[Frameworks] Annette Michelson and Peter Gidal

[Dave Tetzlaff]

I've been thinking, about the original query from John Muse in light of the follow-up query about Michelson, doing some wild-ass speculating. Mark's post (he certainly knows WAY more about this than I do) suggests my imaginings are at least not grossly inconsistent with known facts. And my concluding suggestions are that John's project is misconceived in taking 'structuralist/materialist' as a genre, and could be more productively framed as 'films by women relevant to the debates around "structuralists" and "structuralist/materialist" cinema'.
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I wasn't thinking about the possibility any interpersonal tension might be involved in Gidal's choices – and I'm not at all surprised there isn't any. Rather I was thinking about the function of his choices in relation to the theoretical/critical issues around different concepts of avant grade film, 'formalist' aesthetics, etc. 

From what I remember (it's been, errr, awhile) Gidal's own essays are quite polemical, define 'structuralist/materialist' quite narrowly, and pretty hard-line towards anything/anyone that doesn't fit his aesthetic politics. I took the core of the position to be a radical left politics of representation – a sort of '_Screen_ Theory' on steroids – in which the goal is a sort of film that disrupts 'the dominant ideology', but goes way beyond the Brechtian concepts someone like Colin McCabe celebrates in the work of Godard. As radical politics, the 'structuralist/materialist' writings have some qualities of political manifestos – 'out there' in a bold way designed to disrupt and stir the pot, not necessarily to be followed to the letter. 

Thus, it makes sense to frame an edited anthology around the pot, not just the spoon. Having some stuff to debate is part of the fun of most good anthologies, and helps sell the book, as faculty will be more likely to use it if it offers useful contrasts between essays. 'Wrongheaded' is not necessarily 'bad'. 'Bad' would be something so off-base it's not worth arguing about. Michelson would be worth arguing against for Gidal simply because she's Michelson. Gidal's reply to Mark indicates he saw Michelson's piece on Wavelength as paradigmatic of the 'American' view, a good example of 'wrongheadedness' (in the sense of both 'typical' and 'strong') and thus a very good choice for 'problematizing a terrain rather than imposing one position'. 

If you're out to slay an idea-dragon, you show the dragon. And you take on the Big dragon, not some weak second stringer...


> “fetishization of process and idealization of the formal in its weak sense.”

Ahh, the 1970s. Those were the days, eh? 

This quote strikes me as pointing nicely to how the Brits were defining 'structuralist-materialist' in OPPOSITION to the essentially apolitical aesthetic formalism of American critics including Sitney and Michelson. They had a high-theory, hard-line POLITICAL take, yes? Film, including avant grade film, played a role in the class struggle whether the makers and critics wanted it to or not, and any film or commentary that failed to address the question of the IDEOLOGY of form was indeed 'blind' – the joke version being that footage in focus was hopelessly bourgeois.

The choice of 'structuralist-materialist' as a rubric was a challenge to the 'establishment view'. Since Sitney's 'structuralist' label for similar films was already in place, 'structuralist-materialist' couldn't help but create confusion and conflict – to "problematize". You could say the Brits wanted to appropriate (as in 'righteously steal) a chunk of terrain from the bourghy formalist wankers as a prize in The Struggle. In an intellectual turf war, you want there to be more at stake, so you take a wider view of the territory.

As a thought experiment, consider that Gidal et. al. could have just called it "materialist film" from the get-go, and made it clear that despite some apparent similarities, works like Wavelength and the sort of critical/theoretical position presented by Michelson were NOT what they were talking about. Had that been so, had they been defining a new genre, then there'd be no rationale for including Mcihelson's piece. But they wanted that turf. They wanted to say that Snow and Michelson were 'doing it WRONG!' 

As such, I'd suggest John's notion that he's working against the grain in including Ono and Ackerman is 'wrongheaded' in that the grain is not one of conformity to polemic principles, but tension and dialogue between those principles and other ways of looking at avant grade film practice. Thus, I'm thinking John is actually intuitively going with the grain, as the lumber in question can't be cut or planed smooth in any direction, and the whole point of the wood-crafting is to pull up splinters…
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In that spirit, I'll note one film/maker not included in Gidal's anthology, and not yet mentioned in this thread that strikes me as essential in looking at the subject in context (perhaps belaboring the obvious?): Laura Mulvey and Mulvey?Wollen's "Riddles of the Sphinx".