The Critical Institution
No critic can interpret a film completely. Multiple critics analyzing the same movie may find some of the same things and some different ones, but multiple critics can not interpret the film in its entirety either. Thus, critics criticize by convention, searching for the appropriate cues to guide them. As such, they must deal with four main issues:
appropriateness- making sure the film chosen is suitable for criticism
recalcitrant data- adjusting interpretation of the film to fit critical conventions
novelty- interpreting the information uniquely
plausibility- making a believable interpretation.
The "critical institution" guides the critic to look for cues in two ways:
(1) First, critics look at the overall film from a layman's perspective. The critics outline the referential aspects of the film (primary characters, setting, and plot) and examine the explicit meaning of the film--the moral of the story. Of course, this is the critic's personal interpretation of what is referential and what is explicit.
(2) The critic then finds customary symbols in the film. Here, critics depend on past interpretation. For example, the critic might look at the meaning of nature in The Thin Red Line based on an earlier critic's interpretation of Platoon. They look at their own works and others to determine which "cues" are generally accepted as worthy of interpretation. If a critic wants to look at an unconventional cue, he must show that it effects the understanding of the film or that the cue is similar to a standard cue.
All films are somehow connected to the viewer's world in that comprehension requires some sort of association with viewer's own life or surroundings.
Schemata
Schemata are data structures used in interpretation. 'Schemata are stable, persistent, and of general application'. "War" is a schema in that it conjures up certain concrete images. We know that at least two parties are in serious conflict with one another. We may not know the reason for the conflict, the number of people involved, or any other specifics, but we know the basic structure of the war schema. Many times, critics will select a "prototype" of a schema. This prototype is considered the clearest representative of the schema's essential features. "Police action" is a schema with Vietnam as the prototype. When someone says police action, one thinks of many things associated with Vietnam, even if the police action under consideration bears no association with Vietnam whatsoever.
Heuristics
Heuristics are rules of thumb that are useful understanding how schemata are used for a particular interpretation. In a "representativeness heuristic", the critic tends to reduce all inferential tasks to judgments of similarity. One might say that the jungle in Platoon is symbolic because the men have become beasts. In an "availability heuristic", solutions are sought among what is most readily accessed in memory. Many rely on the "vividness" of the heuristic; that is, the most strongly visible cues are given the most attention.
Models
From these schemata and heuristics, critics make a mental model of the movie. These models are representations for a particular film that cannot be used for the next. To some extent, critics ignore or donwplay cues that do not fit their interpretation as they seek supporting cues for their model. Because of this tunnel-vision, the model is always an approximation of the film as the critic chooses to see it.
By Maria
Collins 7/26/99