Why Are There So Many Chickens In The Shining?
In the previous post I discussed the "Film Literacy in Africa" study that Marshall McLuhan references in The Gutenberg Galaxy. At the center of the study was a short film shown to non-literate tribal natives in Africa. The film was designed to demonstrate the proper techniques for removing standing water, and actors were filmed doing so in a very slow and deliberate fashion. When asked what the natives had seen in the film, they quickly responded that they had seen a chicken. With further questioning they mentioned that they had seen a man as well, but they had not processed what the man was doing. They hadn't "made a whole story out of it" and, to the surprise of the researchers, were unable to see the film in a three-dimensional perspective. Much has been made out of the inability of the native to process the film, but there is another angle to this that I want to focus on.
When the natives mentioned that they had seen a chicken, the filmmakers were baffled. They had not, to their knowledge, filmed a chicken. It wasn't until they watched the film frame by frame that they eventually saw that there actually was a chicken in the film, for about one second of screen time at the bottom right of the screen.
We have two radically different reviews for the same film. This is not a subjective argument about how funny or entertaining the film is. Both reviewers see something objective that the other cannot.
The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, & when separated
From Imagination and closing itself as in steel in a Ratio
Of the Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws & Moralities
To destroy Imagination, the Divine Body, by Martyrdoms & Wars.
William Blake, Jerusalem 1804
McLuhan argues the same idea as Blake, that any time a bodily or mental function is extended into a new technology, sense ratios are changed, and when the sense ratios of man are changed, the man changes.
The film study in Africa explicitly demonstrates this. Let's say that literate man sees Film A and non literate man sees Film B. Film A and Film B are not subjectively different, they are objectively different. And neither can capture the completeness of the film on their own. When analyzed through the lens of both perspectives, we reveal Film AB, which captures more information than is contained separately in Film A or Film B . This is not to say that Film AB offers the complete film. The complete film may only exist conceptually. For now, lets refer to this concept of the complete film as just FILM.
Obviously, non literate man is capable of developing the lens of the literate man, but is literate man capable of resurrecting the lens of non literate man? Can man also have access to BOTH lenses, and if so, can these lenses coexist? Do they work separately, at the same time, or both?
The Great Artificial Barrier
“2001 is a non-verbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there are only less than 40 minutes of dialogue. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalised pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconsciousness with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to ‘explain’ a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation.”
Stanley Kubrick, Playboy 1968
convolute
A. (transitive) To make unnecessarily complex.B. (transitive) To fold or coil into numerous overlapping layers.
Did Stanley Kubrick mean Convolute A or Convolute B? Or a combination of both, Convolute AB? Or did he mean CONVOLUTE? And why did he say "message is the medium" instead of "medium is the message" as McLuhan had originally written it?
If I attempt to "explain" Kubrick, am I also guilty of "emasculating" and "erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation"? Probably, but my goal is to "tear down the wall" after I'm through.