Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Art Cinema by James Harvey

Author:James Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

SPATIAL FIGURATIONS

Rancière reminds us that politics is aesthetic; it is determined by spatial configurations and exclusions: what is seen and not seen, who is heard and not heard, what is sensical and not sensical. While this perceptual law governs one’s experience of a work of art, aesthetics in this sense refers broadly to the configuration of all that is perceivable – the arrangement and partitioning of elements into a social order of perception. We can locate this configurative ordering in the aforementioned therapy session. Caden occupies a familiar position: on the couch, adjacent to the master in her chair. Dissensus occurs by way of intervening into this logic (the reconfiguration of Caden’s mental stability). The critical dissensus of the film’s hyperactive speed disrupts the normality of this configuration and inserts a division in the common sense. As Madeleine ascends a staircase to retrieve a book for her patient, her higher position asserts a further, figurative value to the spatial distribution in the mise en scène. While the social is a collection of aesthetic configurations, works of art (a category distinct from the aesthetic) often entail the utilisation of figurative associations like these; but figuration is still determined by a spatial, aesthetic arrangement. A figurative image stands for something when it resigns its material function over to another (invisible, abstract) body. In this sense, Madeleine on the stairs stands for the power of the doctor. This a good starting point to discuss what I shall refer to as spatial figuration: the figurative capacity of the mise en scène. Throughout the film, images are formatted into a recognisable configuration to suit a particular, narrative purpose; but these images acquire a figurative dimension beyond that original configuration. Like the use of high-speed and accumulation, meaning is at once represented and thwarted, with the effect of evoking something else beyond the original representation.

As implied by the film’s title, Synecdoche is concerned with the distinction between the figurative and the configurative. Crucially for this discussion, though, is the possibility that the film shows us the process of going from the figurative to the reconfigurative. Left alone with an urge to create a masterpiece, Caden constructs a gigantic stage that duplicates Manhattan. In turn, the stage directions he gives to his cast stem directly from his own recent experiences. He believes he is configuring a like-for-like copy of the world to better understand it through art. However – as he demonstrates through his compulsive, neurotic tendency of churning out potential titles for the play – he frequently voices a desire for this realistic imitation to stand for ‘something else’. Consider, for instance, one of his suggestions for a play title: Infectious Diseases in Cattle (an allegory reminiscent of Orwell). The most extreme single instance of figuration must be Hazel’s (the box office assistant’s) burning house.4 It signals the point at which nothing in the film can be taken at face value any longer. Asked about the meaning of Hazel’s house (aflame throughout the film), Kaufman replies:

I like for people to figure things out for themselves.

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