Thought Paper on Michaelangelo
Antonioni’s Blow –Up
Norma Chapple
The
two articles I will discusses are Peter Hutching’s “Modern Forensics: Photography and Other
Suspects” and Megan Williams’ “A Surface of Forgetting: The Object of History
in Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Blow –Up.”
HutchingÂ’s article is concerned with the truth-value of the photograph and in
investigating to what extent the photographed object is a representation of
reality. Williams is interested in the filmÂ’s representation of history and its
attempts, through photography and other means, to break away from history and
to engage in the “crime of forgetting” (259).
HutchingÂ’s
argument frames the discussion of AntonioniÂ’s film within the discussion of
phrenology, physiognomy and photography. Each of these forensic methods of
identification place the observer, the witness or scrutinizer, in a position of
power (232). Hutching’s employs
Benjamin’s reading of Atget to assert that the photograph shows that “every
square inch of our cities is the scene of a crime” (239). The photographer’s task is, therefore, to
“point out the guilty in his pictures” (239). Hutchings claims that in Atget’s
photos “the attention to detail showed…how little those details could show
about reality” (240). The “crime of detail” that Atget’s photographs commit
indicates, as Brecht asserts, that “less than ever does the mere reflection of
reality reveal anything about reality” (240).
Hutchings
argues that in Blow-Up similar
problems arise and that the film educates Philip about the nature of
photography. Phillip is not the all-powerful observer who can scrutinize his
film for truth. He does not control the “signs of his images” that he produces
(240). He is not aware of what his camera has seen and he has not seen it
himself (241). Benjamin states that the will to extract knowledge, truth, or
aesthetic from visual media is inherently violent act since it reduces reality
and wrenches phenomena out of historical context (241). Over the course of the
film Phillip learns that he cannot have mastery over his photographs and that
his mode of seeing is not the only mode. Hutchings cites the filmÂ’s end
sequence where Phillips watches the mimed Tennis game as indicating that
Phillip has learned a new method of seeing where he does not need to “look” in
order to “see” the tennis ball (241).
WilliamsÂ’
article is preoccupied with the nature of history as it is represented in the
film. She argues that other critics have overlooked the filmÂ’s historical
context. She argues that the film is a product of its time, 1966, and that it,
like the Mod generation it features, wants to break with the linear narrative
of history and to institute a forgetting of the traumatic past. Williams argues
that what is “blown-up” in the film is “the humanist belief that man can
intervene in history and change the present by examining it and learning from
the mistakes of the past” (246).
The
filmÂ’s narrative structure itself is one means by which the film attempts to
break with a teleological view of history, as Hutchings states in his article,
the film is a failed detective narrative (240). Phillips desires to reify the
past into objects like the photographs, the smashed guitar, items from the junk
shop, and even the junk shop itself. His goal in collecting these objects,
Williams argues is to discard them (246). The past that needs to be forgotten
is that of WWII and Williams notes that the shots from the dross house are
“strangely reminiscent of the concentration camps” (251). She argues that
photography allows Phillip to turn “suffering and moments of history into
objects, to commodify the past and to relieve himself of its burden by selling
these artefacts” (251).
Williams
also discusses PhillipÂ’s quest for landscape images in the antique shop and
argues that he wants a landscape because it is “an image that contains no image
of man or his actions” (247) and that later the film’s end sequence realizes
this desire when Phillip disappears as “the camera effectively erases human subjectivity”
(250). The filmÂ’s project is to forget the past and the self, which are always
the site of “murder and the history of inhumanity,” (256).
Can
we link WilliamsÂ’ discussion of the empty landscape in AntonioniÂ’s film to
BaerÂ’s discussion of photographs of empty concentration camp landscapes? Does
Bathes notion of the punctum play any
role in PhillipÂ’s photographs?[1]
How does PhillipÂ’s commodification of the past via photographs differ from
other images of commodification we have seen?[2]
If wresting meaning from photographs does them violence and wrenches them from
their historical context to what extent is this not only PhillipÂ’s project, but
the project of the film itself? If Phillip, like Malte, is “learning to see”
then what is the result of his aesthetic education?
Works
Cited
Peter Hutching. “Modern Forensics:
Photography and Other Suspects.” Cardozo
Studies in Law and Literature. 9.2 (1997): 229-43.
Megan Williams. “A Surface of Forgetting:
The Object of History in Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Blow –Up.” Quarterly Review
of Film and Video. 17.3 (2000): 245-59.