A few more sunset shots from my Phone

A Few Shots from Chalai Market, Thiruvananthapuram

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Some unforgettable sweet memories...

Nature of the Life of Meaning in Time and our Life in Meaning in Time

1.      Nature of the Life of Meaning in Time and our Life in Meaning in Time

Introduction

Written text is fundamental to human communication, second only to spoken word. Text enables us to take history forward. It makes us feel proud of our past and allows us to think of a better future. A text is more than its component words. Texts have influenced minds, raised questions, answered some and left many unanswered. it has caused revolutions. ‘What changes the world’ is what we make out of the text in and for our times- that is, its meaning in time. Readers come and go, but texts continue to influence and change the world. Therefore, study of text and its meaning are extremely important in understanding our life and its meaning in the present world.

Synchronic Language and Diachronic Text

            Our world is composed of many codes. Language is the most complex code. We need this code to speak, write and understand. Any realization of language is only a disclosure or parole of the treasury of the code of language. This code of language is synchronic. It is static and doesn’t have complexities of growth, and is ‘of a time’. It was Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a Swiss linguist, who proposed that language as a system of signs should be studied as a complete system at any given point in time. This implies that language is synchronic- ‘of a time’.

            On the contrary, a literary text is diachronic. It is an anti-realistic perspective. Diachrony suggests changes in meaning over time. Meaning begins to move across time. The text doesn’t cling to the author’s bosom. It drifts away from the writer. This is called distanciation.

Distanciation

            In the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), the transition from speaking to writing is marked by what can be called ‘alienation’ or ‘distanciation’ (Verfremdung). The realization of discourse in writing distances the text from its context of spoken discourse. During this transition, the original context of the discourse vanishes. The text takes on a whole new meaning and is no longer bound by its original writer. The text is distanced or alienated from the author. It is now ready for the reader to read and interpret.

This distanciation is the first step in the diachronic journey of the text. Text leaves its origin and ground and moves away from the author. This can be equated to Individuation in Developmental Psychology, proposed by Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). The text undergoes a sort of diachronic individuation. The text is now free to move in time and space. There are no limits as to where to go or how far to go.

In Ricoeurian hermeneutics, distanciation is not looked at negatively as something that needs to be overcome. On the contrary, distanciation turns out to be the very condition of meaning making because it paves the way for ‘Semantic Autonomy’. Semantic Autonomy is nothing but the fact that through the act of writing, the text is freed from the ‘intention of the author’. Against this backdrop of distanciation, ‘Semantic Autonomy’ is inbuilt in the text, i.e., the reader is absent from the act of writing; the writer is absent from the act of reading [death of the author].

Thus freed, the text becomes a ‘projected world’ with a career in time. It has a diachronic life of its own. Hermeneutics focuses on this diachronic life. Literary text is an ‘outward seeker’ looking for readers of all times. It sets out on a diachronic journey in time and space. It is disposed with a quality namely, ‘universality of address’. It is ready for uptake anywhere in the world. For Ricoeur destination of the text is readers’ appropriation - self understanding through dialogue with the text which is a form of the other. Text is a complexified other. Appropriation is making the other myself, that is, ‘Otherness’ into ‘own-ness’. Hermeneutics deals with this appropriation- self understanding through dialogue. It happens across problematic zones of liminality.

Liminality

If I am a realist reader, I go back to the author’s time and space to capture the authorial meaning. The spatiotemporal gap does not count for a realist. One is a contemporary of all times in realist reading. It is an unproblematic travel according to realist hermeneutics. But Ricoeur says such an unproblematic passage is not possible. For him, a reader in the present understands a text of the past with all the ‘receptions’ it gathered during the gap between past and present.

Reception History

Hans Robert Jauss (1921-1997) spoke of reception history (Rezeptions Geschichte) of a text. “Literature and art only obtain a history that has the character of a process when the succession of works is mediated not only through the producing subject but also through the consuming subject—through the interaction of author and public.” We receive a text with a history and all the meanings it accumulated during the journey through time and space. Ricoeur says, when you read it, you read it with all its history and the diachronic journey it made. The process of reading, for reception theory, is always a dynamic one, a complex movement.

All readers have an age, history, era and situation in an epoch, which is named a horizon. A horizon of expectation (Prejudice for Gadamer: 1900-2002) is what we can see within a horizon. It is within a horizon of expectations that Reception takes place. Time is a continuum of receptions in horizons of expectation.

Surplus Meaning

Text goes through receptions through generations of horizons of expectations. Text has a meaning, excess/more than what it had at its birth, because it travels in time gathering meaning. The excess meaning a text acquires during its diachronic journey across time is called Surplus Meaning.

This means, text does not remain disembodied in a vacuumized zone, available for uniform reading. Text travelling through history is historicized in reception. No text is complete in the past. Meaning is not closed and complete in the past but open in its future. Meaning of a text is the future of the text. It is not a finished fact, but an unfolding fate. It comes to my horizon as a sedimentation of a complex reception history that it incurs during its diachronic journey. The sum total of all these is the meaning of the text.

Unfolding Meaning

Ricoeur and Gadamer speak of us being implicated into unfolding meaning in an unconcluded world where last word is not said about anything. Jauss says, “A literary text is not an object that stands by itself and offers the same face to each reader in each period.” Neither writer nor reader has the privilege of a final meaning. Meaning is on an unfolding trajectory in contemporary literary theory. This view is anti-theological and sponsors multiple readings and meanings. It is open to the future. Ricoeur’s surplus meaning is a sign of ever unfolding evolutionary meaning on a journey towards the Omega point in the future.

Reflection

“The sense of a text is not behind the text, but in front of it,” says Ricoeur. Such an attitude to written text would revolutionize one’s perspective. Wherever tradition or faith has declared a dead end to meaning making and interpretation, there was bloodshed. When meaning is closed, tolerance vanishes. Self righteousness looms in the world, which in turn brings in wars to eliminate the ‘difference’. An open attitude to meaning would ensure cohabitation of ‘difference’ in a colourful, multi faced and peace promoting world.

As we are being pulled into the future, into an ever unfolding, ever complexified world of meaning, there needs to be an air of magnanimity to breath and elixir of tolerance to quench our thirst with. If humanity has to coexist, we need to turn and see that there is truth in our neighbor too. Such an atmosphere of mutual human trust will blossom only when we accept that meaning is not exclusive, but inclusive.

Conclusion

“Nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world; the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken; the world is open and free; everything is still in the future and will always be in the future,” says Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975). Meaning is not closed in the past, but is open to the future. There is no degradation, but expansion, addition and increase of meaning. Act of reading is never a distortion. Thus irrespective of changing readers, the text unfolds its meaning into a life of ever increasing spectrum of meaning, enriching the horizons of our lives with prosperous texts of ever blooming realizations. 

River Periyar viewd from Kalady

What is reality? A study

Sajit M.Mathews

What is Reality pertaining Photographs and Paintings?

Reality is a ‘concept’ which can be defined at various levels. A lay man’s definition of reality would be “that which is experienced with senses, as perceived in full consciousness.”

A level deeper, a philosopher could give us an ontological definition of reality. A flower I see can be real as much as a thought I have about that flower. Reality is subjective and objective. Objectively, a flower (in itself) is a reality, irrespective of the names given to it or the qualities attributed to it. Subjectively, a flower can be what I perceive the flower as. The same flower can be perceived and understood as a biological wonder and an aesthetic entity by two/the same observer.

At a level further, we can reflect upon the essence and esse of reality. There is a ‘flowerness’ in the flower which makes it the flower. Change in variety, colour, age, aroma, etc. are qualities added to the basic esse of the flower. We could say that is what a flower is.

Though we are aware of these philosophical facts about reality, we also know that a pragmatic way of looking at life and reality does not need deep thinking like this. Therefore, reality is what is perceived, for most of us.

Thoughts are representations of reality. But what is acutely real for me in thought may not be so real for another person. Thoughts of a person could be interpreted in various ways, as we discussed earlier. Just like thought, visuals (Photographs, Paintings, etc.) are also representations of reality. Only the mode does change. These representations too could be interpreted and understood at various levels.

Photographs

A photograph captures the colours, light and shade of an object/scenery/animal with much technical accuracy. This accuracy can also be manipulated using special lenses, filters and computerized editing. The product of these processes of capturing, editing and reproducing portrays a slice of reality against a context which is almost always alien to the onlooker.

A photograph is as real as the original scene if only the context is already known to the observer. If it is known, a photograph could evoke the same emotions or responses as the original could have done. But the photograph - an extract from the reality - naturally loses continuity in both time and space.

Painting

Now let us consider a painting. A painting is an interpretation of what an artist sees in the world or in her/his mind, using imagination. It could be a real scene, or an imaginary scene or a mixture of both. The advantage of a painting is that the artist could mix colours and tell tales of life which (in a way) is impossible with photography. A painting may not always be understood by untrained eyes. There are codes of colours and light and shade embedded in it. Yet a painting is real as much as a photograph is. A painting can evoke the same responses as the original scene, if the background of the painting is known.

Paintings generally carry themes picked by artists and those themes are evidently manifest in them. A painter could bring in two opposing or contradicting ideas or objects into the same scene, which may be impossible for a photograph. Moreover, as a medium used by human beings from time immemorial, paintings have livelier relationship to us, humans.

When it comes to choosing which is nearer to reality- photograph or painting, I am confused. The reason is, to me, these both appear to be of the same level of reality. A photograph is better than a painting in terms of clarity, complete representation and technical perfection. A painting is better than a photograph in terms of imagination and creativity. Both photographs and paintings in their own way are close to reality. Both in one way or another are away from reality too.

Conclusion

            Yet, when a choice is necessary, a photograph could be much more realistic than a painting. Certain aspects of what is seen cannot be taken out of sight in case of photography. Whether photographer wishes or not, these inseparable aspects of visuals stick to the image. Quality reproduction keeps them intact and makes them all the more clear. The shape, size, contrast, etc. are some of such qualities. In that respect, the viewer cannot be completely alienated from a photograph’s reality. Whereas, this alienation is possible in case of a painting.

            Therefore, my vote goes to photograph as it has a higher degree of reality represented in it, than a painting.

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A response to Ravi Vasudevan's article: The Exhilaration of Dread: Genre, narrative form and film style in contemporary urban action films

 Sajit M. Mathews

Introduction

            Film is a powerful medium. Nobody has a debate on that. Films have grown in the last century from being a fantasy and a hobby affair to be one of the largest industries of the world. What was taken for granted in the beginning is today, a field of specialization and research. And this huge cultural product and entertainment industry has to go through so many processes, since a huge sum of money is involved. That apart, the quality of films needs to be scrutinized on a regular basis. This check should be in qualitative terms, whether our films are up to the set standards.

            But a qualitative check is not all. There are a million ways in which films influence human lives. Millions of people who throng to cinema halls everyday enter the halls with different purposes. Cinema is not just a medium of entertainment. Cinema has powerful influence on what people think, decide and do. Such consequences make films all the more important. Film can fall into the hands of propagandists and malicious people, who can use to subvert human minds for their purposes. For this reason, there need to be constant analysis of what goes on in cine field.

            Off late, we are doing well in looking at the cinema, audience, its present, past and future. We should continue to look so. Ravi Vasudevan’s articles are a ‘looking at’ of academia, at the cinema of our country. They use the methodology of social sciences to analyze films and related issues.

            In this paper, I have summarized three of his articles and added my responses to them in the form of reflections and comments.

About Ravi Vasudevan

Ravi Vasudevan is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). He completed his research on the history of Indian nationalism at Jawaharlal Nehru University and subsequently on Indian film melodrama at the University of East Anglia. His present research concerns are the history and theory of film and media experience. He is part of the Sarai programme of CSDS, which he co-directs with Ravi Sundaram. He runs the film and contemporary media transformations component in the Sarai project Publics and Practices in the History of the Present: Old and New Media in Contemporary India. Vasudevan teaches on film and is guest faculty with the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, and the Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia. In 2004 he coordinated a lecture and film series for the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University.*

Vasudevan is a member of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series and the advisory board of the film studies journal Screen. He has edited Making Meaning in Indian Cinema (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000). Vasudevan also undertakes film curations regularly for Sarai. In 2003, he curated the film series ‘Selves Made Strange: Violent and Performative Bodies in the Cities of Indian Cinema’ for the exhibition body.city on contemporary Indian arts at the House of World Cultures, Berlin.*

Vasudevan bases most of his studies on the Bombay film industry, the premier and biggest in India. The article The Exhilaration of Dread is a study of the narrative form and film style of the modern urban action films, emanating from Bombay. It appears to me that the article as a whole is composed in rather loose style. Ideas about city and city life and films come in and out of the article in a random style. In this particular article, Vasudevan talks about audience, duality of audience-entertainment relation, progress and shift of style in narrative techniques, play of city on the psyche of audience and spectator and spaces used in these action films.*

(* : Source: Internet)

Article : The Exhilaration of Dread: Genre, narrative form and film style in contemporary urban action films

Introduction

            This article deals with the relationship of audience with the form of film, transformation in narrative structures, new awareness and knowledge these films brought about, relationship between space, politics and realism, and such films. The article is analysed and personal reflections are added.

Audience’s relationship with the Entertainment form

Vasudevan situates this study in the Bombay film industry of 1980s. Audience of those times is seen as having a dual identity relationship with films. While enjoying the film as spectator, they also are injected with anxiety about the life in the city. These action films of 80s provided the audience with ample opportunities to enjoy the pleasures of viewership, provided all kinds of entertainment, songs, sensual satisfaction, etc. But along with these incentives, films also filled the audience with a sense of dread- ‘a gathering sense of anxiety’ according to Vasudevan. This sounds quite realistic as a film is a reflection of real city life. The dangers of city are not visible to everyone. A film could very well spell out such fears. So the audience becomes more and more aware of what goes on around them. This awareness makes them look around with anxiety and they see more than they were seeing earlier. This is what a genre of films over a long period of time could do to a people.

Narrative structures

            From the article, we could allude that the earlier narrative techniques used in Indian films were usually based on binary opposites. Examples given are: east/west, country/city, police/criminal, public/private, etc. These binaries bind the form of the film itself to a certain frame. He points at the depressed and dystopian urban subjectivity of Bombay of mid 80s as a reason for this shift. Thus, in the new sensitivity, there were no clear-cut differences between the good and the evil. Good also could be a failure. Legitimate reasons and aspirations also could end up in death and un-fulfilment- as reality is most of the times. In this way, I would say, Indian films began to look at real life in films.

            The new style was basically confusion! This confusion was based on the portrayal of continuity between the binary opposites, shown earlier as belonging to water tight compartments. Vasudevan says, this conveys a sense of the contemporary urban imaginary as a kind of maze. In fact, it is not only a maze, but also a mess. Unstable and dangerous subjectivity governed the anxiety of audience.

New awareness

            These city action films made the audience aware that all are vulnerable to the terrors of the city. Fear, terror, unimagined danger, etc are part of the city, and anyone could be into it at any time or the day or night. The displacement of focus from binary opposites to related continuities left the audience without explanations. Consequently, vulnerability became the awareness. Vasudevan says, this has something to do with the way life is imagined in the city. Films have used acts of terror and fright to generate both fear and pity! Parinda is cited as an example. An act of terror invites the fascination of the audience in many ways- the burning of Anna’a wife and son. The psychosis of Anna is attributed to this act. But we don’t know if it is real or fake. However, this psychosis gives him the right to dominate others.

            Vasudevan also says that there is always an extra diegetic in films- a force or intelligence that drives the narrative in its ways. It can be director, conventions or its transmutation. Important thing is that, this intelligence appears to assume that the source of terror in the city always slips away, beyond the field of knowledge, into some cavernous other space. This is so real, and is noticeable in our films. The villain is not the real cause of the terror. There is another force or intelligence that designs all these. That force seems to be evading the camera, and the final resolution. It awaits another chance to come back, leaving our apprehensions open ended.

Space in Bollywood

            Here, Vasudevan tries to bring symbolic narrative dimensions and narration mechanism in terms of links between key Spaces used often in films. Those spaces familiar to terror and dread are police stations, dark alleys, courts, busy market, den of criminals, etc. These place have gained the representational capacity to speak for themselves now. Why space becomes important for audience? It’s because, no space is a safe space. There is a surveillance mechanism that penetrates through every kind of walls and secrecy. So the basic assumption in such films is that you are being watched everywhere- home, office, market, bus, train, even hide outs. This overarching gaze presupposes the characters’ ability to receive the hints of him/her being watched. No space is a safe space- for characters and audience!

Physical space is redefined and reinterpreted in the narrative as the internal space of the characters, and in turn as that of the audience. Codes available elsewhere are used to generate terror of physical space- resembling interior space. The logical structures of the underworld and the physical (architectural) structures in which the underworld functions are connected to each other by the fashion the latter is filmed. The dark alleys, shadowy rooms, carefully arranged careless halls, atmosphere of dampness, cobwebbed attics, etc. stand for the interior- psychology of those involved in such places. The audience is dragged into such spaces, both physically and mentally. This is terrible.

Vasudevan mentions why the gothic lineage of these structures is significant. These spaces disclose the inner logic of their narrative worlds. He also quotes Mazumdar as arguing that all these are self conscious drawing on of codes generated elsewhere (post-war American genre of film noir). That is, using codes that are historically available for us. Wherever the origin is, such films have changed the texture of our viewing pattern.

Space and Audience

            The history of Hindi filmdom is punctuated by formal transformations in the technology and style of international cinema. Global availability of ‘new’ changed things within India. 70s saw a transformation in filmic representation of Bombay, to accommodate the emergence of a character and urban subjectivity: says Vasudevan. Within this ‘new,’ the city remained a stage, rather than becoming a realistically evoked space. The reasons could be our tradition in drama based film making. City space, though considerably expanded within films, still worked as a background for new types of conflict, subjectivity, etc.

            One of the interesting notes of Vasudevan is that in such films, the audience is not left in their seats in the cinema, to look figures cast against a background. They are drawn into the film they are to flow amongst objects and figures within the space-rime of the fictive world. This involving cinema drags audience to interact with the form of cinema. The familiar sights on screen and expected responses transport us. Narrative comes to a halt. It becomes spatialised. Later, it takes the audience to engage in a dialogue with the space, and the objects within it. This is because the space in these movies is the urban space, which is integral to the urban dweller. So it is easy for urban audience to get into a discourse with the space.

Climate and space

            The climatic condition of the urban space is also important to films. They help to generate moods. The space which is already associated with various moods, when painted with climatic conditions, there emerges another texture which qualifies the space.

Railway station

            Railway track and station are extensively used to indicate the proximity of death, terror and danger in everyday life - Existential condition of city life/the urban. The presence of railway in the city is used to create a sense of the everyday vulnerability of the crowded city to the railway accident. As described in the article, the villain could get rid of the key witness in a case against him, by plunging a cigarette into the witness’ hand. The city trains are naturally jam-packed. The victim had to leave his hand in unexpected pain and he falls out and dies- as easy as that. A natural accident is created. Such scenes suggest more than the chances of everyday life- something precarious, something unsaid. Probably, this kind of suggestions have increased the urban anxiety even while enjoying every moment of it.

            Railway tracks run parallel to each other, and parallel to urban life. A derailing of either of these parallels could pose danger to each other. This is an aspect of urban life. When camera moves parallel to the track, there is double presence accompanying the audience.

Realism and Reality Effects

            Use of realism in the 80s is attributed to the attempts to reduce explanatory force. The phenomenon of place being abstracted into a non-identifiable space of the globalised imagination took place in the early 90s. But in the urban action films, there is a strong orientation to local constructions of the city, mainly because Bombay functions as part of a national imaginary. Realism in such sense is there in the movies. Then comes the reality effects. These are auditory or visual cues which suggest that which is unexplained, that which doesn’t directly link with the characters. These effects enhance the experience of the movie space. This can afford to perceive incidental space, unlike realism procedure.

Another issue discussed here is how social world and terror tend to overlap everyday. Since the movie locates itself in the city which the audience is familiar with, the characters who are in danger are similar to the audience in the cinema. The same audience who sit in the theatre may be unaware of the dangers that are passing just outside or over the theatre. May be in their courtyard, a gang is hiding to attack another gang or even his/her family! Thus, such films problematise the inside/outside world in the city. Here we see how realism is used or adapted to the popular multi-diegetic format of the hindi films, using spaces of multiple narrations, to insert the spectator into the cinematic imagining of the city.

Politics

            The article, from the beginning hints about the politics of the city influencing film and the other way around. Character formation and space composition are influenced by the current political scenario. The single hero, wandering in the city of the 70s is replaced in the 80s with a group of youngsters sitting in city corners. This sense of joint political action has gone into films. This is seen as an echo of the worldview of the Shiv Sena in Bombay. The VP Singh government’s attempts to implement the Mandal Commission report and the subsequent uprising are other backgrounds to such political developments in these films. Cinema gains lofty position in giving an overview of political scenario in the city. As we see in the film Satya, the camera is placed above the Deity of Ganesha, to look upon the scene of chaos, where the gangster turned politician is bleeding to death. Here, camera along with the audience is privileged to see what people in the mess cannot see. People are made to witness this terror from another angle altogether. Head on engagement between present/ politics/ screen and audience has been a recurrent subtheme of our films.