Music in image and image as music (part 2)

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Action flicks and image as music - D&G’s refrain

In one of the Twin Peaks lectures there was a comment on David Bordwell and his concept of intensified continuity. This concept could be summarized as a way of using montage which is more rapid than it used to be but still respects the laws or principles of classical montage. This is how Bordwell saw montage in 2002. (“Intensified Continuity Visual Style in Contemporary American Film.” In: Film Quarterly 55:3, pp. 16–28.) Many long years went by before in 2008 Bordwell realized his error and changed his account, and still then he couldn’t say it straight up. (Bordwell, David (2008). A Glance at Blows.) So, it was Steven Shaviro finally in 2010 who clearly pronaunced the qualitative change in modern film editing, change that was much more than just a faster speed. (Shaviro, Steven (2010). Post Cinematic Affect.) 

Modern cinema montage wasn’t obeying any rules, it had become turbulent. Montage seemed almost random in the films from such directors as Michael Bay (Bad boys -movies and Transformers-movies), Tony Scott (Man on Fire, Deja Vu, Unstoppable), Paul Greengrass (Bourne-movies) or Taylor&Neveldine (Crank-movies and Gamer). Montage had lost in many cases all of it’s concreteness and cohesion. Montage doesn’t any more follow charecter’s bodily movements in fighting scenes and even the following shots are seemingly in no particular order. Only general principle that stands out is that of a irregular rhythm or disorganizing pulse and this is, as we have seen, a purely Dionysian element.

So how this blurry fuzzyness of recent action film’s action scenes differs from Lynch’s Twin Peaks? Twin Peaks maintained a somewhat analogical relation to Greek tragedy as Nietzsche described it, and so Twin Peaks contains both of the god-figures Apollon and Dionysos in a clear form. But in the case of these action sequences, which seemingly harness the properties of trance music, there’s no Apollon in the same sense as in Twin Peaks. So what is this kind of audiovision which lacks or deforms Apollon, in other words doesn’t have a clear and distinct expression? A short answer to this would be that there’s still Apollon, but it has lost it’s spatial and also temporal coordinates, Apollon is somewhat non-organized, but still has it’s purely Apollonian property as individuating element.

So the main problem with this ”new” kind of expression is that while it’s disorganized and so referring to Dionysos it can’t be Dionysian in itself. How I understand it, Dionysos can’t express itself in itself, it needs Apollon as an expression. But the way in which Apollon is produced in these blurry action scenes lacks the clarity as was seen in the case of Twin Peaks and so this ”new” Apollon in reaching it’s limits and almost becoming like Dionysos. So, we can say that this ”new” Apollon is more Dionysian than Apollonian.

This concept of Dionysian Apollon might not even be a accurate definition of the expression, but in any case it’s quite blurry when defined only from the perspective of The Birth of Tragedy. So to clarify and elaborate, I’ll try to connect it to the discussions of music in Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s (D&G) magnum opus A Thousand Plateaus. The two main parts from the book im referring are ”Becoming-Music” (299-309) and ”11. 1837: Of the Refrain” (310-350). These pages about music reveal a somewhat similar conceptual distinction than that of Nietzsche’s Dionysos and Apollon. 

First of all, D&G sees music as two-part entity constituted from blocks of expression and blocks of content. (A Thousand Plateaus 299) Block of expression is a chaotic or dynamic process: ”this block of becoming rests on transversals that continually escape from the coordinates or punctual systems functioning as musical codes at a given moment.” (A Thousand Plateaus 299) So, we can propose that this Dionysian element is in fact a process in which something happends, it’s a becoming. But this notion of becoming isn’t saying much if we don’t know how it’s happening and that’s why we need to concentrate next to the block of content, that which is becoming.

This block of content is what D&G call the refrain. The refrain is principium individuationis of music and that’s to say it functions as Apollon in Greek tragedy. There are mainly three procedural elements in the refrain: 1)territorializing, 2)reterritorializing and 3)deterritorializing, (A Thousand Plateaus 311-12) but it’s easier to give an example than shuffle some concepts. In TP Lynch proposes a problem, not neccesarily a literal problem but one that, if succesful, makes the audience feel some discomfort or at least some restlessness. This problem rises from quarreling elements. In such a scene there’s something familiar and something foreign, but the familiar seems almost as too familiar and so kind of foreign and in contrary the foreign seems somewhat familiar. This is the case of intensified reality: Familiar things are in themselves becoming unfamiliar while the dynamics of the whole is making foreign elements to become familiar in relation to the whole.

I think the refrain shows clearly the processes in this kind of situation. So, the refrain is constituted from three elements the first being purely an individuating process, territoriality, territorialization. D&G uses as an example for this a child’s crooning or singing. (A Thousand Plateaus 311) A child comforts herself by humming some familiar tone as to orient herselt or for protect herself against the outside. In the case of Twin Peaks we could say that the child’s humming intensifies when the outside seems more scary. So the motive for this first process of the refrain is to keep within familiar themes or to form familiarity in scary situations. Keep in one's own territory. 

The second process is connected to surroundings. The funtioning of the refrain isn’t just private individual humming, it’s also co-operating with the milieu or surroundings. As we saw in the first case, a child’s need to intensify her humming grows when the surroundings are seen as more scary. This scaryness is produced by foreign refrains and/or loosening up of familiar ones. With humming a child is in the process of making the milieu more familiar, more like home or abode. So, we can sum up these two first parts by saying that the first one is establishing a fragile repetitive centre and the second one gives it some stableness by making a circle around it.

The third elemental process of the refrain is in our case the most important. The third element is about breaking the circle, making some foreign refrains to enter in that circle. This element is properly a disorganizing one, it’s like Dionysos acting inside the Apollonian refrain. But we must also keep in mind that these three elements are not in chronological or any other order, they are working simultaneously. This simultaneous working, or a becoming, of these three elements is produced by the music’s block of expression, the purely Dionysian element. And here, I think, is the key for the distinction between Twin Peaks and blurry action scenes.

In the case of Twin Peaks the milieu is filled with foreing refrains, but there’s also a strong presense of familiar ones. In Twin Peaks these familiar refrains are intensified and so are keeping the circle in some kind of balance. And so the world of Twin Peaks is born from this strong pressure of these opposing forces or elements. Strong foreign forces and intensified familiar forces.

But in the case of blurry action sequenses all or most of the refrains are foreign and so the musical block of expression is highly balanced towards the third element of the refrain. Consisting mainly of foreign refrains, the action scene isn’t able to produce the stabilizing circle and so loses it’s clear and distict expression. With this kind of distinction we can establish Apollon to both of these examples and still be able to propose that the latter one is more Dionysian.

To conclude, my project was to show how we can move away from the classical distinction of music and image, understood as oppositional or antithetical abstractions. This was made possible by proposing the nietzschean concepts of Apollon and Dionysos. Elaborating from that perspective we were able to aproximately see how Lynch’s Twin Peaks works as an image which is partly affected my the musical element of Dionysos. But this itself wasn’t enough to show how many of recent action movie montages work, so I introduced the D&G’s refrain. With refrain we’re able to see more spesifically how Apollon was working and so were able to make a clear distiction between Twin Peaks and blurry montages.