Mario Slugan | Queen Mary, University of London (original) (raw)

Books by Mario Slugan

Bloomsbury, 2019

When watching the latest instalment of Batman, it is perfectly proper to say that we see Batman f... more When watching the latest instalment of Batman, it is perfectly proper to say that we see Batman fighting Bane. It is not customary to say that we see Christian Bale dressed as Batman going through the motions of punching Tom Hardy pretending to be Bane. But if we consider the promotion and reception from the early days of the cinema, we realize that producers and audiences alike spoke precisely in latter terms. In other words, productions such as Méliès’s 1898 Four Troublesome Heads and Porter’s 1903 Uncle Tom’s Cabin that we nowadays consider as some of the earliest film fictions, were treated as “documentational” recordings of (magic) theatre performance around 1900. In an innovative combination of new film history and philosophical aesthetics, Mario Slugan proposes that the period between 1880 and 1915 provides a unique opportunity not only for construing how a new representational medium became employed in the production of fictions and the crucial role the discourse on imaginary engagement played in this process but for better understanding the notion of fiction overall. By looking at the production, promotion, exhibition, and reception of early European and American cinema, he investigates why we engage some films as fictions and others as nonfictions despite both being based on actuality material – photographs. Most strikingly, Slugan argues that film’s fictional status may change over time and that cinema provides a better model for understanding fiction than literature.

Bloomsbury, 2019

Noël Carroll’s work has had profound consequences on the philosophy of art and his unique backgro... more Noël Carroll’s work has had profound consequences on the philosophy of art and his unique background in both cinema and philosophy has been crucial to his aesthetics. Yet despite this, in cinema studies Carroll has enjoyed considerably less attention than philosophers working in the continental tradition. As such this is the first monograph to address a major analytic philosopher’s take on cinema and art. Noël Carroll on Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture explains the institutional reasons behind Carroll’s relative lack of popularity in film studies and assesses his vehement attack on both classical (Bazin, Arnheim, Perkins) and post-classical film theory (Metz, Baudry, Heath). The book also introduces the reader to an even lesser known aspect of Carroll’s work – film interpretation and documentary filmmaking – both of which are crucial for the formation of his theoretical positions. In the age of postmodern scepticism, Carroll’s defence of the notions of truth and objectivity in practical, interpretative and theoretical work alike provides a welcome antidote to “anything goes” attitudes. His emphasis on conceptual clarity and piecemeal theorizing, the monograph argues, has not only opened the field of cinema studies to analytic philosophy and cognitivism but has also paved the way to novel definition of art in general.

Camden House, 2017

Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and its film adaptations by Jutzi and Fassbinder are ... more Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and its film adaptations by Jutzi and Fassbinder are canonical works of literature and cinema, and yet there is no monograph that treats all three. This omission is even more striking since Döblin's novel is seen as the most famous example of literary appropriation of film montage aesthetics. Mario Slugan addresses this glaring oversight by considering montage in experiential, historic, stylistic, and narratological terms. Starting from the novel argument that montage is best understood as a perceptual experience rather than as a juxtaposition of meaning, Slugan proposes that it was the perceived experiential similarity with Dada photomontage and Soviet montage films rather than any semantic contrast that made contemporary critics identify Berlin Alexanderplatz as the first novel to appropriate film montage. It was the perceived relative absence of montage in the filmings of the novel, moreover, that significantly contributed to their contemporary dismissals as failed adaptations. Slugan argues that both Jutzi's and Fassbinder's films nevertheless present innovative types of both visual and sound montage. These, in turn, allow for the articulation of medium-specific traits of film montage as opposed to those of literary montage, including the organization of time and space, the use of ready-made material, and the relation of montage to the figure of the narrator.

Edited Volumes by Mario Slugan

Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, 2019

Special Issue 8 of Apparatus

Papers by Mario Slugan

Fiction film remains the privileged focus of text-oriented film studies despite the growing inter... more Fiction film remains the privileged focus of text-oriented film studies despite the growing interest in other film forms. Fiction as a concept also organizes the field's key taxonomyfiction v. nonfictionyet little work has been devoted to the notion of fiction itself. The work that does exist is either textualist or spectator centred. The article argues that this leads to significant issues. First, categorization of numerous films diverges significantly from the ordinary understanding of the fiction/nonfiction divide. Second, such categorization may lead to both misunderstanding of audience experience and ethical problems alike. Third, theoretical commitments revolving around indexicality although partially applicable to documentary cannot shed light on fiction contrary to numerous attempts to do so. Fourth, one of discipline's key assumptionsfiction films change real-life beliefsdemands a theory of the relationship between fiction and belief that is currently absent in film studies. Closer scrutiny of the notion of fiction, the article argues, is necessary to dispel these issues. Specifically, the article advocates for 1) non-textualist accounts of fiction and 2) a theory of the relationship of fiction to imagination and belief.

The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Early Popular Visual Culture 09 Jun 2019 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17460654.2019.1623058

Some of the most influential accounts of the transition from the cinema of attractions to narrati... more Some of the most influential accounts of the transition from the cinema of attractions to narrative cinema have relied heavily on the figure of the film narrator. Tom Gunning (1994), for instance, has explained D.W. Griffith’s innovations in terms of Genettian extradiegetic narrator. André Gaudreault (2009) has argued that the filmic narrative agency existed even before these developments in editing in the figure of the monstrator. This paper argues that in general early narrative cinema introduced no such narrators. The argument is twofold. First, I demonstrate that film narrators Gunning and Gaudreault speak of are not merely theoretical abstractions but entities which populate fictional worlds much like fictional characters do. Yet the ontological aspects of their theories hinge on a formally invalid argument that can be tracked to Christian Metz and Albert Laffay. Although this means that fictional narratives do not necessarily introduce fictional narrators, it does not mean that they cannot. If narrative cinema introduced fictional narrators, then the best-case scenario in support of Gunning and Gaudreault’s view is that these were so novel that they were identified by their contemporaries. In the second part of the paper, therefore, I turn to historical data. I show that even the arguably most informed contemporary writings on the subject – screenwriting manuals – fail to identify any such entities. In fact, in making their own vocal ontological claims about the absence of film narrators the manuals present an alternative theory to Gunning and Gaudreault’s which articulates how a fictional narrative can proceed without a fictional narrator.

Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, 2019

Editorial to Special Issue 8 of Apparatus

Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, 2019

Despite fiction film arguably being the privileged object of film theory the notion of “fiction” ... more Despite fiction film arguably being the privileged object of film theory the notion of “fiction” has been undertheorized by film scholars in general and those working in German in particular. Perhaps the most important exception to this trend has been Gertrud Koch and Christiane Voss’ (2009) edited volume on fiction on the intersection of philosophy, film, and media studies. This paper tackles two of the most notable film scholarly contributions to the volume – Koch’s and Vinzenz Hediger’s – and their attempts to define fiction in terms of medium properties as well as their efforts to articulate all photographic films as simultaneously fictional and nonfictional. In the first case, I demonstrate that medium underdetermines whether something is fictional or not. In the second, I argue that although fiction is a temporally unstable category, it is possible to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction at a given moment in time. I conclude with a call to applying Kendall L. Walton’s (1990) transmedial theory of fiction to film, by listing a number of its advantages over competing proposals and by emphasizing its suitability for investigating the change in films’ fictional status over time.

Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 2019

In the early days of cinema, 'fakes'-films which stage an event or refashion an existing film as ... more In the early days of cinema, 'fakes'-films which stage an event or refashion an existing film as a representation of the event in question-could be found in genres as varied as war films, actualities, boxing films, passion plays, etc. By using catalogues, newspaper reports, trade press, contemporary accounts, etc. this essay aims to better understand how the category of 'fake' films was construed c.1900 and whether the audiences were ever fooled by the producers', distributors', and exhibitors' misleading claims. Specifically, I argue that 'fake' film was a broader category than re-enactments which sometimes included representations of sensationalist events on par with present-day 'fake news' and that distinguishing 'fake' films from genuine ones led to problems on more than one occasion.

Projections, 2017

This article argues against the standard readings of Bazin’s seminal essay “The Ontology of the P... more This article argues against the standard readings of Bazin’s seminal essay “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” which are based on Charles S. Peirce’s account of indexicality but for reasons distinct from recent influential criticism of this approach in film studies. The article also moves beyond the accounts of Bazin in the analytic tradition, by building on a rare analysis that takes Bazin’s notion of identity between the photographic image and the model seriously. Whereas Jonathan Friday proposes identity to be construed as psychological, the article argues that, under the dual theory of light available to Bazin at the time, identity between the photographic images and object photographed literally holds for some photographs—namely, negatives of objects which emit light. The article concludes with an explanation of why Bazin thought the identity holds for all photographs.

Early Popular Visual culture, 2016

This article investigates Walter Benjamin’s influential generalization that the effects of cinema... more This article investigates Walter Benjamin’s influential generalization
that the effects of cinema are akin to the hyper-stimulating experience
of modernity. More specifically, I focus on his oft-cited 1935/36 claim
that all editing elicits shock-like disruption. First, I propose a more
detailed articulation of the experience of modernity understood as
hyper-stimulation and call for distinguishing between at least two of
its subsets: the experience of speed and dynamism, on the one hand,
and the experience of shock/disruption, on the other. Then I turn to
classical film theory of the late 1920s to demonstrate the existence of
contemporary views on editing alternative to Benjamin’s. For instance,
whereas classical Soviet and Weimar theorists relate the experience
of speed and dynamism to both Soviet and classical Hollywood style
editing, they reserve the experience of shock/disruption for Soviet
montage. In order to resolve the conceptual disagreement between
these theorists, on the one hand, and Benjamin, on the other, I turn
to late 1920s Weimar film criticism. I demonstrate that, contrary to
Benjamin’s generalizations about the disruptive and shock-like nature
of all editing, and in line with other theorists’ accounts, different
editing practices were regularly distinguished by comparison to at
least two distinct hyper-stimulation subsets: speed and dynamism,
and shock-like disruption. In other words, contemporaries regularly
distinguished between Soviet montage and classical Hollywood
editing patterns on the basis of experiential effects alone. On the
basis of contemporary reviews of city symphonies, I conclude with a
proposal for distinguishing a third subset – confusion.

How to Make Believe: The Fictional Truths of the Representational Arts, edited by J. Alexander Bareis and Lene Nordrum, 2015

Noël Carroll (2006), Gregory Currie (2010), Berys Gaut (2004, 2010) and Andrew Kania (2005) have ... more Noël Carroll (2006), Gregory Currie (2010), Berys Gaut (2004, 2010) and Andrew
Kania (2005) have garnered much attention recently claiming that no fictional
narrators exist but explicit ones such as Ishmael from Hermann Melville’s Moby
Dick. George Wilson (2007, 2011) responded. Elsewhere I have argued in more
detail against Carroll (2006) and Kania (2005), but for reasons different than
Wilson (2007). In fact, in the same place I have argued that Wilson (2007) also
gets it wrong. In this introduction, I will briefly run through this territory again
in order to articulate my own argument for the near-ubiquity of controlling fictional
narrators (henceforth CFNs) in literary fiction based on deictic properties
of verbs. In the second section, I will address objections to my argument raised
by Gaut (2004, 2010) and Currie (2010) by demonstrating that their various appeals
to indeterminacy do not suspend deictic properties. The focus on the second-
person narratives in the third section will allow me to flesh out another
important property of deixis in fiction – intra-ontological reference – and to, at
the same time, clear up some confusion about the effect usually referred to as
ontological destabilization. The discussion will serve as a bridge to the final
section where I will argue against the identification of CFNs in film based on
metaphorical attribution of deictical properties to film. I will conclude with the
criticism of Wilson’s latest attempt to ubiquitously attribute CFNs to film.

American Society For Aesthetics Graduate E Journal, Jul 14, 2014

Here I address the debate concerning the (in)existence of controlling fictional narrators in film... more Here I address the debate concerning the (in)existence of controlling fictional narrators in film. In the first part I turn to general arguments and criticize George Wilson’s latest defense of the existence of controlling fictional narrators. Wilson claims that the existence of controlling fictional narrators hinges on the validity of the Fictional Showing Hypothesis, which in turn rests on the Imagined Seeing Thesis. I argue that Wilson’s Imagined Seeing Thesis and Fictional Showing Hypothesis are about game-worlds, whereas existence of fictional narrators is about work-worlds. As such, they cannot tell us anything about the (in)existence of narrators. In the second part of the paper I turn to the possibility of character narrators acting as controlling fictional ones. I argue against the standard example of this – the case of Addison DeWitt in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All about Eve – but do not dismiss the possibility in general. I conclude with a claim that fiction films are characterized by the near-absence of controlling fictional narrators though some examples to the contrary may be found. I sketch out a typology of these cases.

Letter in response to Žižek's criticism of my article.

In this article I argue for criteria in evaluating the persuasiveness of interpretative work: pro... more In this article I argue for criteria in evaluating the persuasiveness of interpretative work: propositional factuality, argumentative validity and conceptual coherence. With the above criteria in mind I analyze Slavoj Žižek’s work on film – overall rhetorical strategy employed, film theories supported and interpretative work undertaken. I demonstrate that Žižek’s film theory is plagued by hasty generalizations and inaccurate formal analyses which make it fail to compete with its main rival – cognitivism. I point to the conceptual incoherence of the key philosophical term Žižek near-ubiquitously resorts to in his interpretative work – the Real. Finally, the identification of repetition as a key rhetorical strategy allows me to dismiss numerous interpretative and theoretical claims Žižek bases on a limited set of fixed examples by demonstrating that their descriptions are factually incorrect.

lucian.uchicago.edu, 2011

Prompted by comments and criticisms of a paper dealing with Emir Kusturica’s Zivot je cudo made b... more Prompted by comments and criticisms of a paper dealing with Emir Kusturica’s Zivot je cudo made by an anonymous reviewer I hope to address three issues: 1) the expansion of the canon studied, 2) the ideological slant of the study, and 3) the question of weight given to extra-textual evidence.
First, the reviewer points out that studying Kusturica’s movies, especially Underground, brings nothing new to the table because it rehashes old formulas touching either on ethnic propaganda (Cerovic 1995, Finkielkraut 1995a, 1995b) or on Balkan stereotypes (Iordanova 2001, Zizek 1997a, 1997b, Levi 2007). New movies and director’s should be sought out in order to apply Todorova’s (1997) theoretical framework. I argue that it is illegitimate to expand the canon to works the circulation of which is limited and that is why Kusturica remains our best bet. Nevertheless, I demonstrate that the focus should be switched from Underground to Zivot je cudo.
Secondly, I tackle the reviewer’s skepticism of “insider” analysis because it necessarily has an ideological/nationalistic slant (the reviewer points out all ex-Yugoslav commentators have something to gain or lose by the virtue of their nationalities). I point out that the study of Balkanism is itself a political project and thus has an ideological slant, and that the commentators, regardless of their nationality stand to gain or lose something. Thus, we should focus on the comments made not the commentators.
Finally, I conclude with an appeal to giving intra-textual evidence or rebuttals of Balkanism greater emphasis than extra-textual ones, especially because in Kusturica’s case it reveals that the often overlooked aesthetic break that takes place with Dom za vesanje goes hand in hand with the representation of Balkan sterotypes. Whether this is subversion or proliferation of Balkanism remains to be settled.

Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Jan 1, 2011

In this article, I examine responses to Balkanism found in Emir Kusturica’s critically acclaimed ... more In this article, I examine responses to Balkanism found in Emir Kusturica’s critically acclaimed Život je čudo/Life is a Miracle. I identify three rejoinders set at correcting one of the following: the attribution of blame for the Bosnian War, western essentialization of the Balkans, and the image of the Balkans as a primitive and untamed backwater. I argue that all of these responses commence as attempts at positive remodelling of the negative Balkan image, but because they hinge on attracting western attention, collapse either into ethnic chauvinism or proliferation of Balkan stereotypes. I then examine the ethnic favouritism epitomized by the image of the sagacious and neutral Serb. Finally, I focus on the reaction to the image of the Balkans construed by the West as exemplified by, what I call, ‘remodelling’. While re-modelling aims to change how one is perceived, remodelling perpetuates and intensifies that perception. It is the latter that permeates Life is a Miracle as well as most of Kusturica’s work.

Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics, 2010

Bloomsbury, 2019

When watching the latest instalment of Batman, it is perfectly proper to say that we see Batman f... more When watching the latest instalment of Batman, it is perfectly proper to say that we see Batman fighting Bane. It is not customary to say that we see Christian Bale dressed as Batman going through the motions of punching Tom Hardy pretending to be Bane. But if we consider the promotion and reception from the early days of the cinema, we realize that producers and audiences alike spoke precisely in latter terms. In other words, productions such as Méliès’s 1898 Four Troublesome Heads and Porter’s 1903 Uncle Tom’s Cabin that we nowadays consider as some of the earliest film fictions, were treated as “documentational” recordings of (magic) theatre performance around 1900. In an innovative combination of new film history and philosophical aesthetics, Mario Slugan proposes that the period between 1880 and 1915 provides a unique opportunity not only for construing how a new representational medium became employed in the production of fictions and the crucial role the discourse on imaginary engagement played in this process but for better understanding the notion of fiction overall. By looking at the production, promotion, exhibition, and reception of early European and American cinema, he investigates why we engage some films as fictions and others as nonfictions despite both being based on actuality material – photographs. Most strikingly, Slugan argues that film’s fictional status may change over time and that cinema provides a better model for understanding fiction than literature.

Bloomsbury, 2019

Noël Carroll’s work has had profound consequences on the philosophy of art and his unique backgro... more Noël Carroll’s work has had profound consequences on the philosophy of art and his unique background in both cinema and philosophy has been crucial to his aesthetics. Yet despite this, in cinema studies Carroll has enjoyed considerably less attention than philosophers working in the continental tradition. As such this is the first monograph to address a major analytic philosopher’s take on cinema and art. Noël Carroll on Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture explains the institutional reasons behind Carroll’s relative lack of popularity in film studies and assesses his vehement attack on both classical (Bazin, Arnheim, Perkins) and post-classical film theory (Metz, Baudry, Heath). The book also introduces the reader to an even lesser known aspect of Carroll’s work – film interpretation and documentary filmmaking – both of which are crucial for the formation of his theoretical positions. In the age of postmodern scepticism, Carroll’s defence of the notions of truth and objectivity in practical, interpretative and theoretical work alike provides a welcome antidote to “anything goes” attitudes. His emphasis on conceptual clarity and piecemeal theorizing, the monograph argues, has not only opened the field of cinema studies to analytic philosophy and cognitivism but has also paved the way to novel definition of art in general.

Camden House, 2017

Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and its film adaptations by Jutzi and Fassbinder are ... more Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and its film adaptations by Jutzi and Fassbinder are canonical works of literature and cinema, and yet there is no monograph that treats all three. This omission is even more striking since Döblin's novel is seen as the most famous example of literary appropriation of film montage aesthetics. Mario Slugan addresses this glaring oversight by considering montage in experiential, historic, stylistic, and narratological terms. Starting from the novel argument that montage is best understood as a perceptual experience rather than as a juxtaposition of meaning, Slugan proposes that it was the perceived experiential similarity with Dada photomontage and Soviet montage films rather than any semantic contrast that made contemporary critics identify Berlin Alexanderplatz as the first novel to appropriate film montage. It was the perceived relative absence of montage in the filmings of the novel, moreover, that significantly contributed to their contemporary dismissals as failed adaptations. Slugan argues that both Jutzi's and Fassbinder's films nevertheless present innovative types of both visual and sound montage. These, in turn, allow for the articulation of medium-specific traits of film montage as opposed to those of literary montage, including the organization of time and space, the use of ready-made material, and the relation of montage to the figure of the narrator.

Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, 2019

Special Issue 8 of Apparatus

Fiction film remains the privileged focus of text-oriented film studies despite the growing inter... more Fiction film remains the privileged focus of text-oriented film studies despite the growing interest in other film forms. Fiction as a concept also organizes the field's key taxonomyfiction v. nonfictionyet little work has been devoted to the notion of fiction itself. The work that does exist is either textualist or spectator centred. The article argues that this leads to significant issues. First, categorization of numerous films diverges significantly from the ordinary understanding of the fiction/nonfiction divide. Second, such categorization may lead to both misunderstanding of audience experience and ethical problems alike. Third, theoretical commitments revolving around indexicality although partially applicable to documentary cannot shed light on fiction contrary to numerous attempts to do so. Fourth, one of discipline's key assumptionsfiction films change real-life beliefsdemands a theory of the relationship between fiction and belief that is currently absent in film studies. Closer scrutiny of the notion of fiction, the article argues, is necessary to dispel these issues. Specifically, the article advocates for 1) non-textualist accounts of fiction and 2) a theory of the relationship of fiction to imagination and belief.

The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Early Popular Visual Culture 09 Jun 2019 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17460654.2019.1623058

Some of the most influential accounts of the transition from the cinema of attractions to narrati... more Some of the most influential accounts of the transition from the cinema of attractions to narrative cinema have relied heavily on the figure of the film narrator. Tom Gunning (1994), for instance, has explained D.W. Griffith’s innovations in terms of Genettian extradiegetic narrator. André Gaudreault (2009) has argued that the filmic narrative agency existed even before these developments in editing in the figure of the monstrator. This paper argues that in general early narrative cinema introduced no such narrators. The argument is twofold. First, I demonstrate that film narrators Gunning and Gaudreault speak of are not merely theoretical abstractions but entities which populate fictional worlds much like fictional characters do. Yet the ontological aspects of their theories hinge on a formally invalid argument that can be tracked to Christian Metz and Albert Laffay. Although this means that fictional narratives do not necessarily introduce fictional narrators, it does not mean that they cannot. If narrative cinema introduced fictional narrators, then the best-case scenario in support of Gunning and Gaudreault’s view is that these were so novel that they were identified by their contemporaries. In the second part of the paper, therefore, I turn to historical data. I show that even the arguably most informed contemporary writings on the subject – screenwriting manuals – fail to identify any such entities. In fact, in making their own vocal ontological claims about the absence of film narrators the manuals present an alternative theory to Gunning and Gaudreault’s which articulates how a fictional narrative can proceed without a fictional narrator.

Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, 2019

Editorial to Special Issue 8 of Apparatus

Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, 2019

Despite fiction film arguably being the privileged object of film theory the notion of “fiction” ... more Despite fiction film arguably being the privileged object of film theory the notion of “fiction” has been undertheorized by film scholars in general and those working in German in particular. Perhaps the most important exception to this trend has been Gertrud Koch and Christiane Voss’ (2009) edited volume on fiction on the intersection of philosophy, film, and media studies. This paper tackles two of the most notable film scholarly contributions to the volume – Koch’s and Vinzenz Hediger’s – and their attempts to define fiction in terms of medium properties as well as their efforts to articulate all photographic films as simultaneously fictional and nonfictional. In the first case, I demonstrate that medium underdetermines whether something is fictional or not. In the second, I argue that although fiction is a temporally unstable category, it is possible to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction at a given moment in time. I conclude with a call to applying Kendall L. Walton’s (1990) transmedial theory of fiction to film, by listing a number of its advantages over competing proposals and by emphasizing its suitability for investigating the change in films’ fictional status over time.

Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 2019

In the early days of cinema, 'fakes'-films which stage an event or refashion an existing film as ... more In the early days of cinema, 'fakes'-films which stage an event or refashion an existing film as a representation of the event in question-could be found in genres as varied as war films, actualities, boxing films, passion plays, etc. By using catalogues, newspaper reports, trade press, contemporary accounts, etc. this essay aims to better understand how the category of 'fake' films was construed c.1900 and whether the audiences were ever fooled by the producers', distributors', and exhibitors' misleading claims. Specifically, I argue that 'fake' film was a broader category than re-enactments which sometimes included representations of sensationalist events on par with present-day 'fake news' and that distinguishing 'fake' films from genuine ones led to problems on more than one occasion.

Projections, 2017

This article argues against the standard readings of Bazin’s seminal essay “The Ontology of the P... more This article argues against the standard readings of Bazin’s seminal essay “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” which are based on Charles S. Peirce’s account of indexicality but for reasons distinct from recent influential criticism of this approach in film studies. The article also moves beyond the accounts of Bazin in the analytic tradition, by building on a rare analysis that takes Bazin’s notion of identity between the photographic image and the model seriously. Whereas Jonathan Friday proposes identity to be construed as psychological, the article argues that, under the dual theory of light available to Bazin at the time, identity between the photographic images and object photographed literally holds for some photographs—namely, negatives of objects which emit light. The article concludes with an explanation of why Bazin thought the identity holds for all photographs.

Early Popular Visual culture, 2016

This article investigates Walter Benjamin’s influential generalization that the effects of cinema... more This article investigates Walter Benjamin’s influential generalization
that the effects of cinema are akin to the hyper-stimulating experience
of modernity. More specifically, I focus on his oft-cited 1935/36 claim
that all editing elicits shock-like disruption. First, I propose a more
detailed articulation of the experience of modernity understood as
hyper-stimulation and call for distinguishing between at least two of
its subsets: the experience of speed and dynamism, on the one hand,
and the experience of shock/disruption, on the other. Then I turn to
classical film theory of the late 1920s to demonstrate the existence of
contemporary views on editing alternative to Benjamin’s. For instance,
whereas classical Soviet and Weimar theorists relate the experience
of speed and dynamism to both Soviet and classical Hollywood style
editing, they reserve the experience of shock/disruption for Soviet
montage. In order to resolve the conceptual disagreement between
these theorists, on the one hand, and Benjamin, on the other, I turn
to late 1920s Weimar film criticism. I demonstrate that, contrary to
Benjamin’s generalizations about the disruptive and shock-like nature
of all editing, and in line with other theorists’ accounts, different
editing practices were regularly distinguished by comparison to at
least two distinct hyper-stimulation subsets: speed and dynamism,
and shock-like disruption. In other words, contemporaries regularly
distinguished between Soviet montage and classical Hollywood
editing patterns on the basis of experiential effects alone. On the
basis of contemporary reviews of city symphonies, I conclude with a
proposal for distinguishing a third subset – confusion.

How to Make Believe: The Fictional Truths of the Representational Arts, edited by J. Alexander Bareis and Lene Nordrum, 2015

Noël Carroll (2006), Gregory Currie (2010), Berys Gaut (2004, 2010) and Andrew Kania (2005) have ... more Noël Carroll (2006), Gregory Currie (2010), Berys Gaut (2004, 2010) and Andrew
Kania (2005) have garnered much attention recently claiming that no fictional
narrators exist but explicit ones such as Ishmael from Hermann Melville’s Moby
Dick. George Wilson (2007, 2011) responded. Elsewhere I have argued in more
detail against Carroll (2006) and Kania (2005), but for reasons different than
Wilson (2007). In fact, in the same place I have argued that Wilson (2007) also
gets it wrong. In this introduction, I will briefly run through this territory again
in order to articulate my own argument for the near-ubiquity of controlling fictional
narrators (henceforth CFNs) in literary fiction based on deictic properties
of verbs. In the second section, I will address objections to my argument raised
by Gaut (2004, 2010) and Currie (2010) by demonstrating that their various appeals
to indeterminacy do not suspend deictic properties. The focus on the second-
person narratives in the third section will allow me to flesh out another
important property of deixis in fiction – intra-ontological reference – and to, at
the same time, clear up some confusion about the effect usually referred to as
ontological destabilization. The discussion will serve as a bridge to the final
section where I will argue against the identification of CFNs in film based on
metaphorical attribution of deictical properties to film. I will conclude with the
criticism of Wilson’s latest attempt to ubiquitously attribute CFNs to film.

American Society For Aesthetics Graduate E Journal, Jul 14, 2014

Here I address the debate concerning the (in)existence of controlling fictional narrators in film... more Here I address the debate concerning the (in)existence of controlling fictional narrators in film. In the first part I turn to general arguments and criticize George Wilson’s latest defense of the existence of controlling fictional narrators. Wilson claims that the existence of controlling fictional narrators hinges on the validity of the Fictional Showing Hypothesis, which in turn rests on the Imagined Seeing Thesis. I argue that Wilson’s Imagined Seeing Thesis and Fictional Showing Hypothesis are about game-worlds, whereas existence of fictional narrators is about work-worlds. As such, they cannot tell us anything about the (in)existence of narrators. In the second part of the paper I turn to the possibility of character narrators acting as controlling fictional ones. I argue against the standard example of this – the case of Addison DeWitt in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All about Eve – but do not dismiss the possibility in general. I conclude with a claim that fiction films are characterized by the near-absence of controlling fictional narrators though some examples to the contrary may be found. I sketch out a typology of these cases.

Letter in response to Žižek's criticism of my article.

In this article I argue for criteria in evaluating the persuasiveness of interpretative work: pro... more In this article I argue for criteria in evaluating the persuasiveness of interpretative work: propositional factuality, argumentative validity and conceptual coherence. With the above criteria in mind I analyze Slavoj Žižek’s work on film – overall rhetorical strategy employed, film theories supported and interpretative work undertaken. I demonstrate that Žižek’s film theory is plagued by hasty generalizations and inaccurate formal analyses which make it fail to compete with its main rival – cognitivism. I point to the conceptual incoherence of the key philosophical term Žižek near-ubiquitously resorts to in his interpretative work – the Real. Finally, the identification of repetition as a key rhetorical strategy allows me to dismiss numerous interpretative and theoretical claims Žižek bases on a limited set of fixed examples by demonstrating that their descriptions are factually incorrect.

lucian.uchicago.edu, 2011

Prompted by comments and criticisms of a paper dealing with Emir Kusturica’s Zivot je cudo made b... more Prompted by comments and criticisms of a paper dealing with Emir Kusturica’s Zivot je cudo made by an anonymous reviewer I hope to address three issues: 1) the expansion of the canon studied, 2) the ideological slant of the study, and 3) the question of weight given to extra-textual evidence.
First, the reviewer points out that studying Kusturica’s movies, especially Underground, brings nothing new to the table because it rehashes old formulas touching either on ethnic propaganda (Cerovic 1995, Finkielkraut 1995a, 1995b) or on Balkan stereotypes (Iordanova 2001, Zizek 1997a, 1997b, Levi 2007). New movies and director’s should be sought out in order to apply Todorova’s (1997) theoretical framework. I argue that it is illegitimate to expand the canon to works the circulation of which is limited and that is why Kusturica remains our best bet. Nevertheless, I demonstrate that the focus should be switched from Underground to Zivot je cudo.
Secondly, I tackle the reviewer’s skepticism of “insider” analysis because it necessarily has an ideological/nationalistic slant (the reviewer points out all ex-Yugoslav commentators have something to gain or lose by the virtue of their nationalities). I point out that the study of Balkanism is itself a political project and thus has an ideological slant, and that the commentators, regardless of their nationality stand to gain or lose something. Thus, we should focus on the comments made not the commentators.
Finally, I conclude with an appeal to giving intra-textual evidence or rebuttals of Balkanism greater emphasis than extra-textual ones, especially because in Kusturica’s case it reveals that the often overlooked aesthetic break that takes place with Dom za vesanje goes hand in hand with the representation of Balkan sterotypes. Whether this is subversion or proliferation of Balkanism remains to be settled.

Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Jan 1, 2011

In this article, I examine responses to Balkanism found in Emir Kusturica’s critically acclaimed ... more In this article, I examine responses to Balkanism found in Emir Kusturica’s critically acclaimed Život je čudo/Life is a Miracle. I identify three rejoinders set at correcting one of the following: the attribution of blame for the Bosnian War, western essentialization of the Balkans, and the image of the Balkans as a primitive and untamed backwater. I argue that all of these responses commence as attempts at positive remodelling of the negative Balkan image, but because they hinge on attracting western attention, collapse either into ethnic chauvinism or proliferation of Balkan stereotypes. I then examine the ethnic favouritism epitomized by the image of the sagacious and neutral Serb. Finally, I focus on the reaction to the image of the Balkans construed by the West as exemplified by, what I call, ‘remodelling’. While re-modelling aims to change how one is perceived, remodelling perpetuates and intensifies that perception. It is the latter that permeates Life is a Miracle as well as most of Kusturica’s work.

Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics, 2010

European Modelling Symposium 2006, 2006

In this MA thesis I argue for an existence theory of action implicit in Sophocles‟ Theban plays a... more In this MA thesis I argue for an existence theory of action implicit in Sophocles‟ Theban plays and base my claims on the close readings of the tragic texts. I differentiate between non-tragic and tragic actions and spell out the sufficient and necessary conditions for an action to be deemed tragic. Furthermore, I argue that tragic actions, unlike non-tragic ones, are character determined. These claims I base on special employment of literary techniques found in Sophocles‟ texts. Finally, I explain the relation between Sophocles‟ views on internal and external necessity and the way in which they relate to tragic actions. I conclude with the demonstration of conceptual coherence of this implicit theory of action.