Anubha asked:

I have been working on 'literature and cinema an interface' for my doctoral thesis. I am looking for
some information on how the theory of mimesis has been tackled by contemporary film critics. How
does film theory talk about Aristotle's "Mimesis'? What kind of a representation is Cinema?

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For Aristotle, different art forms use mimesis (in essence imitation, mainly but not necessarily, of
reality) with different means of representation. This involves different manners of communicating that
representation to an audience and different levels of ethical and moral standards being represented.
Obviously he was referring to poetry, fine art and drama which were the main art forms of his day.
However the principles of mimetic analysis apply to most art forms including most types of film. It has
been argued that abstract painting, "modern" classical music and some video art fall outside the
scope of analysis in mimetic terms yet still have as their goal the evocation of intellectual pleasure.
Others would argue that no matter how abstract the art form it is imitating something even if it is an
emotion rather than a 'thing'.

With "cinema" the analysis is complicated further by the different sorts of film — for example
documentary film, cartoon animation, science fiction, classic Hollywood narrative etc. Each of these
could be said to use different forms of representation. They interact with reality differently. Theories of
Realism and cinema stretch back to Eisenstein in the 1920's and were a key part of Italian
neo-realism for directors such as De Sica and Pasolini in the 1940's. Film theorists Verkov and Bazin
argued (not very convincingly) that film had to imitate life as precisely as possible as if it was the
divine mission of film to move towards verisimilitude. More recently Andy Warhol made a number of
(very dull) films where he turned the camera on in front of a situation and e.g. filmed someone
sleeping for four hours. This would presumably be the essence of pure mimetic cinema.

A number of writers on film theory — notably David Bordwell and Noel Carroll — have sought to
analyse Film in the light of Aristotle's theory of mimesis. Similarly a number of philosophers have
approached the same subject from another direction — notably Richard Janko and Roger Scruton. It
is also worth looking up Leon Golden's article on Aristotle in the John Hopkins Guide to Literary
Theory and Criticismand Richard Allen's book on Film and Philosophy.

Andrew Browne

www.sicetnon.com