfeeling laws
just waiting to be discovered. Convinced of cinema’s
hold on the human mind, I looked at
it as a stimulus that
elicits certain cognitive and
behavioral responses. If I could only break it down
somehow—grab hold of its untarnished essence—then I could
generate some universal algorithm for engaging with media that,
just maybe,
could increase empathy, augment charity,
or decrees aggression;
variables I saw as
equally quantifiable and
contextless as the stimuli that produced
them.
Switching back and
forth between the sciences and
humanities necessitated some
impressive mental gymnastics. Seeing that
spectator engagement
and phenomenology were crucial variables to understanding the effects
of cinema, the rationalism
of semiotics
was the only option for
a hopeless Greek
such
as myself
(see my “Connoting Emotional Dependence in The King
of Comedy”).
This semester I am
taking three classes
that continue to blow my mind by presenting (finally!) an alternative that addresses and
expands
the forgotten
questions I had as
a child. This paradigm shift
began with
a few simple observations.
Problems with
the
Scientific Worldview,
and
the Hermeneutic Solution
Proponents of the scientific method claim
that
it is
value-neutral; that its application
will automatically reveal truth.
But
Martin Heidegger points out that any method
devised to uncover truth prefigures
the nature of
the object of investigation (Heidegger,
Being
and Time, 1953). For
example, if one
were to enter a cave, determined to
gain an
understanding of what lies
therein, and brought only a tape recorder, they would reveal a preconceived notion
that the nature of the
cave is essentially auditory, that perhaps all its
other relevant
attributes may be derived from the
audio that will be captured. Such a method
would, because of its faulty starting assumption, miss
many
of the cave’s most
important attributes, and true understanding could not
be achieved.
And so, to determine what method is
most appropriate for investigating an object (or whether a method
will be useful at all), one must first make some
assumptions. The scientific
method cannot discover through an
experiment
whether or not
experimentation
can
get to the essence of
things, it can only reveal
truths consistent with
itself.
The basic, unproven
assumption on which this method rests is
that
the
universe is deterministic; a view
that “for everything that
happens there
are conditions such
that, given them, nothing else could
happen” (Long,
1974). This view is in direct opposition to my own beliefs
about, and experience with,
moral agency, which requires
possibilities. I had an
awareness
of this inconsistency before, but with
seemingly no
alternative, I placed
this concern on my “figure out later” shelf. But
as philosophy professor
Richard Williams points
out, agency is “a watershed issue” which must be first affirmed
or rejected
before moving down any philosophical stream
(Williams, 2005). The final blow that freed me from my modernist shackles
was the simple, self- evident observation that “No one
has ever experienced uninterpreted reality, and no one ever will.” This being the case,
what could possibly be achieved
by
discussing a realm of “ideal forms” that
could never be in
any
way accessed? The dominoes were falling.
Michael Inwood summarizes
the implications of this idea better than I could in his
book Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction (note: in the following quote, “Dasein” refers
to the Human Being):
The distinction between what is
so in itself and what
is so only for us
is a distinction drawn from our
own understanding of
being, not from
the Dasein-independent nature of things. If there were no Dasein, there would be
no such distinction: every being would be
on a par with every other being, with no foreground and
no background, no depth
and no superficiality. We do not have the resources to describe such a condition: every description we propose is
already encumbered
with our own understanding
of being, our
own significant world. Why should we say that,
in our familiar Dasein-ridden world,
a hammer is in itself a collection of molecules and only for
us a tool? There is no reason
to do so. It follows from no plausible account of a Dasein-free, hammerless world. It gives an
unwarranted priority to the theoretical investigations
of the scientist over the circumspect concern
of the craftsman. For such reasons as these Heidegger believes
that ontology and phenomenology coincide.
(p. 63)
That’s good
stuff.
An astute observer will note some possible problems with this
perspective. If, as
it seems to suggest, science cannot give
us access
to the objective,
why
does it work so well? Surely it
must be a better
way of looking at
the
world—look at what it has produced! The implication here
is that if something doesn’t
“work,” or
meet our needs the way we want
it to,
it is not based on truth. But to “work” is a meaning in
itself, indetachable
from our everyday, interpreted concerns.
As Inwood put it “Newton’s and
Euclid’s systems both
worked because they were ingenious systems for representing natural phenomena in
a manner relevant
to our need to control and manipulate nature,
not because they mirrored an objective reality” (p.
22). Consider the failure of
this unbiased method, which works
so well on physical objects, to
produce similar
advances in psychology, which seeks control
over human behavior. With all its
confident language and
lofty theories, no one seriously claims
the project of mental and emotional health has progressed
in the last century anything close to
the
mastery we’ve achieved over
the physical realm. The hermeneutic perspective suggests an
intriguing answer
to this troubling inconsistency.
The basic premise of the hermeneutic perspective is that there is
no distinction between the subjective and
the objective. As these two concepts
are
often perceived as
opposites, some explanation
is in order. First, let’s consider the
idea
of interpretation; often considered a purely
subjective endeavor.
To interpret
is to assign meaning to something. By the very nature of meaning, this
entails one significance being claimed from
an array of possible significances. When someone explains
what they meant by something,
they
are pointing out that their expression could
be taken different ways,
and the intention
was to express this one
rather than that one. Something
that had no potential to exist otherwise
would not mean anything,
it would just be. If a robot
says “I love you” whenever a button
is pressed, that expression
has no meaning because the robot
could not have done otherwise. As
every event
and object may be interpreted a
number of ways depending on
the perspective of
the
one doing the
interpretation, it appears,
to the dualist, that interpretation must be fundamentally different
from reality. From this perspective, everything has
a “real” nature;
an objective way of
being that cannot be interpreted otherwise.
The hermeneutic perspective challenges
the premises on which
this dualism rests. If
we reconsider the above assertion
that “something that
could not exist otherwise would
not mean
anything, it would just be,” a subtle assumption
reveals itself. This idea assumes that to exist is to be
stagnant, or to have a fixed
nature. Current advances in quantum physics
are
calling into
question this idea, as
we discover elemental
building blocks that exhibit
the
qualities of two diametrically opposed modes of existence simultaneously (Malin, 2001). The hermeneutic argument,
put forth before the rise
of quantum physics, takes
this idea of a dual
nature even farther, claiming that everything exists as meaning. That
is, when we assign a meaning to something, we are in a way enabling it to exist, or at least participating in
its existence. This does not necessarily imply a solipsism wherein objects and events do not exist if they are not
perceived, but simply that
they exist as an array of possible
meanings, not as
a stagnant entity
independent of all context.
Not even time
is considered as
the objective flowing stream we often
imagine
it to be. The past is
not a series of unchangeable
events, but an interpretation that gets its
meaning from its
relationship to the experienced
present and the prospective future. A veteran with a missing hand could interpret
his injury as a noble
sacrifice for the next generation when he becomes
a father, or a sign that God does not exist upon learning that it
precludes him from some
employment
opportunity. But he could
never not interpret
it.
Because everything in
the
experienced world has an assigned,
contextual meaning inherent to
its very existence,
any approach to inquiry based on an objective/subjective dualism is inherently less
truthful than explicitly interpretive accounts.
There is no escaping
interpretation;
we cannot create detached
spheres from whence we can
peer out on an
objective world. A perspective that advocates
being
“value neutral” reveals its
bias
by ironically not
valuing that which embraces interpretation.
The prominent hermeneutic psychologist Carl Jung
pointed out “The experiment imposes
limiting conditions
on nature, for its
aim is to force her
to give answers to questions
devised by man.
Every answer of
nature is therefore more or
less
influenced by the kind of questions asked, and the
result is always a hybrid product. The
so- called ‘scientific view of the
world’
based on this
can hardly be anything more than a psychologically biased
partial
view” (Jung, 1960, p. 6).
Now back to the puzzling absence of
advancement
in mainstream psychology,
a discipline sopping with Greek yogurt. If
reality exists
fundamentally as experienced meanings, doesn’t
it make sense that interpreting
that-which-does-not-interpret (rocks, molecules,
etc.) would elicit results
much more readily than
interpreting interpreters (human beings). Accounting
for the natural world is a much simpler project—molecules
do not care what
story
you tell to describe them,
or whether that story coincides
with the one they tell of themselves. But
to explain my neighbor, who is constantly in the process
of explaining himself, is a
fundamentally
different operation. In fact, Packer suggests the
few
behavioral models that do seem
to get
some traction with people, such
as economics,
may
“work only because our
understanding of
the causal regularities
of nature constrains social
life” (Packer, 1989,
p. 26). This suggests that the sciences and
the humanities are actually in the same
business, just with different
subject
matter;
one tells stories about nature, the other about humans.
The Camera
and
the Single Shot
A common question for someone trying to grapple with
this new way of
looking at the world
has direct relevance to
documentary. They ask “What
if
you captured a moment on video?
Couldn’t such a document
potentially reveal that one person’s interpretation of an
event was
‘wrong?’” Bill Nichols discusses the exalted
status we often give
the camera in
his book Introduction to Documentary: “The ability of the photographic image to
reproduce the likeness of
what is set before it, its
indexical quality, compels us to believe that it
is reality itself re- presented before us, while the story or proposal
presents a distinct way of regarding this reality.” Perhaps
the camera’s
technological
paternity, with its
sleek, unrufflable frame,
unconsciously reminds us of objectivity. (Note:
for
the sake of compactness, from
now on only visual qualities
will be discussed, although each concept applies equally to the audible)
Let’s first compare this
indexical quality to that of our
own imaging apparatus. We go
through life looking through our own eyes, and
so must accept that
our perspective will always
be different from that of others. But
a film document lets everyone look
through the same eyes.
If
two witnesses of a crime later
disagree over
the
color of the perpetrator’s
hat,
it is easy to see
that one of them has an incorrect
interpretation. Show them
a security tape that shows
the hat to be red and the discussion is over—affirming that
one
person’s interpretation can
be “wrong.”
Although such an
experience would necessitate
the
incorrect witness to revise his memory,
taking into account the
evidence at hand,
this in no way disqualifies the
hat’s redness from
the
realm of interpretation.
What we have here is simply a progression
of interpretation. Consider
the following pair
of assertions:
1. “One witness reports the hat
was red while the other witness
reports
the hat was green.”
2. “Both witnesses now
agree the hat was
red.”
Both statements are equally accurate,
and both would be relevant in
an investigation. Such an
observation cannot be removed
from the implications
it may have for,
say, a suspect who was found
wearing a red
hat. Inwood sheds more
light on this issue
in his intro to Heidegger:
An assertion
is true, it is suggested,
if and
only
if it corresponds to a fact.
This gives
Heidegger two
reasons for disputing the
theory. For if the
theory is correct, there must
first be an assertion
to correspond to a fact and secondly a fact for
it to correspond
to. But
neither of these items can fit the
role assigned
to it by the theory…
There is no
pre-
packaged portion
of meaning sufficiently independent of the world and of entities
within it to correspond,
or fail to correspond, to the world. Words and
their meanings
are
already world-laden.
(48-50)
The comparison of the shot to a statement makes
this concept’s application to film clear. Besides, as Packer
points out, “what counts as an observation
depends
on current
theory”
(Packer, 1989, p. 21). If the current theory of what happened does not require knowledge of the perpetrator’s
headwear,
the
color of the hat
would not even be considered evidence and,
unless
assigned
some
other significance by one of
the witnesses (such as
its
fashion value), would likely
be forgotten.
Because
time is unidirectional
change, neither the human
eye nor the
camera lens can
take in light directly from the past
or future. Film’s
ability to
reproduce light,
captured in the past,
in the present—its temporality—does not, as Andre Bazin
suggested, mummify the image
in the sense of taking it out
of the flow of time (Bazin, 1960). It
instead converts
what was captured into
a form
that can be encountered
and interpreted afresh in
the
spectator’s own present. It then
instantly takes its rank in the interpreted past,
as new
experiences
add to, color, or detract
from the meaning of what
was
experienced. Leni
Riefenstahl’s sympathetic portrayal of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress, Triumph of the Will,
provides a convenient
example of
a film that has
been reinterpreted
several times over
the years in
light
of shifting meanings surrounding World War II. To
declare one interpretation
“right” and
another “wrong” is to suggest the
existence of
some neutral way of seeing the film that can
serve as a criterion.
One
perspective can
take into account (interpret) more information about
the
making of the film,
but while this may render their
reading more
useful, it hardly makes
it more objectively true.
Yet many documentarians
continue to imbue the
camera with the magical ability to capture reality “untainted” by human bias.
Influential filmmaker
Albert Maysles has been known to side with the notorious empiricist Sir Francis Bacon by adopting as his personal
motto
the quote "The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution
or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than the whole
harvest of invention" (Tammer, p. 1). His claim,
that a cameraman can
“Get it down as
no different, no better, no
worse than what
it is”
(Levin, 1971, p. 251), is challenged
by
Frederick Wiseman, whose
straight-forward
films are often classified alongside the
Maysles’
observational
docs. In a famous interview
he asserted “Of course there's conscious
manipulation! Everything
about a movie is
manipulation” (Wiseman,
2012).
It
has been
pointed out by countless filmmakers
and scholars that placing the camera within
a space is inherently taking a position
on the nature of what
is to be captured. Simply
standing aside and “letting the action
unfold,” as an “impartial” scientist might, is
making the value-laden assumption that the event being captured
is best understood as not
involving the camera.
So,
we see, the idea that the camera is somehow exempt from the all-encompassing “meaning soup” of reality—the idea that tripods stand on neutral ground—is fundamentally ill- conceived, for cameras “are not detached:
they are blind. They don’t
see
from nowhere,
they
see nothing” (Packer, 1989, p. 28). Only we humans are capable
of truly seeing, and what
we see is
significance.
Montage as Complex
The prospect
of representing an
objective reality becomes even
more complex when we consider the
edited documentary; essentially one extended collage of ideas and images. The creation of meaning,
via juxtaposition, here is obvious. The most straight-forward example is
narration, wherein
the
viewer is told the meaning of the
image presented. With
the technique of montage, first
described by Eisenstein, an emotionally charged image is placed after a more
ambiguous (ripe with potential meaning) image, and the recent
past instantly acquires a new meaning in light of the present.
As experienced
rationalists,
it is tempting for us to see montage as a process
of constructing a logical
argument. When a solid
logical case is
made,
it appears there can be little wiggle
room
for differing perspectives. Perhaps this—intuitive, rational
thought—can
be the arbiter of interpretations, coming down
solidly on one side
or another.
But
there’s
a problem—although
the well-known syllogism “All men are mortal,
and Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal,” is, by the rules
of language,
true given its premises,
we see that the premises
exist not in the world
of logic, but in the lived world of human experience. This
does not escape interpretation,
because interpretation is more fundamental. If
there is no
such thing as an objective,
contextless antecedent or consequent,
syllogistic
reasoning becomes
nothing more than a stimulating, though often
quite useful, mental
exercise.
In
his book Synchronicity:
An Acausal Connecting
Principle, Carl Jung present
an alternative to rationalist conceptions
of reality, emphasizing that “We must remember that the
rationalistic attitude of the
West is not the only possible
one and is not all-embracing,
but is in many ways a prejudice and
a bias that ought perhaps
to be corrected” (Jung, 1960, p. 69). In search
of such
an
alternative
epistemology, which he believed
would account for many important aspects of life left untouched by rationalism, he
dedicated many years to studying the
mythologies
of various cultures,
presenting for occidental
consideration ideas such as
the
poem which heads
this paper. The idea of synchronicity “maintains that, just
as events may be grouped
by
cause, they may also be grouped
by
meaning” (Hott, 2011, p. 1). Such a grouping of
meaning forms
what Jung referred to
as a “complex” which is
“the sum of ideas referring to a particular
feeling-toned event” (Cope, 2006, p. 105).
In film, montage may be seen
similarly as
the linking of ideas
and images by meaning in
an expanding network of significance.
We have already alluded to the court-room analogy, with
its evidence-based
explanation
of events. Documentarians such as
Andrew and Annelie Thorndike and
Errol
Morris have embraced
this prosecutorial role,
piecing together evidence to account for what
happened and what
should be done about it
(a movement thoroughly documented in Erik Barnouw’s
Documentary:
A History of the Non-Fiction Film [1974, pp. 172-182]). The legal system has long
been aware that it
was not in the business
of making judgments based on some
“objective truth”
about what “really happened.” Kim Lane Scheppele
in her work Telling Stories, published in the Michigan Law Review,
states in no uncertain terms that “The resolution of any individual case in the law relies heavily on
a court’s adoption of a particular story, one that makes
sense, is true to what
the
listeners know about
the
world, and hangs together” (Scheppele, 1989, p. 2076). W. Lance Bennett and Martha S. Feldman further claim
that
“The
use of stories to reconstruct
the evidence in cases casts doubt on the common belief that
justice is
a mechanical and objective process” in
their
book Reconstructing
Reality in the Courtroom (Bennett,
1981, p. 1).
This account rings
true to most of us; we inhabit a world of values and emotions that can
seem equally non-rational
and undeniable. This too makes
more sense of the documentary, with its
tradition of rhetoric and inevitable appeal
to ethos and
pathos. A film argument,
as
with our own internal
rationalizing, can be compelling in its
logic,
but it is never exclusively logical,
always depending on an underlying layer of malleable
meaning. For someone whose
emotional or spiritual compass points north,
logic rarely persuades them to turn south, no matter
how air- tight it
may
appear. Wiseman
recognized
this when saying of
his own films “If you like it,
it's
an interpretation. If you
don't like it, it's a lie” (Wiseman,
2012, p. 1).
A Moral Foundation
But
the
wishy-washiness
implied by this last quote—the idea that no
perspective can ever
be definitively declared more true than another—smacks of a
dangerous
relativism. But with the hermeneutic perspective this need
not necessarily be the
case. Of course
there is such a thing as a straight-up
lie,
which
occurs when someone purposely fails to take into account all the factors involved, or invents factors that do not
exist in reality.
That’s right, just because there is
no objective, separate, atemporal reality,
does not mean reality does
not exist. Hermeneutics
is not purely subjective; it
is, if you will, sobjective—the objective and
subjective are inseparable, considered
to be the same thing.
An example my professor shared that helped me
with this concept invites
us to imagine that a little girl
has been struck
and killed by a car. I know, an
unpleasant thought. This event can be
interpreted
many
different ways depending on one’s relationship
to the girl and one’s understanding of what
led
to the accident. These different interpretations are all equally
representative
of what happened, yet
they are
constrained by the event’s
reality, which cannot be interpreted in just any way. It
could not, for example, be understood as anything but
a tragedy, though
it be of the lugubrious variety or
the silver-lined cloud variety.
Back to the above quote by Wiseman: He closes
his remarks by admitting
that
“Everything about these movies
is a
distortion” (Wiseman,
2012, p. 1). Presumably he meant to imply that
the
act of filmmaking is
inherently distorting,
as indeed anyone believing in the
existence of
an objective realm just out of the camera’s reach
would be obliged to believe. But
the hermeneuticist enjoys the
hope of achieving an interpretation that is
not distorted, because it is reality.
Wiseman’s self-deprecating statement may reveal
an underlying uneasiness
he has about
the
observational mode
he employs, with
its
preconceptions of the objective nature of
the lens’ prisoner. It never fully yields
to interrogation,
and so what is presented
in the final film inevitably feels
incomplete.
So
he is not wrong; his
work
may
in fact be skewed,
but not inevitably so. Inwood
talks about how an interpretation
can be distorted, but not in the common usage of
corresponding less to reality:
There are falsehoods. But… it
is more a matter of covering things
up, of distorting them, and
this may be done in other ways than by making false assertions, by omission
or by
non-verbal actions. Truth… consists of uncovering things. It
consists of illuminating
things
or shedding light on them. It is
a matter of degree, of
more or less, rather than
an either-or. (Inwood, 1997, pp. 50-51)
The possibility of one view
being more or less distorted than
another opens the door
for an alternative means
of assessing interpretation. If it can be
said that misrepresenting something
by
not taking into
account
all its constitutive aspects is morally wrong, we see that
any
perspective can
be
assessed for its moral
value. Though this is not
an inevitable conclusion of the
hermeneutic perspective, it is
clear by the writings of
theistic existentialists such as
Soren
Kiekegaard
that this option is available
for
the faithful hermeneuticist.
His statement that “death is the light in
which great passions, both good and bad,
become transparent” (Kierkegaard,
2000, p. 124) suggests that taking into account the inevitability of death
can
result in passions (energized perspectives) that are morally good. If morality is
considered a meaning that
emanates from God, then accessing
His divine light becomes a means
for identifying the best
(most morally good) perspective. This may be what
Heidegger was getting at
when
he said “Every philosophy,
as a human thing, intrinsically fails; and
God needs
no philosophy” (Heidegger, The Metaphysical
Foundations of Logic, 1978, p. 76).
But
if one interpretation can be considered more morally good than
another, doesn’t that bring up
the problems of subjective/objective dualism by positing that
an immoral
perspective fails
to match
up to the “best” perspective,
considered to be static and
timeless? Not necessarily. If we consider
morality as
a living entity, rather than
a fixed index of superlative approaches to every conceivable situation, we
see that morality, like our
own lived experience, can be relative to context and still exist. If such an
index existed
there would be no need for an
active God—He
could simply drop
off
the guidebook and
let us study our way to sanctity. Instead,
He sent His son to enact that eternal Good
which is not reducible to
laws
or ideals. Christ did
not say He exemplified, understood,
or lived in accordance with
the
truth—He boldly declared “I am
the truth” (John 14:6). If
the Truth is a living being that
emanates light in
which moral meanings are
assigned,
the
epistemology of revelation
becomes key. While no
known method can reveal objective truth
in itself, Truth may actually present itself to the humble, faithful
seeker.
I think this
is the key. Considering that everything exists
as meaning, and telling stories about
the
world in light of
a divine context, the
life of a theorist may be saved
from perpetual present-at-hand detachment.
Divine Context and Usefulness
To truly comprehend one’s context is
to assume a purpose in relation to
it. Teleological
explanations
of human motivation hold that any action,
including speech, is taken for the sake of some goal. The modernist
assumption of linear time
holds only the past responsible for
“pushing” us into action. But
when the meaning of the future (which
exists in
the form of goals
and expectations) is considered just
as real as the meaning of
the past, our actions
can be seen as truly “caused” by the self—by our
own agentic choice to value
a goal and pursue it. So
when we learn to turn our gaze to context in
the pursuit of meaning, a certain course of action
is indicated and instinctively ventured into.
When
a modernist philosopher,
mapping “objective reality” with pen,
paper, and
his rational mind,
does not notice the cry of his infant in the next room, it is because he is
out of his immediate context.
Direct his attention to the fact, and a caring father
will risk losing his train of thought to attend to the matter at hand.
This new purpose is
sure to ensue automatically, without
theorizing,
just by virtue of recognizing the present,
meaning-laden
context.
Understanding that conceptualizations
are,
first and foremost, acts
of expression (whether in the form
of words or montage), theoretical inquiry can
be redeemed
from
the
irrelevance of
abstraction. While considering the construct
of love as somehow containing its
own qualities outside the context of a
relationship may impede one’s
readiness-to-hand, the expression “I love you,” when said by a nonrobot who
could do otherwise,
can be very helpful
indeed.
This is the mode I recognized
in Varda’s The Gleaner’s
and I. By acknowledging her own role
in processing these
events, she assumed a humble position
in relation to the viewer. Never implying her film was “merely a perspective,” as if other films could achieve more
objectivity, she
presents her
subject matter with a “this
is my experience for your consideration,”
sense of proportion. This is inviting and
therefore useful, as I am more inclined
to absorb what she has to offer when it is accurately advertized.
This approach does
not come naturally for those
still
stumbling in the shadows
of subjective/objective dualism. I know the
feeling all
too well of discovering some earth-shattering truth, and
then despairing when others
fail to accept it.
Perspective—so necessary for
the here- and-now
interaction of the ready-to-hand—can
be lost as allegiance to such a finding— demanded
by
its obvious “truthy-ness”—results
in the collateral
damage of closed minds, as listeners resist an expression which purposely leaves
out morality, perspective, and context. If
one caught in such
a monologue can snap
out of the present-at-hand, they may be able
to see that what is really going on—the
true nature of
the exchange—is
not the transmission
of pure truth from one mind to another, but the self-centered display of a Greek mind
trying to assert its rightness.
What does this imply about the various
approaches of documentary, with
its long
tradition of grappling with just
such issues? Some categorizations
can help us identify an
ideal
of sorts. Placing specific
films
on a spectrum from expository to observational,
it appears the more perspectival
(often
considered manipulative) mode of exposition escapes
the
scientific distortion of detachment. But
a heavily narrated
documentary might easily grab
hold of some concept and
not let go until the whole world conforms to
it, as in many a network’s construals of current events. Such obstinacy obscures the purposes
of connection,
expansion,
or persuasion, as the presenter feels constrained by some Platonic ideal. Cinema verite,
the laudable attempt to tell stories that include the
presence of the camera,
appears the
safest bet for one who
admits
that
reality is inherently contextual.
But
the common denominator
here is context, and it seems nearly every documentary mode is capable of
taking this into account.
Even the observational documentarian
may,
be
laying bare her rationale for standing aside, present
a compelling work that avoids the traps of objectivism.
Now that I think of it, many of the
films that have most resonated with me have displayed
this contextual-usefulness.
Ross McElwee’s Bright Leaves (2003) rings true precisely because it lays context on the table
for our inspection
and
then
goes to it,
as does the BYU production Home Movies
(2011). Several of my favorite
books take a similar tact,
framing their principles by first
recognizing the
nature of the interaction. This
approach, employed to inviting affect by
the best missionaries, recognizes
first that we are all in this
together,
and that no one but God has a monopoly on
truth. Such an approach
has the potential
to do much good, for as we recognize that storytelling is
the
ultimate means of penetrating reality, context-conscious
documentaries gain
the
ability to shed
light
on aspects of reality accessible
to no other story-telling method, including the
scientific one.
~
This is my best attempt at explaining the “Aha!” moment I experienced
in the shower that morning. My efforts at writing a paper on hermeneutics
using a nonhermeneutic method were failing.
As soon as Martin’s
ghost prompted
me to include the context, I knew what I had
to do. By conveying this paper’s personal significance in the paper itself, my intention is to
enact the very approach
being presented.
Though I will undoubtedly have to return
to the present-at-hand throughout
my
life, I am optimistic
that this paper will mark
the beginning of a new and useful
career as one
who humbly tells stories
about stories in God’s kingdom.
Thanks
for indulging me.
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