Ai ee > Fila CQuaetich Come zoe: G24, THE ONTOLOGY OF A FETISH DUDLEY ANDREW SCRUTINIZES A HITHERTO-UNPUBLISHED TYPESCRIPT FRAGMENT BY ANDRE BAZIN Stacked neatly a meter high in my attic are photocopies of all—or neatly all —Bazin’s published writings. This amounts to over 2600 items, of which, scandalously, less than seven pereent are available in French or English.” With such a treasure of material that he sent out for the world to read, why am 1 fascinated by a single sheet he typed but never published, one I cannot even date with accuracy? I discov exed it while preparing the foreword for the re-edition of What is Cinema? (University of California Press). Glancing through material I had gathered thisty years earlier when. working up Bazin’s biography, I carefully opened Sartre's Limaginaire, the yellowed volume that had been on the bookshelfabove Bazin’s dealhbed and that Janine, his widow, had let me choose asa souvenir in 1974. There weren't many Drooks to choose from (I've never discavered what sort of li brary he maintained), but atthe time I was excited to have irrefutable proof of his interest in Sartre. The Poychofogy of the Imagination {as it was called in English until recently) had been important to me in my undergraduate days, and it was gratifying to know that the inclinations af my own line of thought converged with his, But until reopened this fragile volume in 2004, Thadt {known just how central it was to him. There on pages 38 and 39 were penciled underlinings of passages that he indubitably reworked forthe essay that would anchor his career and make his reputation, “The Ontology of the Photographie Tage” ven without his markup, certain shared phrases leap out, «specially those concerning the “magic” and “imsational” na- ture of the image. In the very fist paragraph of the French criginal, Bazin develops the psychoanalytic sole of inxages. He writes of “the ariow-piereed clay bear to be found in pre- historic eaves, a substitute forthe living animal that will en- sure a successful hunt” Now listen to Sartre: “the effigy of wax pierced with a pin, the wounded bison painted on the walls ih ie i dee Pocaaemecintans nee ne ma to make the hunt more fruitfih” Or look at Bazia’s dating as seition: “the image proceeds from the ontology of the model, itis the mode.” This scandalous elaine seems move defers ble when set beside what Sartre had writton (and what Bazin underlined): "Phe partait of Prerreaets 1 us—almost—like Pierre in person . . [say “This isa portrait of Pien ote briefly: "This is Pierre.” Both men employ as a key ex- ample the portait of king, Concerning, "the image-portiait” of King Charles VII in the Uffizi Gallery Sartre says, “The object is posited as absent, but the impression is present, Hete we have an irrational synthesis... the dead Charles VID is there, present before us. It ise that we see, not the picture. ‘And yet we posi hin as not being there. We have only reached him: ‘as imaged’ by ‘the intermediacy’ ofthe picture, One sees that the relation that consciousness posits in the imaging at tituce between the portrait ane its subject is [properly speak ing] magical”? Bazin used a diferent king, Lonix SIV, anda fferent painter, Charles Le Brun, to evoke the same ination nal synthesis. Wester civlization’s way of presenvingits noble teaders on painted canvas is but a variant of Egyptian mam- nification, though, as opposed to Sarl, Razin sees an evol tion whereby painting has passed beyond an easlier phase wher arts mission was ied 10 magic. We know that Sartre oe casionally attended Ba \é-club near the Sorbonne in 1943. Did they ever disess the fetish power ofthe image? “This physical object produced by La Librarie Gallimard in Spring 1940, this book Bazin purchased when he was twenty-two, becarne my fetish when it fell into-my hands. 1 can't but read the dozen marginalia and underlinings a seats in the struggle between student and master philoso pher. (Bazin’s wonderful piece on Chaplin's The Creat Dietator(1940}, for iestance—is inangaral contribution to sprit in 1945— lights up when set beside pages 40-44 of Libnoginaire.) But there was far more of Bazin ia this vol ume. As {slowly turned the pages in summer 2004, looking for aitional scribbles, a folded sheet fntiered out: Bazin’s \weting that had been stuffed inside the body of Sarre’——.—_ 9 PHOTOGRAPHY: “REPRESENTANT ANALOGIQUE,” “ANALOGON” (SARTRE) Photo-souvenir and photo-at: the first has a simple function (that ofa vehicle}; the second plays on the ambiguity ofits nature; insofar asitis a mechanical product, itrefersto the real of which it isthe fixation; insofar as itis a visible form, it tries to hold our attention fon the visible aspect of itself. A bizarre angle suffices to grab the eye in this way, on its form, before the eye can escape toward the reality that it ans at That which is fixed isthe teal. The photograph of Landra's oven takes on an emotive foree thanks to the jmmediate confidence that one accords the photograph, “nrough this representation of the object, iis the object that moves us, not the representation, The abject itself would move us even more. Ifa piece of newsreel should, perchance, restore for us this object within the event which made it memorable and moving, that is, iFthis oven, which moves us becatise itewwkes certain tawdry newitenns of which it was the pivot, should be rendered present in its real coordinates by virine of cinematic recording, then the rubric “représentant analogique” that we have given to the photograph is cinlarged. The family photo may be the family imamobilized in a here and now; bua film renders the fluidity ofits space and of ts time. The photo was a docranent, the film isa documentary Now let us imagine this film broadcast on live TV. “Then the documentary becomes contemporary with the spectator, asthe spectator is led to participate in an event which is displayed to him through the work of cinematographic technique. [Translated by Dudley Andrew) When did he take the time to type np this sheet? When backlit the page revealsa watermark, "Maton-Pas” Maton hroing a city in Alsace known for paper manufactnce of carbon-dating, however, there seems no way to tell when Bazin tamed the platen and rolled this sheet into position, then started hitting the keys. The example he dwells ou, 2 photograph of Landiu’s oven, cond suggest W47, since that yeat he wrote of Bluebeard (Landru) in his review of Monsicur Verdou (1947). Alater date is unged by the refer- ence to television, since Bazin’ Bist essay on ‘TV came out iw 1951, But André Malraux had already brought up TV in his “Esquisse d'un psychologic dit einen” back im 1940, and we know how important that piece was for Bazin, since Short 64 cusacr 2008 hhe explicitly cites it im the “Ontology” essay. Like Malraux he could easily have been speculating in 1940 on a phe- rnomesion that was in the science news of the time, one that pat cinema in perspective [No matter wha its dae, this page shows Bazin struggling With the specificity of three technological media, Like a sine \eyor, he trimgulates cinema’ pesition between photography und television, and, after first isolating the valence of tech- nological images for reality, he does so in theee successive paragraphs 1. Bazin calls the photograph a document, a tenn he un- derlines. In the French context, this edges him close to Georges Bataille (whose joumal Documents featured disturb- ing photographs not liflerent from the one Bavin brings up, J anidcu's oven that incinerated the bodies of eleven humans} ‘The Surrealists collected and produced bizarre photographs; they inay well have relished this very example. # Breton's 1928 Nadia weaves its dreamy native around Boiffard’s unalter- able photos. About the same time Dal’s obsession with “pre- cisionista” found its best examples in photographs, as alien signs that confront us with a reality outside the human. tn 1943 some of hisacquaintances averted that Bazin was a prace tising Surrealist. Just look at the last page of the “Ontology” essay where he calls a photograph “une hallucination vrai” Sartre, who lonthed surrealism, would never have counte- nanced this formulation thathaunted Bazin’s view of cinema ever alter 2 From the document lo the documentaire, Bazin next innagines the photograph coming alive within an “actuabité (Filmed newsreel} whose subject expands from an object to an cvent or a stateoF affairs. Whereas Sartre concentrated on the celation of the analoyon to the imaige-consciousness it auntomatieilly provokes, Bazin is more concerned with Hie relation of the unafogon to the situation frony which it was “captured.” In Sactze’s view, while every object inainlains an indefinite number of relations to neighboring objects, and is infact made up of an infinite sumber of elements itself, the photograph ents the analogon eff from these relations, fixing itasmatetial forthe imation to play with as itwills Bazin, cn the other hand, cares that the photogmph offers ches about its situation, inviting, acute inspection. A film greatly enlarges this impulse since its analogon delivers not just one or even several objects but the relations of those objects to their spatiotemporal suriaund. We ean scam the sereem for Aletails that the sequence may contain unbeknawn even to the cinematographer (“a reflection on a damp sidewalk, the gesture of child. Only the impasive lens, stripping its object fall those ways of seeing it. ..”). Film, as opposed to photog: raphy, “iso longer content to preserve the abject enshroudedFILM STUDIES New Amsterdam Xo tuibeny Press PP TWe CweMadt ATTRACTIONS RELOADED Edited by Wanda Stravven “These ayy writen by samme ofthe mor pr%9%3 tive and highly excomed schol nlm and ea seus, eval che exe inary historical ad heor real productive of che notion of ataccinme Th ‘athaogy lsboth an inlet east ae ery prac eord of crit Eesicerey in ore fil ses" Mary Ane Doane, Brown Univericy i fel OY Goins to THe Movies Hollywood andthe Social Experience a the Cinema ited by Richard Maltby, Melvyn Stokes, ‘and Robert Allen Fenuringadingushed ‘rnp of in scat, lading Richard Abel, Ae ete Ku. Jane Gains. dad Thomas Dobe thie felume analgees the eke oF cone hws i esl eonrnivies the tke berwcen Bes ad other mertainment red, n09- ‘heacealexhibiden, 0d gn ating om hi ban fans DasrainvTen ev rHe Unvtnsiry oF CnicAgo PRESS. vrs pres.uchienga ea 6 sumer 2008 {incloding movies) recorded earlier. Butas the sports matches, the nightly news, the Olympics, the Oscars, ame other lve broadeasts attest, TV is esontially distinet from cinerng André Bazin's philosophy of the image can be found within that distinction Reading his reading notes | reengnize two Bazins, Op the one hand stands the sunny, textbook Bazin, for whom cinesna reveals reality. ‘This isthe Bazin for whom films arg the monstration of the world’s selEpresentation, offering epiphanies to the vigilant. Qn the other hand, 25 has became increasingly evident, a darker Bazin prefigures several phi losophers in the post-Sartrean Fiench context sight ip tour own day (Derrida, Deleuze, Naney, Raneitre). This isthe Bazin of fag and deferral cinema as a mintor whose tin ge tains the image,” he wonld fater write in anticipation of Derrida, the Bazin ofthe off sexeen and the invisible, and af whatever is not fully given, oF is given ambiguously, o& with. draws into itself Television, for this Bazin, presents or sing Intes the way the world Toots; cinerna, by contiast, points to tn absent reality hroug shadowy traces and echoes of re corded sound But didn't need to interpret these notes to understand what in fact they patpably exemplify, because Sarties Lilmaginaire—this particular copy in my hands—arnd the typed sheet buried tike # mummy within it, conjure Bazi as present in his absence. They constitute —precisely and potently —a fetish. 1, Gs Cintas gal ons passing The opel Prag cape wort ey, 2 feanPail Sate, Te Bragonay « Phenomena Fecha of he Ineglaion wats ooatan Webber (Laud Rails) p23 3 Ake Mu ye dn pyle di inna” Vr (40, “plea "Seth fra Pyeihay he Motion Petna in Saas ig Ttre, ND ft pl ery Pres, 95H Te Fin tly” aie Bs dct Nisin a file de Vere 41 Kobe Wale Pap Sustains tole Raptr Cte any Pentel Conta ars (Bekele: Unset uf Calera Pe, 26! rece [hot linking tandentoAngrn ae tothe Sora cant i 5 Lene Geos Sebo, cn yea Wane eck ae sry} Dace: 28 OLE ANDREW Seldon ose oles Fi nd Compa Lite ate yori, ABSTRACT Tinie ido datos, and yt ope ey Bc wih ee semen! wih Si’ Fe fag. EYWORDS, ig Sate: Bares, coumarin, aogaahy