See It with 3-D Glasses! Avatar: The Lights and Shadows of 3-D Cinema

By F. Javier Panera Cuevas

Those of us who like to narrate the history of cinema based on technological determinism find ourselves before a historic milestone at the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century. In just a few months Avatar, James Cameron’s movie filmed with new 3-D technology, has become the highest grossing movie in the history of cinema¹, threatening to condition the way we perceive moving images in the future. Following in the wake of Avatar, 2010 has become the year of the 3-D movie. To date 15 films have been produced in this format, generating more than 4 billion dollars and making this year along with 2009 one of the highest income-producing periods in the film industry.

It goes without saying that Cameron did not invent the 3-D movie; in fact, experimentation leading to the development of totally and sensorially immersive cinema dates back to the origins of the motion picture². He has, however, been the first to exploit it efficiently thereby providing the spectator with a fully satisfying immersive experience and achieving what many others have been trying to do for years, to once again systematically fill movie theaters breaking the cycle of decline caused by an increase in illegal Internet downloads. In other words, the industry is trying to defend itself with its only available weapon: providing the spectator with a visual experience that he cannot have at home (at least at that level).

In the face of the undisputed economic and public success of Cameron’s film, two opposing critical positions have arisen that manifest two ways of seeing and understanding the movie. In the first, the technophile is just amazed by the technological display of the feature film, as if this were an end in itself. “Cameron revolutionizes cinema,” “Cameron reinvents cinema,” “Avatar converts cinema into a new experience” are some of the headlines repeated as a mantra by media throughout the world ³.

Confronted with this complacent and acritical view of the pleasures of technology and the spectacle, a second view emerges that condemns Avatar for its empty story line and its inability to turn 3-D into little more than a sensory experience devoid of artistic value.

Still image from Avatar by James Cameron, 2009, (USA), 161 min. Photo credit: WETA. TM & © 2010 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All right reserved.

Evidently, as noted by Jordi Costa⁴, the exceptionality of Avatar is not its conceptual originality. In other words, this is not 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Stanley Kubrick was, in fact, the first to turn technology into something more than a tool subject to the creative interests negotiated between the creator and the production process. However, if we were waiting for Cameron to surprise us by enhancing the possibilities of 3-D digital cinema, the movie has raised the bar significantly.

“WATCHING OURSELVES SEEING”

Will Avatar change the future of cinema and the visual arts? The answer is not unanimous. Three-D is one of the formulae devised to regain the notion of cinema as an event and the simplicity of the script and characters for many would not be an impediment but rather an advantage in order to focus attention on the constant action and sustained manifestation of special effects at every level of the movie. As pointed out recently by José Luis Brea⁵ , however, we should not allow ourselves to be deceived; this is no longer cinema but “the mise en scène of another productive syntax -for which contents barely matter.” The only thing of relevance is “the efficacy of the effects-generating mechanism -discourse effects, but above all character effects.”

In this sense, Avatar’s principal defect comes from its most interesting component in terms of an analysis of the ideological effects and functions of the images and the way in which these determine our subjectivity. Somehow, James Cameron’s film informs us that not only is the movie a fictional space, but so is the black box (the projection room) and with it the spectator. It is a game of reflections which no longer supports the worn-out formula art=life, but which supports the cinematic exhibition space itself as the legitimate “theater of the world.” “Today there is no other ideology,” notes Brea, “than that of the device: the ideology is the apparatus itself -producing it, the very techno-syntactic architecture of its fabrication and diffusion.” (Brea)

The spectator not only witnesses a spectacle, but is also integrated into it and forms part of it; he participates -even if passively- in a “theater of operations” thanks to the rhetorical efficacy of a “self-productive” resource that most certainly does away with the need for arguments, attributes and contents. Doubtless to say, we are before that neo-baroque game of “seeing oneself seeing” in which the spectator finds himself trapped by the rhetoric itself -of the lights, the watching, the glasses, the viewing devices, of self-contemplation in which “it is necessary to watch oneself seeing.” (Brea)

In one way or another cinema continues to be indebted to “narrative technologies” (with the production of a story of identifying with another), but what Avatar’s empty story line is now telling us is that, “we do not need narratives or exemplary figures of stature (…).” This narrative’s only trivial ‘act of heroism’ is that of manufacturing itself as such a character -and that offer is sustained here by the pure mise en scène of the projection room.

In this same order of things, it would be worth establishing a counterpoint at a semantic level between 3-D commercial cinema and immersive experiences provided by the video installations of some contemporary artists who also utilize devices comparable to 3-D. In this respect, Mario Perniola in his book El sex appeal de lo inorgánico⁶ (The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic) points out that we no longer go to exhibitions to see and enjoy art, but rather to “to be seen and enjoyed by art,” calling attention to some installations as spaces that: “usher in the visitor, welcome him, touch him, feel him, reach out to him, cause him to enter, penetrate him, possess him, inundate him …”

In effect, there is a whole generation of artists that since the 1980s has been exploring and redefining the narrative, performative and theatrical registers of immersive video. Its work is based on a restatement of the “exhibition experience” itself starting with the physical and psychological experiences of the spectator, who when he walks in and enters into contact with installations frees himself from the “cervical paralysis” to which he has been subjugated by cinema and other contemplative forms of the moving image, thereby actively contributing to the production of interpretations. Some immersive video installations by artists such as Judith Barry, Diana Thater, Tony Oursler, Pipilotti Rist, Kurt Hentschläger and GranularSynthesis present an immediate sensory experience, appropriating entertainment industry means such as visual impact, technological seduction, surprise and the psychological stimulation of desire. As Helmut Draxler notes, in some of their works these artists embody the desire for identification with hegemonic regimes of observation; however, at the same time, this desire appears to be counterbalanced by the actual exhibition experience, which triggers a process of isolation (Draxler 168-169). Although in these works there are traces of the new scopic regime in which they are inscribed, they often stress possible means of escape and also bring to the table some questions: To what extent can art make use of these media devices without succumbing to their dependencies? Are Avatar’s concept and story line more unsubstantial than those of some of Pipilotti Rist or Kurt Hentschläger’s installations?

GENERIC CINEMA AS HYPERTEXT

Part of the history of cinema is obviously based on a search for new ways of recounting old stories. In this sense, Avatar does not aspire to be anything other than a generic film in a pure state and any generic film that values itself always utilizes identical narrative protocols to transmit information to the spectator. In various interviews, James Cameron has indicated that his chief inspiration was “each and every science fiction book that I read as a child,”⁷ but you do not have to be a veteran cinephile to recognize in Avatar’s narration a story line  from movies like Kevin Costner’s Dancing with Wolves (1990),  the Wachowskys’ Matrix saga (1997-99), with elements taken from Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg 1993) and The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson 2001); passing through Terrence Malick’s The New World, (2005), Pocahontas (Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, 1995), Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans, Hayao Miyazaki’s Mononoque Hime or going back a little further, Elliot Silverstein’s A Man Called Horse (1970). The image of Pandora, the planet on which the action takes place reminds us of the aesthetics of some illustrators of 1970s comic books such as Richard Corben, Moebius and the French magazine Metal Hurlant, as well as the heroic fantasies drawn by the illustrators of progressive rock album covers such as Roger Dean and Ron Cobb, reinvented in cinematographic terms.

With its encyclopedic nature, Cameron’s movie lays out some narrative strategies in which generic cinema becomes a hypertext for aficionados of “the Seventh Art” at a basic level; the yesterday and today of the genres and their continuous reformulations in Hollywood cinema here acquire stellar prominence -to give a contemporary example of another discipline- differing little from the way in which Lady Gaga cannibalizes the rhythms and attire of Madonna, David Bowie, Nina Hagen, Cindy Lauper, Marilyn Manson, or Britney Spears to the delight of new generations of aficionados who have been musically educated by seeing  video clips on Youtube. Avatar detractors could be right when they reproach its predictability, but it is nothing more than a response to a spectator who has become lazy and has to be spoon fed. Avatar is the consequence of what we deserve, no longer as spectators but as consumers. In the absence of new stories, let us recount the same ones. In the absence of new ideas, let us fully utilize technology.

3-D AS AN INSTITUTIONAL MODEL OF REPRESENTATION

It is precisely on this point that some critics⁸ reproach Cameron, who with all the means at his disposal has not been able to -or has not wanted to- recreate in his film an alien space that challenges our perceptive reasoning. Cameron develops all his strategies of persuasion within boundaries delimited by cinematographic classicism and within an institutional model of representation that still depends on the geometric system of classical perspective, with parallel planes placed in such a way that they optically converge in space. In this respect, we could point out that decades of audiovisual experimentation and artistic practices like video installations or expanded cinema, which question the oculocentric gaze, have been of little use.

The way in which perspective constructs a transcendental subject has been the reason for its prolonged control over western representation⁹. Its ocular regimen, which favors vision over other senses, also establishes an isolated and disembodied subject, ceding to the unifying authority of a single point of view. As a material and ideological system, perspective assigns to the observer a specific location outside of the scene of representation, and although it appears as a paradox, 3-D technology applied to films like Avatar merely emphasizes this aspect. Maintaining a distance between the subject and the object of vision denies the spectator a place within the space of the image. The spectator’s structural exclusion is the cause of the captivating naturalistic effect and the ideological efficacy of the movie. Taking into account the recent avalanche of 3-D mega-productions created in the same format, it has become increasingly urgent to develop alternative active roles for the spectator within predominant visual paradigms.

NOTES

¹ The December 18, 2009 premiere of Avatar had an official budget of 237 million dollars -although some estimates place it at 310 million, plus another 150 million devoted to marketing. On January 31, 2010 Avatar became the first movie in history to surpass the 2 billion dollar barrier in box office receipts - data looked up in Box Office Mojo on January 26, 2010; by August 25, 2010 the figure surpassed 2.7 billion.

² As noted by Ray Zone, in Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of  3-D Film; 1838-1952. The University Press of Kentucky, 2007, the basic concept of the 3-D anaglyph using red and cyan glasses to filter the images directed at the left eye and the right eye reverts back to nothing less than the beginning of the nineteenth century and pre-cinematographic spectacles like the magic lantern. See also: Dave Kehr. “Luces y sombras en 3-D” (Lights and Shadows in 3-D). Cahiers de cinema [Spain] March 2010: 73.

³ The version that many textbooks give us about the history of cinema as a series of “milestones” that marked successive revolutions in sound, color, panoramic screen and 3-D to a great extent is nothing more than another “Darwinist” myth similar to the one that has frequently been used to explain the history of art. In this sense we should recall that headlines such as those that Avatar continues generating have been repeated intermittently throughout cinematic history. In 1922 a film maker of the stature of D.W Griffith was sufficiently impressed by the first 3-D movies projected at the Selwin Theater to declare in the New York Times: “The true stereoscopic effect will contribute an enormous force to movies. It will turn them into the most powerful, unparalleled means of expression ever dreamt of(…).”

In the 1950s (considered by some as the first golden era of 3-D), cinema in theaters was undergoing a moment of crisis similar to the current crisis, losing a lot of its audience to a new domestic format: television. Between 1952 and 1953, the first systematic surge of 3-D cinema generated dozens of successful genre films  -although today forgotten- conceived to be seen with the famous bicolored glasses such as, Bwana Devil by Arch Oboler (1952), House of Wax by André Toth (1953) and It Came From Outer Space by Jack Arnold (1953); even Hitchcock filmed a 3-D movie in 1954: Dial M for Murder, but the fashion ended abruptly with the apparition of another new format: Cinemascope led by Twentieth Century Fox’s mega-production  The Robe (1953) whose publicity said “see it without glasses” and which offered a type of spectacle superior to television without the physical inconvenience of 3-D. See: Ray Zone, Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film; 1838-1952. The University Press of Kentucky, 2007.

⁴ See, Jordi Costa: Crítica de Avatar and ¿La nueva revolución? (A Critique of Avatar and The New Revolution?) in Fotogramas - <www.fotogramas.es/Peliculas/Avatar/Critica> 14/12/2009.

⁵ See, José Luis Brea: “ Devenir-avatar: la vida sin cualidades, la ficción sin contenidos” (Becoming an Avatar: Life without Attributes, Fiction without Contents) in Salon Kritik, 23 January 2010. <salonkritik.net/…/deveniravatar_la_vida_sin_cual.php>

6 See, Mario Perniola: “Performances perversas” in El sex appeal de lo inorgánico (The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic). Madrid: Ed. Trama, 1998. 138-181.

⁷ See, Notas de producción (Production Notes) © 2009 Hispano Foxfilm. <http://www.fox.es/>

⁸ For example: J.M. Company and M.Talens. Una fábula de nuestro tiempo Reseña de la película Avatar, de James Cameron (A Fable for Our Time. Review of James Cameron’s Movie Avatar) in <www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=99374>

⁹ See: Katie Linker: “Cinema and Space(s) in the Art of Judith Barry” in Judith Barry, Body Without Limits. Salamanca: DA2, Fundación Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura, 2009. 178-188 and “Engaging perspectives: Film feminism, Psychoanalysis and the Problem of Vision” in Russell Ferguson, ed: Art and Film Since 1945. Hall of Mirrors. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996. 216-243.

Mari Ann Doane: “Remembering Women: Psychical and Historical Constructions in Film Theory” in Ann Kaplan, ed, Psychoanalysis and Cinema, New York: Routledge, 1990. 51.

WORKS CITED

• Draxler, Helmut. “Ambivalence and Actualization”. In Judith Barry, Body Without Limits. Salamanca: DA2, Fundación Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura, 2009. 168-169.