Mimesis/Abstraction

I am interested in Furniss' concepts of mimesis and abstraction as they relate to Trinh Minh-ha's ideas. I think that Furniss was thinking more-so on a purely visual level, as, for example, cartoons are obviously an abstraction of nature. However, I find it interesting that Furniss brought up Andy Warhol's Sleep and other films of this caliber, because that brings content into the picture.

Sleep shows the human form captured just about as honestly as the camera can, but why does Furniss put it at the furthest end of the spectrum of mimesis? If we are to go by medium/form alone, wouldn't Sleep be technically just as mimetic as, say, Psycho? The reason I bring this up is that none of Furniss' other examples take content into account. Jurassic Park is cited for its extensive use of CGI, The Three Caballeros for its combination of cartoon and live-action, Snow White as a fairly realistic-looking cartoon, and Hen Hop as a more impressionistic cartoon. I haven't seen any Frank Tashlin films, but knowing that he frequently collaborates with Jerry Lewis, I can understand that his work is cited as a sort of living cartoon. Furniss points to the use of hair/make-up to distort the natural human form.

Still from Jurassic Park


By this logic, though, wouldn't Sleep be just as mimetic as any non-CGI movie (for example, The Godfather)? I believe that Furniss is, on some level, taking Trinh Minh-ha's concept of movies "lying" to us into account. The visual language we use to understand a narrative in a movie is related to, but ultimately different from, the way we perceive information in our day-to-day lives. Our brains have a way of taking in information between cuts, like in the "gutter" between panels in a graphic novel.

I'm also curious about Furniss' attitude toward effects. If Jurassic Park is considered partially abstract due to the use of computer-generated imagery, how would we consider something like The Fly or Scanners, which use all practical effects? I would think it would be considered similar to the Tashlin films, somewhere toward the middle of the spectrum. Technically, though, the camera is capturing something that's really happening in front of it that isn't drawn or computer generated.

Comments

  1. Ethan SwansonMay 2, 2021 at 7:55 PM

    Your ideas about how any non-CGI movies are very mimetic is really interesting. I think she puts Sleep at one end of the spectrum because it depicts something everyone does in real time. But I do agree that The Godfather is pretty mimetic, since stories like that did actually happen. But I think her argument with Sleep is that there is no manipulation of time or space, which I would consider forms of abstraction.

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  2. Michael ZhangMay 3, 2021 at 7:35 AM

    I really like how you connect multiple films to the idea of the abstraction and mimesis. I totally agree that non-CGI movies are more mimetic than those CGI productions. However, I think if the storytelling is more of a novel, it wouldn't be more mimetic than a real life clip. So like you mention Psycho and Sleep are all very mimetic; however, since Sleep is really just about sleeping people, it would definitely be more mimetic than Psycho.

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