Tuesday 16 March 2010

a critical analysis of tom ryall's 'course construction: the conceptual field'

Discussions about genre theory have been prevalent since the work of the auteur theorists of Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s. At the forefront of the debate in this field have been a number of critics, each presenting their own views on the subjects of the notion of genre as a whole, the genre film and the difficulties that present themselves in studying genre.

The work of Tom Ryall is seen by many as presenting some of the most significant developments in genre theory and specifically the study of genre itself. His articles The Notion of Genre (Screen, Vol. 11, no. 2), Teaching Through Genre (Screen Education, no. 17) and Course Construction: the Conceptual Field (The Gangster Guide, BFI, 1978) have provided the framework for much critical discussion and counter-argument, most notably so by Steve Neale. Using Ryall’s article Course Construction: the Conceptual Field, I will attempt to analyse what place it has in the ongoing debate of genre theory and assess its strengths and weaknesses in terms of its effectiveness as a teaching guide. Furthermore, I will identify the crux of Ryall’s argument and consider this in relation to other work of genre from such critics as Edward Buscombe, Colin McArthur, Judith Hess and Steve Neale.

Edward Buscombe, in his article The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema (Screen, Vol. 11, no. 2) begins with a set of questions aimed at reflecting on the ways in which genre can be actively studied. He states:

“There appear to be three sorts of questions one could profitably ask: first, do genres in cinema really exist, and if so can they be defined; secondly, what are the functions they fulfil; and thirdly, how do specific genres originate, or what causes them?”

It is these questions that, by large, critics have attempted to answer in their work on genre, and although Ryall does not endeavour to answer all of these questions in The Conceptual Field, he does attempt to rethink the way in which genre should be addressed by both teachers and students alike. Ryall’s earlier work on the subject was concerned with the process of defining the term ‘genre’, concluding, “the notion of a network or complex of films is essential, if the word ‘genre’ is to be used successfully.” However, Ryall moves away from a general consideration of the term ‘genre’ and the idea of categorisation in The Conceptual Field, favouring a new approach, which brings the role of the film to the forefront. This new approach can in some way be summed up by the title of the article itself, the emphasis being on conceptualising the notion of genre rather than the notion of genre itself, which places emphasis on the process of definition as aforementioned.

Ryall identifies early on in the article the ‘traditional’ view of genre as being divisionary in terms of categorisation of films into ‘commonsense’ groups (the western, the musical, the gangster film etc.) and that the boundaries of these groups are governed by two things; the first being subject matter and the second being what he calls ‘content embracing historical material’ Based on this idea, Ryall suggests that a study of genre would be relatively simple, calling on students to only take into account a) the historical context in which the classic gangster film takes place, and b) the iconographical and thematic consistencies that present themselves in the films that make up the genre.

However, recognising that this alone would not be an adequate enough base on which to study genre, Ryall proposes a new direction that can be best summed up in the following quotation from The Conceptual Field:

“There is, however, a third area of study and that is the critical analysis of individual films, a study of their particularity… when we look at the most influential genre texts (Kitses, McArthur) we find that the theoretical chapters dealing with the notion of genre are not related in a precise way to the discussion of individual films.”

Ryall goes on to stress the importance of concentrating on the idea of studying a film using genre notions rather than using genre as a tool by which to allocate a place for a film within the restrictions of that genre.

In a very general sense, the problem that presents itself when studying genre as a whole is that it is a massively complex and interrelated system, encompassing ideas of iconography, thematic similarity, visual and narrative style as well as social, cultural and historical contexts. As Ryall states, these issues become topics of discussion in their own right, thus drawing attention away from the films that are supposedly the very basis of genre. Essentially what Ryall is arguing is that within the context of genre, an individual film should act as the basis for study as it will undoubtedly call upon different areas of genre theory. Using the idea of iconography as ‘patterns of visual imagery’ consider the example of two gangster films that follow a different narrative structure, one conforming to the more classical model of the ‘rise and fall’ narrative trend and the other utilising the concept of a retired gangster, drawn back into a life of crime unwillingly. Iconographically, a gun is often portrayed as a symbol of power or status in the former, whereas it is more likely to symbolise the reality of being drawn into the criminal underworld in the latter. Such examples of iconographical disparity can be commonly found in the gangster film – the idea of milieux being another. The classical Hollywood gangster film is set most commonly in Chicago where gangsters populate the streets and speak easys in the dead of night, so what of Scorsese’s Casino set in Las Vegas or de Palma’s Scarface set in Miami often in the light of day. McArthur’s idea of iconography seems to leave no room for adaptation or development, a process that is inevitable and surely welcome given the confinements of genre. As Steve Neale writes in his book titled Genre, with regard to the concept of iconography,

“It is worth asking to what degree these categories [McArthur’s] can be used in the analysis of genres other than the gangster film / thriller… how would the third category [technology], for instance, apply to the musical or the melodrama – what is the force of the term technology within this category?”

This is yet another example on the limitations that can be imposed on the study of a genre film when it is approached from the angle of ‘traditionally’ accepted genre criticism. If the notion of iconography is to be considered a useful tool in the criticism of film then surely it must apply to all kinds of film, not just a handful. It is the reading of the film that will lead to the areas of genre theory that need to be looked at, and thus, it is the reading of the film that takes priority over these areas of genre theory.

Having established the need for the redirection of the study of genre, Ryall moves on to look at the relationship between the film itself and the audience who are watching it, bringing in the idea of audience expectation. At the beginning of the article Ryall presents his triangular theory in the form of a diagram; this theory sees the film, the audience and the artist as part of one interrelated system. Ryall incorporates this strand of argument into his article by looking at the gangster film in terms of how it is read by the viewer, who base their reading of the film on a set of conventions that have already been established between the filmmaker and audience. In the case of the gangster film, Ryall argues that the merit of looking at a gangster film in the context of genre is not to prove that it is, in fact, part of the gangster genre. Using the example of The Roaring Twenties (dir. Raoul Walsh), Ryall suggests that there are very few people who would not recognise the film as part of the gangster genre because of the pattern of conventions that is apparent in the film and the codes that they have acquired to be able to read those conventions. Ryall proposes that a more useful means of looking at the gangster film is to “examine how the film depends upon genre knowledge in order to be understood or read." Again, this emphasis on the importance of the reading of the film is apparent and Ryall asserts that it is the ‘operations of reading’ that will enable the teaching of genre to bridge the gap between the genres themselves and the films which make up the genre. It is this, Ryall says, that is most commonly missing from the study of genre.

Elaborating on the notion of reading, the central theme to the article, Ryall brings forward the idea of realism in films as inseparable from the study of genre. Ryall puts forward the idea that to dismiss a film for being historically inaccurate would be to read the film incorrectly. To do this would be to confuse fiction with history and to judge the fictional for containing too little of the historical when essentially they are two separate things. To return to Ryall’s argument that the understanding of a film is governed by the audience having acquired codes from viewing similar films previously, the problem of what is ‘real’ arises. For many, what is known about how the West was won will have been attained directly from films that they will have seen about the subject. Similarly an audience might only understand the period of American history known as the prohibition era due to watching films such as The Roaring Twenties or Scarface (dir. Howard Hawks, 1932). This kind of realism however is problematic in that only two genres, the western and the gangster film rely on, or heavily draw upon, a historical knowledge of the period in which they are set. It is this problem that leads Ryall to the acknowledgement of a second sense of the word which stems from the way in which genre films have been produced. The implication of the ‘real’ in the second sense is, rather than historical actuality, a reality that is born from the resemblance of a film to previous films of its type. Studios have for some time relied upon previous successful films as models on which to create new films in the hope of repeating that success. Ryall, therefore comes to the conclusion that:

“The concepts of realism and convention are aligned in the sense that films are seen to be realistic insofar as they adhere to the conventions of their genre, i.e. to the conventions established by previous films.”

Considering this line of argument, I believe there is a contradiction, on some level, in Ryall’s dismissal of categorisation. This position is perhaps best summed up by Ryall himself earlier in the article;

“Indeed, the key to understanding the theoretical foundations of the concept of genre, of understanding its use value in terms of film criticism, lie in pushing beyond such classificatory exercises”

Although Ryall successfully argues that there is no critical merit in simply observing that one film is like another, the idea of using the ‘cross-generic’ sense of the word realism seems to rely upon the notion of categorisation to some extent. That is to say if the audience is to take a sense of realism from a film, it will more often than not come from the viewing of similar films in the same category. Of course, if the historical context of a film is crucial to the understanding of the film, this can be provided within the text of the film itself, albeit a scaled down account of what information is needed. Therefore, though the uses of categorisation are greatly played down by Ryall, they surely remain the most prominent tool used by what Ryall calls the ‘competent film reader’. The codes that are acquired by the audience are based upon the notion of categorisation itself – the recognition that one film is like another. Ryall himself states that an audience is much more likely to recognise White Heat as a gangster film than a Walsh film. However, despite the apparent contradiction between notions of categorisation and realism, there does appear to be an argument to support the need for Ryall’s second sense of realism. In order to fully articulate this, it is worth quoting Judith Hess at length:

“All of these genre films, science fiction included, present a greatly simplified social structure. However frequently this kind of very limited social structure may have existed in the past, it no longer exists in the present. Thus, genre films are nostalgic, their social structure posits some sort of movement backward to a simpler world. And in this simple structure problems which haunt us because of out inability to resolve them are solved in ways which are not possible today. Genre films reject the present and ignore any likely future.”

So essentially what Hess is arguing is that because the majority of genre films are so far removed from the idea of the ‘real’ or that of realistic depiction of every day life, it becomes necessary to think of realism in the secondary sense that Ryall presents. Since the audience will not be able to see the realism in the historical actuality of the film, they will take from it what they can, the similarities between the film and others of its type.

Although the crux of Ryall’s argument, that of the redirection of genre study and the placing of emphasis on the reading of the film, is presented in study area one, Ryall does move on to identify areas that can be useful when studying genre. Ryall explains in this section the importance of the Hollywood production base in its role of establishing the genre film within the industry as a whole. Ryall makes two main points in this section, the first being that despite the close association between certain studios and certain genres (Ryall uses Warner Bros. as a short case study, showing the reasons why this particular studio were linked with the gangster genre and thus, why other studios were linked with other genres) the studio still had to maintain ‘a balance between formula and variation’. The second point that Ryall makes is that any consideration of a big-budget Hollywood picture must take into account the differing perspectives of those involved in making the picture. Ryall describes two opposing groups of people; ‘the creative personnel’ (directors, writers, actors and designers etc.) and those on the financial side of the production. Given the differing roles of the two groups of people, their concerns are likely to be markedly different. Ryall sums up this section briefly by stating that the aim of studying the production base is to make students aware of the various limitations and obstacles, provided by the conditions of production that the filmmaker has to rise above.

Ryall, finally, considers the role of the social base in relation to genre, outlining the many problems that can be encountered when trying to apply the notion of social, cultural and historical aspects to the subject of genre. Ryall argues that just as the production base imposes constrictions upon the filmmaker (and by way of this the film) so too does the social base. As a footnote in the introduction to the article, Ryall explains his use of the phrase ‘social formation’ as opposed to the more commonly used term, society;

“the term ‘social formation’ is used in preference to the more usual word ‘society’ in order to stress that what is being referred to is an entity composed of a variety of practices (including the artistic) which may be in conflict at any given point in time. The term ‘society’ suggests a rather more harmonious, organic entity.”

This explanation itself offers a good insight into the reason why the social base may provide a problematic layer to the study of genre. Furthermore, the idea of cultural specificity, stemming from a difference in class, gender or race, is raised. There is no way that a film can be viewed in the same way by every person who sees it, mainly due to the aforementioned differences inherent in the viewer. Ryall concludes that the only way to ensure that a film is read correctly is for it to be studied in the context of the social, cultural and historical actualities of which it was produced. This argument, in a sense ties together the article as a whole. As I have already shown, Ryall places a great deal of emphasis on the correct reading of a film, but in order to do so a student must first be aware of the production base of which it is part of. As a result of this knowledge, the social base, and ideas of cultural specificity, will then come into play.

Edward Buscombe writes, “Since we are dealing with a visual medium we ought surely to look for our defining criteria at what we actually see on the screen” and, although this statement is lambasted by Neale in Genre, it does seem to be in keeping at least on some level with the idea presented by Ryall. Ryall is principally concerned with the redirection of genre criticism and I believe that in The Conceptual Field he presents a valid and well informed argument for the focus of genre criticism to be shifted. Furthermore, Ryall identifies areas of study that are problematic and presents a way around these problems, leading the reader to a series of solutions that all stem from Ryall’s main argument.