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Language, Metaphor & Film

Language, Metaphor & Film. East & West in Film & Print. Basic Concepts. Language & Truth . Language is extremely imprecise Language at best approximates reality It is a system of signs (signifiers) that represent or connote “meaning” (signified)

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Language, Metaphor & Film

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  1. Language, Metaphor& Film East & West in Film & Print

  2. Basic Concepts Language & Truth • Language is extremely imprecise • Language at best approximates reality • It is a system of signs (signifiers) that represent or connote “meaning” (signified) • Words work best at describing objects that can be verified by the senses • Words become less accurate and more metaphorical when attempting to describe other spheres of reality THE MEANING OF MEANING

  3. Basic Concepts Two Views of Language • Idealists • Romanticists • Mystics • Archetypal SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIER THE MEANING OF MEANING

  4. Basic Concepts Two Views of Language • Idealists • Romanticists • Mystics • Archetypal SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIER • Postmodernists • Poststructuralists • Constructivists THE MEANING OF MEANING

  5. Basic Concepts The Power of Metaphor Metaphor is the basis of language and thought. THE MEANING OF MEANING

  6. Basic Concepts The Power of Metaphor There are no absolute truths. THE MEANING OF MEANING

  7. Basic Concepts The Power of Metaphor All we can say about anything is that it is sort of like this... THE MEANING OF MEANING

  8. How Language Means Ralph Waldo Emerson LANGUAGE (1849) 1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE

  9. How Language Means Ralph Waldo Emerson LANGUAGE (1849) “Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind...We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature.” NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE

  10. How Language Means Ralph Waldo Emerson LANGUAGE (1849) “It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope.” NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE

  11. Power of Metaphor Ralph Waldo Emerson LANGUAGE (1849) “The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.” NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE

  12. Power of Metaphor T. S. Eliot OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE (1919) “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." EVOKING OF EMOTIONS

  13. Power of Metaphor Robert Frost EDUCATION BY POETRY “I have wanted in late years to go further and further in making metaphor the whole of thinking." METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING

  14. Power of Metaphor Freiderich Nietzche WHAT IS TRUTH? “What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors..." All philosophies rest on the shifting texture of figurative language. METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING

  15. Power of Metaphor Milan Kundera “Metaphor is a means of grasping, through instantaneous revelation, the ungraspable essence of things.” METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING

  16. Film Theory Andre Bazin(1918-1958) CINEMATIC REALISM • Cinema and photography are media that an artist can utilize to review the deeper meanings behind the phenomena of existence • Close observation of natural phenomena reveal planetary consciousness • The spirit behind the “real” object • Long takes (long hard gaze) METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF CINEMATIC TRUTH

  17. Andre Bazin(1918-1958) “ We know that under the image revealed there is another which is truer to reality and under this image still another and yet again still another under this last one, right down to the true image of reality, absolute, mysterious, which no on will ever see.”

  18. Andrei Tarkovsky

  19. Andrei Tarkovsky

  20. Krzysztof Kieslowski “ In Blue Kieslowski is attempting to render complex and difficult emotional states and situations from within the confines of the cinematic language he has at his disposal. Indeed, I would certainly contend that he stretches that language as far as possible so as to open the ground of new cinematic vistas (the sugar cube receding in the coffee, the mysterious flautist). “

  21. Krzysztof Kieslowski “There are details in Blue that seem to convey a proximity to hell, despair, dread and damnation. What Kieslowski is trying to do is to find a cinematic language that can express Julie’s dilemmas (in much the same way that Shakespeare, for example, stretched the written and spoken word to express the dilemmas and passions of his characters).” Richard Rushton, Reading Three Colours: Blue, Senses of Cinema

  22. The Power of Metaphor There are no absolute truths. Language is imperfect. Metaphor is the basis of all thought. Film and literature are the highest forms of experiental “knowledge.”

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