I Dream of J.J., or Affordances and Motion Pictures
 
***** ANDERSON ********* EJC/REC Vol. 5, No. 1, 1995 *******
I DREAM OF J.J., OR AFFORDANCES AND MOTION PICTURES
Joseph D. Anderson
University of Kansas
Abstract: Attempts to account for how viewers
garner meanings from motion pictures are
categorized as either semiotic, realist, or
conventionalist, and the shortcomings of each
approach are noted. An alternative explanation
based upon the ecological theory of perception set
forth by J. J. Gibson is proposed. Gibson's
hypothesis that "the 'values' and 'meanings' of
things in the environment can be directly
perceived" (Gibson, 1979, p. 127) is considered in
regard to motion pictures. His concept of
"affordances" is offered as the key to an
explanation of how meanings in motion pictures are
generated and constrained.
Recently I had a most disturbing dream. I found myself
sitting in the cavernous darkness of a movie theater
destined to pursue the question of how motion pictures come
to have meanings for motion picture viewers, for all
eternity, or until such time as I should arrive at a
reasonable answer. In the interest of prudence I spent the
first few moments considering a strategy. Should I begin by
defining the term "meaning" or "meanings"? (There are
likely more than one. They may exist in coveys or braces,
or prides, or packs.) No, such a course could lead to an
infinite regression, the meanings of meanings, the meanings
of the meanings of meanings, etc. Perhaps if one shrinks
from addressing meanings directly, one could at least set
about specifying their location with regard to motion
pictures. Indeed, if one could locate meanings associated
with motion pictures then, perhaps occasionally in the
bright shafts of projected light, one could gain brief
glimpses of glistening fur or brilliant plumage as they leap
from their high perches into the minds of viewers.
Do meanings reside in the movie; are they contained in
some sort of pictorial code? A substantial argument can be
made for answering affirmatively. A small army of people
devote a great deal of time and effort to making a movie,
which in the end consists of a mere ten reels of film.
Copies are made and shipped to theaters (or TV studios)
where they are mechanically projected. We in the audience
watch the images play upon the screen and are filled with
complex and sometimes subtle meanings. Surely the meanings
we enjoy are somehow contained in the film, perhaps encoded
as a set of representations, an elaborate set of symbols
which we decode in the act of viewing.
But several problems come to mind, not the least of
which is that, except for the dialogue, no one has been able
to specify a set of symbols along with a set of rules
governing their usage with anywhere near the capacity for
carrying the complex meanings inherent in a motion picture.
Although it is easy to demonstrate that some audiences have
command of the English or French or Japanese language, no
one has shown that we who make up movie audiences are in
possession of a symbolic motion picture language.
If the notion of a language-like system for encoding
meanings in motion pictures seems unlikely, one might
propose that the meanings associated with motion pictures
are not in the film _per se_, but in the world that is
depicted on film. Such proposals are sometimes labeled
"realist."
Dramatic narrative motion pictures, the kind we call
"movies," usually consist of photography and sound recording
of people engaged in actions, and even though the events
photographed may be undertaken specifically for the camera,
they take the form of real events. And even if the
characters and the time and space of the movie are
fictional, the events are lawful within the diegetic world
of the movie. Just as in the real world, the objects and
events of the fictional world are related to each other in
lawful ways. Relationships between objects and events in
the real world exist in such precision that they can often
be described mathematically. And it can be argued that
these relationships exist whether or not there are any
mathematicians present. The same can be said for the
objects and events of a motion picture. The events of a
motion picture, including all the causes and effects and all
other relationships depicted, can be said to exist even if
every member of the audience walks out and leaves the film
to run in an empty theater.
This is an intriguing idea, one that merits further
consideration, but it does not account for specifically how
relationships between objects in the real world or a
fictional one come to have meaning for individual humans.
And to turn the matter around, it does not account for the
possibility that some individuals who witness the same event
either in reality or in a movie seemingly garner different
meanings.
If a realist approach seems too rigid to account for
different meanings, then perhaps a conventionalist approach
may serve better. In this latter approach the meanings that
accrue to any motion picture are to be found residing in the
viewers themselves. By this reckoning, meanings in the
possession of viewers are so inherently unstable that to
attempt to link symbols to objects and events in the real
world (sometimes called referents) is nigh impossible, and
to expect a particular symbol to have a consistent meaning
is unwarranted (as in linking a signifier with a signified).
And while meanings (the signifieds) are created by culture
and language, they are in fact shifting from moment to
moment, thus making it unlikely that two people sitting in a
theater will have the same meaning for the same signifier at
the moment it is presented in the film. This principle is
at work whether one is watching a movie, reading a book,
listening to a speech, or carrying on a conversation over
coffee. Thus, writers create books and film makers create
films using signifiers as they understand them at the moment
of creation. And, when the books are read and the films
viewed at another time, the viewers attach to the presented
signifiers the meanings they possess at the moment of
encounter. If they read the book again at a later time or
view the movie a second time they will attach yet another
set of meanings.
It should be readily apparent that inherent in this
conventionalist notion is the pitfall that in defining
meanings as an attribute of language shaped by culture,
conventionalism fails to account for the structures of
physical reality and the whole of possible meanings that are
not language-based. The conventionalist position allows for
the possibility that physical reality may not exist at all,
and that if it does we cannot know it except through the
filters of language and culture.
Taking stock, then, of my dream-bound ruminations in a
darkened theater, I find that the meanings which are
believed to abound in motion pictures are first of all not
encoded in motion pictures as in a language, for film is not
a language. Thus I cannot look to a semiotic theory of film
for a satisfactory explanation of how motion pictures come
to mean to their viewers. Second, I note that a realist
theory, while perhaps persuasively accounting for the
dynamic relationships between objects and events in the
world or in motion pictures, nevertheless fails to account
for a viewer's role in that mix, and ultimately for
differences in meanings between individuals witnessing the
same event or watching the same movie. And third, I find
that a conventionalist view has just the opposite problem.
While describing how individual viewers may gain different
meanings from the same movie, it is oblivious to the
workings of the physical world and impotent to deal with any
possible meanings apart from those instated in the
conventions of language and culture.
With increasing anxiety I become aware that I cannot
look to any of these notions for an answer to the question
of how motion pictures come to mean. None holds the key to
my deliverance from the darkened theater of my dream. As I
struggle to suppress looming images of eternity in the
flickering gargoyled darkness of a faded movie palace, I am
suddenly struck by the idea that perhaps I have not
understood the question. I have made assumptions about a
symbolic language of film, mathematical relationships
between objects and events, and cultural and linguistic
constructions, but in my troubled sleep I have failed to
address the issue of meaning at its most fundamental level.
What is the central basic question regarding meaning in
motion pictures? I struggle to phrase the question in the
least abstract, most direct terms: How do the characters
and events in a movie come to have meaning for individual
viewers? No, no, I am already making assumptions about
higher order phenomena like characters and events. Perhaps
I need to start with the light from the projector and the
vibration from the sound system: how do successions of
light distributions emanating from beaded glass or
phosphorous coated screens and atmospheric compressions from
metal or plastic speakers come to have meanings for movie
audiences far in excess of their mere existence as
successive patterns of light and molecular disturbances?
But I hesitate, for I know that when watching a movie I am
often not aware of the patterns of light on the screen as
patterns of light, and I am even less aware of the patterns
of sound as patterns of sound. I realize that I am aware of
both the characters and events _and_ the patterns of light
and sound, but not at the same time. No, I attend first to
one and then the other, but most of the time I am caught up
in the events in which the characters participate.
Now I seem to be getting somewhere as I realize that
the patterns upon the screen and in the air contain
information about both their own existence as patterns of
light and sound, _and_ about an entire fictional world in
which characters live and events unfold. But how do I get
information from patterns of light and sound in a once
elegant movie theater? The answer flutters into my mind:
the same way I get information from patterns of light and
sound anywhere in the world! We, as biological creatures,
have no special capacity for perceiving motion pictures.
When viewing motion pictures we rely upon our general
perceptual capacities, those same capacities that developed
through the processes of evolution for perceiving not the
constructions of media but the natural world.
Suddenly upon the screen of my dream there appears a
figure walking toward me (or perhaps more precisely toward
the camera). I recognize him immediately as the perceptual
psychologist J.J. Gibson, who in his lifetime laid out most
carefully a theory of ecological perception. He stands
there in black and white, but of course I do not notice that
any color is missing, for perception is most directly of
what is rather than what is not. In a clear and almost
theatrical voice he delivers his lines before the screen
fades to black:
...if there is information in light for the
perception of surfaces, is there information for
the perception of what they afford? Perhaps the
composition and layout of surfaces _constitute_
what they afford. If so, to perceive them is to
perceive what they afford. This is a radical
hypothesis, for it implies that the "values" and
"meanings" of things in the environment can be
directly perceived. (1979, p. 127)
Gibson observed that we are most fundamentally animals
walking around on the ground. As perceivers, our
perspective is not a god's eye view from outside the system
looking in, as is the case with scientific investigation;
our perspective is from inside the system, walking around on
the ground, very much a part of the world we inhabit. And
Gibson held that an understanding of the nature of meaning
must begin from this point of view, i.e., that of an animal
walking around on the ground. "Physics," Gibson asserted,
"may be value free, but ecology is not" (1979, p, 140). By
this he meant that an animal sees things in terms of its own
self interest, but not as the animal wishes they were or
capriciously imagines them to be. Such an animal has
evolved in relation to its environment, and in that
development its perceptual systems have been shaped by the
necessity to obtain veridical information from its
environment with which to inform its own actions. These two
constraints seem to have prevailed, indeed still prevail:
one, that information about the world, including other
nearby creatures, must be veridical; and two, the
information must specifically inform the perceiver's
actions.
Grasping the significance of his insight into how a
creature finds meaning in relation to its environment,
Gibson sought a term in language to signify the
relationship. The word he found was "affordance."
The verb _to afford_ is found in the
dictionary, but the noun _affordance_ is not. I
have made it up. I mean by it something that
refers to both the environment and the animal in a
way that no existing term does. (1979, p. 127)
When Gibson coined the word "affordance" he set in
language the terms of the transaction that generates
meanings for all animals, including those like ourselves who
walk around on the ground.
The definition seems straightforward, but the concept
of affordances is one with far-reaching implications and one
that is difficult to grasp. Gibson's critics have charged
that it opens the door to relativism; and indeed,
conventionalists, contextualists, and relativists of several
stripes have agreed, adopting it as their own. But Gibson
was no relativist. He attempted to clarify his concept and
give it substance.
An important fact about the affordances of the
environment is that they are in a sense objective,
real, and physical, unlike values and meanings,
which are often supposed to be subjective,
phenomenal, and mental. But, actually, an
affordance is neither an objective property nor a
subjective property; or it is both if you like.
An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of
subjective-objective and helps us to understand
its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the
environment and a fact of behavior. It is both
physical and psychical, yet neither. An
affordance points both ways, to the environment
and to the observer. (1979, p. 129)
But he argued that the transaction was not weighted equally
in both directions, that when the meanings inherent in
physical reality are set against subjective meanings,
physical reality ultimately dominates: "The organism
depends on its environment for its life," he writes, "but
the environment does not depend on the organism for its
existence" (1979, p. 129).
To cultural relativists who might argue that the
environment, though once natural, is now man-made, and hence
an evolutionary theory is no longer appropriate for
describing the relationship of contemporary people to
today's world, Gibson responded, "This is not a _new_
environment--an artificial environment distinct from the
natural environment--but the same old environment modified
by man." (1979, p. 130) Mud has merely been reshaped into
bricks, iron-bearing rocks into automobiles, and sand into
computers, but the fact of a mutual environment has not
changed, and, short of genetic engineering, the principles
of evolution remain as they have always been.
Our environment provides the things we need to survive,
and we perceive those things as affordances. We do not
perceive the ground first as an abstraction and then
calculate that we could perhaps walk upon it. We perceive
the ground as a surface to walk upon. We perceive the
affordance of drinking water or eating an apple. The
meanings of things are perceived most directly in terms of
what they afford us. Gibson goes on to note that "some
offerings of the environment are beneficial and some are
injurious" (1979, p. 137). And of course we sometimes make
mistakes. What we may perceive as solid ground may in fact
be quicksand. Gibson's explanation is that "if information
is picked up perception results; if misinformation is picked
up misperception results" (1979, p. 142).
Skeptics may at this point be willing to concede that
it might be useful to view meanings related to the physical
world in terms of affordances, but they might balk at
couching relationships with other people and with cultural
abstractions in terms of affordances. To such skeptics
Gibson offers this assurance:
The richest and most elaborate affordances of
the environment are provided by other animals and,
for us, other people. . . . Behavior affords
behavior, and the whole subject matter of
psychology and of the social sciences can be
thought of as an elaboration of this basic fact.
(1979, p. 130)
J.J. Gibson was not a motion picture scholar, but he
recognized the potential his theory of ecological perception
held for advancing our understanding of the perception of
motion pictures. He had used film in his work in perceptual
psychology and had hands-on experience shooting and editing,
so it was with some knowledge of and affection for the
medium that he entitled the last chapter in his last book,
"Motion Pictures and Visual Awareness." In this chapter,
however, he does not develop the implications of his concept
of affordances for motion picture viewing. He has left that
work to present and future generations of film scholars.
Patterns of light and sound are the units of perception
not only in motion pictures but in the natural world. That
is where both begin, and those patterns are constantly
changing. It is instructive in this context to note that
Gibson first began to develop his theory during World War II
when he was assigned the task of helping pilots fly and land
airplanes. To a pilot landing an airplane many of the
patterns of light move very fast. Recognizing the fact that
the visual flow is very rapid led Gibson to develop a theory
of perception that emphasizes the things that do not change
with change, those things that persist over a succession of
transformations. Gibson termed such phenomena "invariants,"
and his theory of how meaning is derived rests upon the
invariants of perception. Unlike theories of meaning based
upon Saussurian notions of unstable meanings, Gibson argues
that we, as biological creatures, have an inherent tendency
to seek out the stable, invariant properties in our
environment, whether they be properties of a physical sort
or of the social or intellectual kinds.
Gibson did not expect things to remain the same; he
assumed change in every aspect of our existence. He
specifically recognized that for animals like ourselves who
continually move about, what constitutes our immediate
environment changes as we move. Yet higher level mammals,
and humans in particular, have developed capacities for
dealing with such changes. We have adapted our perceptual
apparatuses to the task of gaining information from a
constantly changing influx of sensory stimulation.
One of Gibson's most significant contributions was his
pointing out that the built-in strategy of the perceptual
system is to dwell upon, not the continually changing sense
data itself, but the information contained in patterns of
light, air disturbances, chemical molecules, etc. Animals
attend differentially to patterns in several domains, but
humans seem to get most of their information from patterns
of light and patterns of atmospheric compressions. And
therein lies the key to applying Gibson's theory of
perception to motion pictures.
First, motion pictures consist of patterns of light and
disturbances in the air. There is in fact sufficient visual
and auditory information in the motion picture for it to
function in such respects as a surrogate for the natural
world. Second, viewers of motion pictures seek the
invariant structures in such man-made arrays just as they
seek the invariant structures in arrays within the natural
world. Third, the meanings of invariant structures in
motion pictures are perceived just as they are in the
natural world--in terms of affordances. And just as in the
natural world, motion picture affordances are accountable to
the perspective of the perceiver. But the application of
the concept of affordances to motion pictures requires
further explanation, for it is readily apparent that film
viewers are not themselves participants in the events
portrayed on the screen. They are not characters in the
fictional world but observers of the fictional events.
Gibson's explanation that affordances are found in the
relationships between individuals and their environments,
that affordances are not infinite in number but constrained
by reality, that they are "in a sense objective, real, and
physical," helps to explain why it is possible to perceive
potential affordances for others (1979, p. 129). In daily
life one continually perceives potential affordances for
oneself and for a fair number of other people. The
difference in motion picture viewing is that the available
affordances are, by the very nature of the situation,
generally unavailable to the viewer directly. Viewers must
therefore perceive the affordances of the diegetic world in
terms of affordances for the characters in the movie rather
than for themselves.
Such a constraint could begin to account for the fact
that most often there is one primary character in the
fictional world, usually the film's protagonist, with whom
the viewer "identifies." But it is critical to note that
such "identification" is not limited to the sense of the
viewers' feeling that they are themselves akin in
personality to the fictional character, but encompasses a
more fundamental and profound sense of perceiving the
affordances offered by the fictional world through that
character, gaining "meaning" from the film by perceiving
what the events of the fictional world mean to that
character.
An ecological theory of film viewing can offer
significant insights into an entire range of issues, from
the most abstract issues of film spectatorship (entry into a
diegetic space, character perception, narrative structure)
to the most basic perceptual issues of film viewing. It
can, for instance, begin to explain why the rules of thumb
used by editors in the Hollywood system are able to produce
a product that is seamless, with transitions from one shot
to the next that are virtually invisible. [1] Indeed, the
new perspective inherent in such a theory calls into
question the assumption made by many contemporary theories
of film spectatorship (generally those based upon
psychoanalysis or Marxism) that the "absorption" of the
spectator into a filmic narrative is in some way evil and
something to be avoided. An ecological perspective points
instead to that very capacity--that is, the capacity to
create on the screen a compelling, unbroken chain of
narrative events that involves the viewer perceptually and
emotionally--as the source of power in the cinema.
Perhaps most importantly, an ecological theory of film
viewing offers a way to locate meaning not in the film or
the external world alone, nor in the subjective
consciousness of the individual viewer, but in an
interaction between the viewer and the filmic construct. It
posits that film is not a language, but a surrogate for
reality, and it goes beyond acknowledging that real, lawful,
and measurable relationships exist both in the natural world
and the diegetic world of a movie. It offers specific ways
in which we, as biological creatures, are linked to those
relationships. In doing so, it allows for a mutuality of
film and viewer while avoiding the untethered relativism of
theories in which all meaning is ultimately either
subjective or negotiable or both. An ecological perspective
stresses the complementary relationship of film and viewer
and recognizes the biological constraints imposed upon that
relationship by the nature of the human visual and auditory
systems.
I awoke from my dream with a soaring feeling of freedom
that almost immediately became tinged with anxiety. Had
J.J. Gibson earned my release from a prison of worn
upholstery and fluted columns by offering a better
explanation for how motion pictures come to have meaning for
their viewers? Perhaps. I see great promise for a theory
of film that emphasizes the relationship between the viewer
and the events depicted on the screen while recognizing the
biological boundaries to that interaction. The outcome is
thus most positive, yet I find my dream disturbing, for I do
not believe for a moment that dreams have any relevance for
a theory of film spectatorship.
Notes
[1] For discussions of specific Hollywood editing practices
from ecological and cognitive perspectives, see J.
Anderson (1993), A cognitive approach to continuity,
Post Script 13(3), 61-66; and N. Carroll (1993), Toward
a theory of point of view editing, Poetics Today 14(1),
123-141.
References
Gibson, J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual
perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
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Author Information: Joseph D. Anderson
Department of Theatre and Film
University of Kansas
jda@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
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Copyright 1995
Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, Inc.
This file may not be publicly distributed or reproduced
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