Realist Theory in Cinema

Realist theory, in the cinema, often conjures up the "real" as that which precedes the image, for example, in the performance taking place in front of a camera, but in this the cinematic realists (as distinct from the stoics) have the same problem as the platonists.

What is in front of the camera, in the "profilmic", in the "outside", is the same problem, whether one is a cinematic realist or platonist. It is (we are arguing) a virtual reality.

But whereas the platonist turns from this problem (of the virtual) to the eternal (as it's realism), cinematic realism turn towards the image as it's realism (towards rediscovery of stoic realism). The cinematic realists discover the image as a reality in it's own right, even if they start in terms of the same virtual space (the same problem) in which platonic realism starts.

The virtual is always the space in which the difference between stoic realism and platonic realism can be rendered or regarded as indistinguishable. It is not that this is the case, but that it can be either engineered this way or be comprehended this way. So both camps can often sound as if they are talking about the same thing. And in many ways they are, they are within the same problem. But it is where they are heading, their destinations, their solutions, that one gets a sense of their difference between them. Platonic realism heads towards the geometrical and the mathematical, while the realists head towards the physical and dynamical (stoic realism).

Now neither is a substitute for what is "really" outside. So neither are solutions to a "real" outside the image. I've often entertained the idea that there is no outside (if only for fun), but insofar as our virtual realities seem to suggest there is some sort of outside or to render themselves that way, as indicative of that (whether mathematically or physically) I take it as a form of intelligence (rather than ignorance). And it seems more spiritually correct to think there is a world bigger than ones self anyway. I certainly feel comfortable with the idea of a world larger than myself.

But are we doomed or liberated in only being able to represent that outside, be it as aliens who control our virtual reality, as in The Matrix or Dark City, of as a TV producer and his audience, as in The Truman Show, or to defer it's representation altogether. The image, on the other hand, be it real or virtual (physical or mathematical) counter-posed as an internal process, are things we can possess, or of which we are possessed, and of which we do not need to represent (or defer such representation) but can invoke directly as objects in themselves.

Realist theory restarts itself, in a physical image (a real image) and does not seek to replace the outside with this image, but to treat the physical image as the basis for what occurs or can occur back in virtual reality which comprehends it.

Platonism restarts itself as well, and does not necessarily seek to replace the outside with it's image either. But it is more prone to that risk. It turns back to the real image (the structural space of such), from the point of view of the mathematical, and can numerically mimic the physical image that otherwise occupies that space. This is sometimes theorised as if it's ability to govern such images (that mimic the physical), within our virtual realities, were indicative of an outside that governed the physical image in the same way. This theorisation occurs in classical physics (and sometimes attempted in modern theoretical physics). And it occurs in some digital media theory as well. There is an assumption that recurs as a consequence of this, that the outside is, if belatedly (!), prefacto a given, and that any debate can only occur in the light of that belatedly comprehended given.

Realist theory provides an alternative to this. Where it can go, though, remains a question.

Bergson's Deleuze restarts a larger world (a transcendental one) that would behave in ways that parallels the world we've been considering so far: the world of our own personal consciousness. This larger world will be one on the side of the image, a world which is an image in itself. And this world at large would be a consciousness as well, not too unlike our own consciousness. Each world has a hole in it. Within each world, through the hole in each, enters something of the larger one. These holy worlds become, in the limit, a W-hole.

What I like about this is that it doesn't necessarily pose an outside any different from the inside. Just bigger. There is a bigger picture and a bigger consciousness born of it (a bigger virtual reality).

Deleuze often speaks in terms of planes which I interpret to be a kind of minimalist platonism. The images of the kind being discussed need a surface, and the plane acts as that surface. In computer generated images, planes are subdivided and structured into geometrical objects that eventually become images. But the type of image being discussed are those image which would occupy geometry rather than be the result (or effect) of any geometry. It would be those images which do not need anything more than a plane in which to exist.


Carl