Concepts of National Cinema - Literature review Example

National Cinema In his essay on national cinema, Stephen Crofts has argued that ‘national cinema’ as such is no longer an appropriate critical category because of the increasing lack of congruence between nations and nation states. This essay offers a discussion of this argument. The standard definition for national cinema was based earlier on common sense but according to Crofts, adopting such a definition would no longer be valid. He states: “Prior to the 1980s critical writings on cinema adopted common sense notions of national cinema. The idea of national cinema has long informed the promotion of non Hollywood cinemas. Along with the name of the director-auteur, it has served as a means by which non Hollywood films – most commonly art films – have been labelled, distributed and reviewed.” (Crofts, 2000:1). The word ‘national’ in association with cinema suggests that it pertains to themes and subjects that would be relevant to a particular country and be made in the local language that is characteristic of that country. In defining the concept of national cinema, Higson states that it tends to be reduced to “the terms of a quality art cinema, a culturally worthy cinema steeped in the high cultural and/or modernist heritage of a particular national state , rather than one which appeals to the desires and fantasies of the popular audiences.” Where the use of the term “national cinema” as a marketing strategy is concerned, Crofts states that “these national labels have promised varieties of ‘otherness’ – of what is culturally different from both Hollywood and the films of other importing countries.” (Crofts, 2000:1). It would therefore appear that ‘national’ appears to be associated with films that are characteristic of a particular country and demonstrate the various elements of its nationhood. Higson (1989) also offers a text based model of national cinema and argues that when adopting such an approach, the following questions about national cinema may be relevant (a) what the films are about (b) what kind of national character projections do they offer? (c) is there a common style or world view that is evident in these films? (d) to what extent do they question, explore and construct the concept of nationhood in the films that also impact upon the consciousness of the viewer? In effect, national cinema may be categorized as the kind of films that seek to include a nation specific cultural context as well as content in the films, such that the film can be definitely categorized as belonging to national cinema. Martin McLoone, examines national cinema in Ireland, a phenomenon that has emerged within the last fifteen years. He suggests that Irish cinema occupies some “ill defined space between the particular and the universal, between essentialist irrelevance and global insignificance” (Vitali and Willemen, 2006:89). Part of the reason he offers for the inappropriateness of the category of Irish national cinema and its ability to exist with a strong presence in the world market is due to the all encompassing nature of Hollywood films. This is also a concern that emerges in the case of films of other countries such as Australia and England. The reason for their lack of success has been set out by Crofts who states that these cinemas have “sought to beat Hollywood at its own game – and overwhelmingly failed.” (Vitali and Willemen, 2006:50). The predominance of Hollywood as the film medium of choice has been increasingly eroding the national identity that films from other English speaking countries have been trying to establish. The shadow of globalisation looms over the field of cinema as well and national cinema is increasingly becoming an inappropriate category. For instance, Crofts in his article on national cinema has differentiated between seven different types of cinema, including Hollywood cinema, art cinema, regional cinema, indigenous cinema that is also popular and totalitarian cinema. Such categorization however, may not necessarily be fully valid when viewed from the perspective of national cinema, which by definition would be characteristic of a particular country. For example, the notion of an art film would be as applicable in Europe as it would be in other film producing countries such as India, thereby extending across geographical boundaries. Examples of the blurring of the boundaries of what constitutes the parameters of one particular state may be noted in two films, namely Aimee and Jaguar and Naked among wolves, both of which are set in Berlin during the war. The former film deals with a love affair between a female Jewish bohemian writer and the wife of a German officer. It may be noted that the theme of the film deals with several forbidden themes. One of them is homosexuality because same sex unions were frowned upon in those days. Secondly, another issue is the love affair between two people who belonged to races that were in enmity with each other. Thirdly, there were also class differences between them. As a result, the film in its scope, is applicable across geographical boundaries, dealing with issues that cannot be categorized as being peculiar to or characteristic of Germany alone. Naked among wolves is yet another story that is set in Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp. The protagonist of the story is a Polish prisoner carrying a suitcase in which a small Jewish boy is being hidden and saved from the Nazis. The child is discovered by the other prisoners, who are also the underground resistance, trying to organize themselves to carry out a successful rebellion against the Nazis. The issue of conflict becomes the question of keeping the child safe versus mounting an armed resistance against the guards and the child becomes the pivot around whom the story revolves. This story again, although produced in east Germany, cannot be strictly characterized as east German national cinema because the issues it deals with, such as the saving of a child’s life, are universal and common across geographical boundaries. Moreover, both the films would also qualify as art films, because they may not have the wide reach or acceptability that a Hollywood film dealing with the same subject matter would have. The film arena that may be characterized as German national cinema is increasingly becoming fragmented, and one of the most important reasons for the eschewing of ‘national’ film as such is the “crucial weakness of the hybrid, alternative film culture in West Germany because it could never develop the kind of distribution network that could enable it to compete successfully in the world marketplace. In further supporting his argument that the parameters of national cinema as such cannot be effectively established as an appropriate critical category to classify films because of the growing lack of congruence between nations and nation states, Crofts points out that there are essentially two perspectives to the debate. One is the paradigm of essentialism as opposed to constructivism, whereby essentialism would include the notion that some concepts are universal and are not dependent upon the context within which they occur. On this basis, it could be argued that where film is concerned, the idea of ‘national cinema’ is itself a misnomer and may not actually exist because nation states as defined by geographical boundaries, would not exist from the perspective of cinema themes because these would be universal themes that would apply across such boundaries. Constructivism on the other hand, was a movement in film which rejected art for art’s sake and was more oriented towards art for the sake of achieving certain social purposes. Within the Russian context for instance, this appears to support the concept of national cinema, because it supports cinema as a means to educate the masses about Communism and its objectives. Similarly, other kinds of social messages that are relevant to a particular local context can also be communicated through the film medium. Another argument Crofts offers in the debate about whether the idea of nation state is itself relevant is ‘otherness’. In order to frame national identity, it is essential to first draw invisible boundaries and determine what must be included within and what must stay out before it can conform to the paradigm of otherness. When the idea of a nation state is considered, it specifically includes territorial limits and boundaries, but in an era of globalization with the dominance of Hollywood, it is difficult to establish a congruence between nations and nation states. For instance, national cinema in itself, is becoming a term that is difficult to define and where it is difficult to slot films into, so that the ‘otherness’ becomes difficult to establish clearly. More films than ever are being made which reflect border crossings, or deal with subjects involving ethnic Diaspora living in countries other than their country of birth; for example a film like Monsoon Wedding which is a narrative of an Indian marriage played out in the UK. It cannot thus be strictly categorized as national cinema, because the notion of a specific nation state – India, is increasingly being subordinated to the concept of ‘nation’ where the nation in question is not limited into boundaries that are geographical or territorial, neither can they be slotted entirely into what constitutes Indian culture. Crofts has shown how national cinema as has been traditionally understood from the perspective of the common sense approach is no longer relevant, because globalization has changed the equations that existed earlier, while Hollywood is increasingly eroding the traditional markets that once belonged primarily to national cinema. Silberman (1996) has also examined cinema in West Germany and points out that there is a “crucial weakness” in the “hybrid, alternative film culture” of the country, primarily because it was never able to compete with the extensive distribution networks that American film companies were able to set up in order to access mass viewers (Silberman, 1996:231). Silberman (1996) also describes the period during the eighties in Germany, when earnings for films that could be categorized as ‘national’ cinema were dismal within the domestic market and export earnings generated three times more earnings than the domestic markets. He explains that the reason for such low viewership of German films within the domestic market was largely due to the lack of availability of new technology such as digital imaging, trick photography, animation and other kinds of computer applications, which were also expensive to obtain. During the West German exhibition in the eighties that was specifically for domestic-made films, the share of the German domestic market was only 10% as compared to 40 to 50 percent for domestic productions arising out of countries such as France and Italy (Silberman, 1996:231-2). Hence, this leads to the conclusion that national cinema as such retains its viewership largely through being viewed as films from the artistic genre, rather than purely on the basis of the “national cinema” category. It could also be argued that in the context of the two films discussed earlier, i.e., Naked among wolves and Aimee Jaguar, the reasons for the success of these films lay in their appeal to audiences across territorial borders, since they dealt with subjects such as love and the protection of an innocent child. In the case of the German films Wings of desire, which was a successful film internationally, the director Wim Wenders who was a new director, was using Hollywood production values in order to ensure that the films were made to a standard that was likely to appeal to international viewers as well as domestic German viewers who had become used to the slick production values and fast moving storylines of Hollywood films.(Silberman 1996:232). On the basis of the above, it could thus be concluded that while attempting to theoretically describe national cinema, the earlier decades, especially the ‘60s and ‘70s described films as falling within a narrow category that was prescribed by territorial boundaries. This definition would no longer apply, because films that once fell into the category of national cinema are demonstrating declining levels of viewership. Globalization and the growing popularity of Hollywood have introduced issues such as multi-culturalism and a transnational flow of images and themes across national boundaries, which renders the national cinema category an inappropriate one for theorising cinema. References: Crofts, Stephen(1998), ‘Concepts of National Cinema’, in:John Hill and Pamela Church-Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford:OUP, pp 385-394. Higson, Andrew. (1989) The Concepts of National Cinema, Screen 30(4): 36-46 Silberman, Marc (1996), ‘German cinema: texts in context’, Wayne State University Press. Vitali, Valentina and Willemen, Paul, 2006. “Theorising national cinema”, London: BFI Publishing Read More