|
|
|
|
|
|
of the risks of this procedure is the failure to make the quotation marks evident, so that what is cited is accepted by the naive reader as an original invention rather than as an ironic reference. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
We have so far put forward three examples of quotations of a previous topos: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Bananas, and ET. Let us look closer at the third case: the spectator who knows nothing of the production of the two films (in which one quotes from the other) cannot succeed in understanding why what happens does happen. By that gag the movie focuses both on movies and on the media universe. The understanding of this device is a condition for its aesthetic enjoyment. Thus this episode can work only if one realizes that there are quotation marks somewhere. One can say that these marks can be perceived only on the basis of an extratextual knowledge. Nothing in the film helps the spectator to understand at what point there ought to be quotation marks. The film presupposes a previous world knowledge on the part of the spectator. And if the spectator does not know? Too bad. The effect gets lost, but the film knows of other means to gain approval. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
These imperceptible quotation marks, more than an aesthetic device, are a social artifice; they select the happy few (and the mass media usually hope to produce millions of the happy few). To the naive spectator of the first level the film has already given almost too much; that secret pleasure is reserved, for that time, for the critical spectator of the second level. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The case of Raiders is different. If the critical spectator fails (does not recognize the quotation) there remain plenty of possibilities for the naive spectator, who at least can enjoy the fact that the hero gets the best of his adversary. We are here confronted by a less subtle strategy than in the preceding example, a mode inclined to satisfy the urgent need of the producer, who, in any case, must sell his product to whomever he can. While it is difficult to imagine Raiders being seen and enjoyed by those spectators who do not grasp the interplay of quotations, it is always possible that such will happen, and the work is clearly open to that possibility. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I do not feel like saying which of the two texts cited pursues the "more aesthetically noble" ends. It is enough for me (and perhaps for the moment I have already given myself much to think about) to point out a critically relevant difference in the functioning and use of textual strategy. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
We come now to the case of Bananas. On that staircase there descend, not only a baby carriage, but also a platoon of rabbis and I do not remember what else. What happens to the spectator who has not caught the quotation from Potemkin mixed up with imprecise fancies about |
|
|
|
|
|