William James once compared the stream of conscioussness to a bird's life:
"As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of
conscioussness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its
parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of
flights and perchings."
(James: 203)
These flights and perchings serve as a powerful metaphor not only for a
stream of consciousness, but of film - as a cinema of the subconscious
with a collapsing of time, memory and image.
As John-Steiner states: ". . .[M]any intriguing parallels exist between
the manifold itineraries of the human mind at work and the ways in which
images, memories, associations, and stories are combined on
celluloid"
(John-Steiner:
p.102). Many have noted the bizarre semblance of
sunconscoussness captured on film, including the infamous Luis Bunuel, who
once stated: "The screen is a dangerous and wonderful instrument . . .It
is the superior way of expressing the world of dreams, emotions and
instincts. . . The cinema seems to have been invented for the expression
of the subconscious . . ."
(Arando:
p.274) Nowhere is the link between
interior monlogue and external visualization clearer than in Henry
Jaglom's statement that: " . . .[I]f I could grasp what is going on in my
brain sucessfully, I could do it by putting it up on
screen."
(John-Steiner:
p.104)
The cinema is a powerful tool for shaping, and expressing the inner
visual dialogues between memory, imagination, and subconsciousness. Cinema
is also a powerful shaper of the vision society holds of itself -
particularly on the young people in theprocess of building their own
identity. Films are also notorious for the irresponsible and unthinking
use of imagery, a bombardment of images without an underlying concept
other than to engage the individual in the experiential mode. However, it
is also unique in that it uses a relatively conventionalized visual
grammar to represent internal and external realities, and in this it may
be a useful tool in explicating the interdependance of image and language.
A metaphor of flights and perchings applies not only to a cinema of the
subconscious, but also to the users course through the web. Though many
educational programs already incorporate some sort of media-analysis in
some disipline or other, these will prove inadequate as television and the
web begin to fuse - with URLs showing up in movie trailers, and web
surfing becoming more and more like clicking TV channels - an ability to
decode the visual will become an increasingly important part of every
individual's basic education. Turning a blind eye to the impact of visual
imput will not
solve the problem. Only an intensive training in imagery decoding, and
creating, will give each generation the tools to fully understand and be
affective, not simply affected, in their culture.
