> D. and I argue about this all the time. He thinks that contradictory/differing versions make things less real. I think they make them more so -- just like multiple eye witness accounts differ, if they're true. When they're identical -- that's when you begin to think people are lying.
I think it depends on the media, work(s) and the viewer(s) in question. My specialty is film and motion picture media, so that's where I get my examples. Rashomon is widely acclaimed for good reasons, and its very subject is the multiple differing eye witness accounts of a single incident -- which cannot be simply reduced or resolved. However, the film itself displays a high degree of aesthetic coherence or unity, and I wonder what D would think of it in terms of being real. For me, part of the very pleasure of the film is that it is simultaneously a psychologically engaging mystery that allows me to suspend my disbelief at many moments, a virtuosically constructed work that contains many sophisticated forms, AND an allegory for human contradiction and weakness that connects these two levels -- the story and the art work. This complex and in some ways, contradictory pleasure comes from my simultaneously feeling that the work is "real" AND "unreal".
I guess what I'm saying is that for me, this is a case where I can almost always have my cake and eat it, too, if it is a sufficiently well-made work or if I am in a sufficiently open frame of mind. Multiple povs (and attendant narrative contradictions) are a formal property like any other to me -- what matters to me is whether they _function_ well within this work of art, hopefully on multiple levels.
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Date: 2009-02-14 12:29 am (UTC)I think it depends on the media, work(s) and the viewer(s) in question. My specialty is film and motion picture media, so that's where I get my examples. Rashomon is widely acclaimed for good reasons, and its very subject is the multiple differing eye witness accounts of a single incident -- which cannot be simply reduced or resolved. However, the film itself displays a high degree of aesthetic coherence or unity, and I wonder what D would think of it in terms of being real. For me, part of the very pleasure of the film is that it is simultaneously a psychologically engaging mystery that allows me to suspend my disbelief at many moments, a virtuosically constructed work that contains many sophisticated forms, AND an allegory for human contradiction and weakness that connects these two levels -- the story and the art work. This complex and in some ways, contradictory pleasure comes from my simultaneously feeling that the work is "real" AND "unreal".
I guess what I'm saying is that for me, this is a case where I can almost always have my cake and eat it, too, if it is a sufficiently well-made work or if I am in a sufficiently open frame of mind. Multiple povs (and attendant narrative contradictions) are a formal property like any other to me -- what matters to me is whether they _function_ well within this work of art, hopefully on multiple levels.