This thesis investigates how Victor Turners concept of cultural performance can be used to explore and analyse the experience of film. Drawing on performance theory, hermeneutics, phenomenology and Bakhtins dialogism, Sections One and Two develop this investigation through a theoretic discussion which relates and yet distinguishes between three levels of performance in film: filmmaking performance, performances as text and cultural performances. The theory is grounded within four films which were researched for this thesis: Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994), Rats in the Ranks (Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson,1996), beDevil (Tracey Moffatt, 1993) and Link-Up Diary (David MacDougall, 1987). Section Three undertakes the close analyses of the latter two films. These analyses address specific cultural performances that are performed across cultures and which are concerned particularly with Australian societys relationship with indigenous Australians.
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Section One locates Turners concept of cultural performance within his wider theory of social drama and introduces the three-tiered mode of analysis which is developed throughout this thesis. His concept of liminality is also investigated in order to consider specific relationships between performances which take place in film and theatre. Performances which take place in film are located in this Section within the theatrical understanding of performance as for an audience. I describe this relationship between performances in film and theatre through Kristevas interpretation of Bakhtins concept of heteroglossia as intertextuality, especially through her distinction of a transformative intertextuality. Three specific concepts from theatre and performance theory are interrogated for their relevance to film theory:
1. Brechts theory of gest,
2. direct address to the audience in relation to the gaze in film and
3. Rebecca Schneiders conceptualisation of the performance artist.
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Using these three tropes of performance, Section Two develops a theory of performance in film. Besides Turners concept of cultural performance, this theory draws on aspects of several other substantial bodies of work. These works include Richard Schechners performance theory, Michael Taussigs understanding of mimesis, Vivian Sobchacks phenomenology of film, Paul Ricoeurs theory of text as meaningful action, Gadamers concept of meaningful play, Bakhtins conceptualisation of a dialogic text and Catherine Bells theory of ritualised behaviour. The two analyses in Section Three do not rigidly follow the three-tiered process of analysis which is developed in the previous two Sections. They rather focus on the films as sites for particular cultural performances which are specific for each film and which need for their description, different aspects of the theory that is offered through this thesis. These analyses especially draw on my interpretation of David MacDougalls transcultural cinema and Jodi Brooks conceptualisation of a gestural practice in film, which she positions both in terms of Brechts theatrical concept of gest and Walter Benjamins concept of the shock of modernity.
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The film analyses are of one fiction film, beDevil, and one non-fiction film, Link-Up Diary. Both films use audiovisual images of Aboriginal Australians as content. According the terms of this thesis, these people must also be considered as filmmakers. Although this role may constitute varying degrees of authority and power, a film analysis which considers the filmmaking roles of people whose images are present in the filmic text also allows a particular consideration of the social relationships which exist between people who film and people who are filmed. My focus on the cultural performances of these two films allowed an even closer description of this relationship for two reasons. Firstly, both Moffatt and MacDougall respectively present their own images in the films. Secondly, my analyses of these films as cultural performance draw out and describe the different ways in which the two films address the same social drama: the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. My analyses expose how a description of these differences in address can extend beyond the distinction between one film as fiction and the other as non-fiction towards a description of the different ways in which people relate to each other, at both the individual level and at the level of society, through the production and reception of a particular film. While locating these films as cultural performances within in particular sets of social relationships, my consideration of film in this thesis in terms of theatrical performance also enables a description of the experience of film which draws on the social experience of live theatre. The theory developed in this thesis and its application in the analyses of these two films suggest further areas of research which might look more closely at whether or not, or how much people draw from the social practices of live theatre as they live their lives with film a signifying practice which has existed just over one hundred years.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/206989 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Summerhayes, Catherine, catherine.summerhayes@anu.edu.au |
| Publisher | The Australian National University. School of Art |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.anu.edu.au/legal/copyrit.html), Copyright Catherine Summerhayes |
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