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| (1) Godard: A Letter to Freddy Buache (1982) |
Following
on the framework definition offered by Deleuze, “… we will call the
determination of a closed system, a relatively closed system which includes
everything which is present in the image—sets, characters and props—framing.
The frame therefore forms a set which has a great number of parts, that is of
elements, which themselves form sub-sets. It can be broken down” (Deleuze 12), it
seems relevant to develop a critical approach to the contemporary linguistic framework analysis, and correspondingly offer some ways to
understand framing within the multilayered environments of cinematic media. One
might question the effectiveness of contemporary frame research (coming out of
political science and communications) in bringing a reductionary analysis of
linguistics into the study of news journalism and television. Though, some scholars
have looked at a variety of relational elements of framing, and thus framing as a process that process a multilayered frame environment (Deleuze, de
Vreese), the majority of frame theorists have interjected a simplified version
of what is a complex web for political analysis. It is for this reason that
there is need to readdress new conceptions of ‘process’ oriented framework and
potentially apply or develop a typographical approach to the study of framework
within the complex media environment that connects medium types and movement
images.
If we are
to understand Deleuze’s conception of framing as an extensive one, one which incorporates
images and sub-sets of images and objects (not triggered by linguistic determination, or a priori value, but experience), then the frame becomes not only made up
of the images within a single take or shot, but rather the relations developed
between images through time. The frame, in this sense- incorporates the total environment in which the montage develops (image, sound, language, geometry, object, character, etc.).
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| (2) Godard: A Letter to Freddy Buache (1982) |
Within his Letter to Freddy Buache (1982), Godard’s "frame" becomes both apparent within the linguistic space of his production, as well as within the content and movement image. All of which are "subversive" yet posit a framed vision of urban life. First, as seen in (1) the camera takes a new form of geographic tour, panning over trees, and tracking subway cars, and moving over banks of water, catching locations of color common to the space of Lausanne. here Godard expresses that the frame is the re-presentation of urban life. Godard's production becomes a sort of rearrangement of the data of Lausanne that he presents as most salient in the (re)memory of the space.
In another sense, the frame is inherently pedagogical, as it asks one to see the marginalized spaces of urban climates (bodies of water at the boundaries of the city, trees which create temporary borders) as the most inherent to an urban ontology. Godard's pedagogical technique, in this sense, becomes the de-abstraction of the urban environment. Those things that tend to be out of the frame, subtracted from the frame, here are recognized as the frame. This all operates in contrast to a traditional documentary in which subjects are featured (abstracted from the urban environment) in order to speak about the urban environment.
Jay Bowe
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