Composition #VII by Vassily Kandinsky (1913)

      Another conspicuous feature of Modernism is irony—an oft-used but seldom understood term. While there are many different types of irony, its core characteristics represent a fracturing between language and meaning, between expectation and material result, between illusion and reality. While the ironic mode can sometimes degenerate into wry, lazy cynicism and pedestrian self-reference, it also has the power to achieve a penetrating, multi-perspectival outlook with serious, sometimes profound, implications.

      One might argue persuasively that we, in the twenty-first century, are still negotiating the interplay between the decaying remnants of the Romantic sensibility and the fragmented nature of a Modernist idiom.

      Regardless of the degree to which a given artist is self-consciously aware of his/her aesthetic leanings, or interested in codifying a particular aesthetic stance that permeates his/her work, and regardless of whether or not audiences have defined the criteria by which they judge another’s creative output, certain ingrained assumptions do, in fact, inform and govern the three stages of the artistic process:

      1.Conception: An artist cultivates an idea for an artwork in a given medium.

      2.Creation: The artist translates the idea into an actual, manifest object.

      3.Reception: Audiences respond to their own engagement with the artwork.

      Each of these three stages of the artistic process emerges in a cultural/aesthetic context that is characterized by established, sometimes unconscious, sets of assumptions and expectations about what constitutes beauty, truth, quality, and entertainment—and as we have already established, these contexts are not static; they are fluid and dynamic. They differ from one culture to the next, from one subculture to the next, from one epoch to the next, from one geographical region to the next; and the artworks they produce are directly affected by these amorphous contextual ideals.

      The following chapters examine a series of four ostensible dichotomies that govern the aesthetic foundations of storytelling:

      1.Myth and Parable

      2.Realism and Abstraction

      3.Classicism and Romanticism

      4.Escapism and Formalism

      Each dichotomy is designed to locate and examine a particular mode of narrative and the manner in which that mode can inform and widen the aesthetic choices of the filmmaker or graphic storyteller.

      It should be noted that none of these aesthetic modes are mutually exclusive—they can often overlap or be combined in interesting and novel ways. Nor are any of the films featured in the following case studies pure examples of any one mode of expression; rather, they are illustrative of certain tendencies that are present, to greater or lesser degrees, in the films that this book examines.

      Because of the nonexclusive nature of these distinctions—and the character of this type of analysis—the book necessarily includes many overlapping observations and certain redundancies whose import should emerge as self-evident.

      Wherever useful and appropriate, the book will attempt to examine how certain aesthetic strategies are connected to the larger sociopolitical/historical contexts in which they were deployed, contributing to a deeper understanding of the relationships between cultural perspectives and artistic output.

      While the book does not assume familiarity with any of the films discussed in the following chapters, screening the films before reading is not merely highly recommended but also crucial to any deep and comprehensive understanding of the respective analyses.

1I use the term “Romantic” to connote characteristics indicative of Romanticism as an artistic tradition (which will be defined and examined subsequently), not its more common and colloquial usage.

2See Stephen Halliwell’s Aristotle’s Poetics for a more detailed and comprehensive analysis.

3Marvin Carlson’s Theories of the Theatre provides an excellent and comprehensive chronological survey of theatrical traditions.

4The collected scholarly works of semiotician Umberto Eco provide the most insightful analyses and descriptions of the Medieval aesthetic.

5For an interesting examination of Renaissance art’s relationship to its sociopolitical context, see Roy Strong’s Art and Power.

6Roger Scruton has written penetrating analyses of Kant, most accessibly in Kant: A Very Short Introduction.

7A seminal explication of Romanticism can be found in M. H. Abrams’s The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition.

8I am using the terms “invisible fourth wall” and “slice of life” anachronistically, as neither term was employed to describe naturalistic theater practice until the late nineteenth century.