Actors' eyes
January 17th 2007 07:09
In the examination scene in "Billy Elliot", Billy takes up a posture, and the panel of ballet judges begin to talk -- at length -- among themselves, while Billy wilts beneath the scrutiny. There's a disproportion between the simpleness of the act, and the interest it elicits.
This is a little surprising, a little comic, but also believable. After all, we expect experts:
(1) to take a keen interest in their trade, and to have lots to say about it. Portaloo salesmen sometimes can't help but take apart the aeroplane dunny; while the two barbers in Seinfeld are mesmerized by Edward Scissorhands.
(2) to notice and process in a way that other people don't -- be sensitive in a way that other people aren't. A carpenter is awake to all sorts of details about furniture; a TV golf commentator can crap on and on; a botanist sees a wealth of differences and facts where other people see undifferentiated green; a musician can tell you which violinist came in a little late, which flautist was a little flat...
And Alan Chalmers makes an even stronger claim:
Now, if you're unsurprised in the case of ballet, why should you be surprised in the case of acting? -- and yet people are. They don't imagine any great rift between the acting teacher's evaluation and their own. The think any fool can judge good acting from bad. After all: (1) it's all very subjective, right; and (2) we've all seen hundreds of movies.
But would you still think it subjective if you had an idea of what the actor was capable of, and was aiming at? -- And if hundreds of plants haven't given us botanist eyes, why should hundreds of movies have taught us crap about acting?
Some actors will have spent years observing, for instance, the differences between real and faked behaviour, or between the instinctive and the conditioned...
What the trained see, and the information they can extract, is on a different level -- from even the critic of theatre or film.
The best that the best critics have is access to their own reactions. But put a critic and an actor in a room, and they're not even speaking the same language. They use different concepts in terms of which to express themselves, are awake to, notice, are interested in different things...
And even if the non-actor happens to feel it, can they put their finger on it, put it into words, specify it, communicate it?
-- This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia articles Philosophical Investigations, Kenny (2006 film).
-- The quote is from AF Chalmers, What is this thing called science?, 3rd edition, 1999, at page 7.
-- Thursday 21 January 2010: Hayes Gordon makes the same point in Acting and Performing, 1987, p 273: "Sometimes the quality is blatantly self-evident. But also we are trained to recognise the misfits by intuition. We watch a TV show and suddenly an alarm rings. Something jars. What was that? We fund the impression and usually discover a boo-boo. As my friend Rod Power said when he perused parts of this manuscript for psychological inaccuracies, 'I suddenly twitched'. This when he came upon one of my brash, half-baked generalisations relating to the field in which he was expert." -- The general point, as I see it, is that the expert has a trained "intuition" that senses the presence of something. The expert then systematically applies the categories, methods, thought-patterns of his or her trade, and makes explicity to the fully conscious mind what the unconsciousness sensed. For my own part, I sympathize with this in terms of creative writing (elsewhere I've used the metaphor of "smelling a rat"), in terms of philosophical writing (I've used the metaphor of scratching itches and not allowing yourself to ignore them), and in terms of argumentation generally (I tend to notice if an argument is presented as being logically closed, but isn't -- alarm bells do sound -- I hear them all the time as I reread my own writing).
This is a little surprising, a little comic, but also believable. After all, we expect experts:
(2) to notice and process in a way that other people don't -- be sensitive in a way that other people aren't. A carpenter is awake to all sorts of details about furniture; a TV golf commentator can crap on and on; a botanist sees a wealth of differences and facts where other people see undifferentiated green; a musician can tell you which violinist came in a little late, which flautist was a little flat...
And Alan Chalmers makes an even stronger claim:
| ... what observers see, the subjective experiences that they undergo, when viewing an object or scene is not determined solely by the images on their retinas but depends also on the experience, knowledge and expectations of the observer. The point is implicit in the uncontroversial realisation that one has to learn to be a competent observer in science. [emphasis added] |
Is it a duck, or is it a rabbit?
***
Now, if you're unsurprised in the case of ballet, why should you be surprised in the case of acting? -- and yet people are. They don't imagine any great rift between the acting teacher's evaluation and their own. The think any fool can judge good acting from bad. After all: (1) it's all very subjective, right; and (2) we've all seen hundreds of movies.
But would you still think it subjective if you had an idea of what the actor was capable of, and was aiming at? -- And if hundreds of plants haven't given us botanist eyes, why should hundreds of movies have taught us crap about acting?
Some actors will have spent years observing, for instance, the differences between real and faked behaviour, or between the instinctive and the conditioned...
What the trained see, and the information they can extract, is on a different level -- from even the critic of theatre or film.
The best that the best critics have is access to their own reactions. But put a critic and an actor in a room, and they're not even speaking the same language. They use different concepts in terms of which to express themselves, are awake to, notice, are interested in different things...
And even if the non-actor happens to feel it, can they put their finger on it, put it into words, specify it, communicate it?
***
-- This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia articles Philosophical Investigations, Kenny (2006 film).
-- The quote is from AF Chalmers, What is this thing called science?, 3rd edition, 1999, at page 7.
-- Thursday 21 January 2010: Hayes Gordon makes the same point in Acting and Performing, 1987, p 273: "Sometimes the quality is blatantly self-evident. But also we are trained to recognise the misfits by intuition. We watch a TV show and suddenly an alarm rings. Something jars. What was that? We fund the impression and usually discover a boo-boo. As my friend Rod Power said when he perused parts of this manuscript for psychological inaccuracies, 'I suddenly twitched'. This when he came upon one of my brash, half-baked generalisations relating to the field in which he was expert." -- The general point, as I see it, is that the expert has a trained "intuition" that senses the presence of something. The expert then systematically applies the categories, methods, thought-patterns of his or her trade, and makes explicity to the fully conscious mind what the unconsciousness sensed. For my own part, I sympathize with this in terms of creative writing (elsewhere I've used the metaphor of "smelling a rat"), in terms of philosophical writing (I've used the metaphor of scratching itches and not allowing yourself to ignore them), and in terms of argumentation generally (I tend to notice if an argument is presented as being logically closed, but isn't -- alarm bells do sound -- I hear them all the time as I reread my own writing).
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Comment by katyzzz
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MS Paint Art
Billy Elliott is one of my favourite movies, I'm a balletophile.
Loved every minute of it.
katyzzz
Comment by Brian Rhodes
RainbowWarriorPoet
for the script and wordplay so designed
as we turn over one another smaller one we find
the actor must needs pretend
the byplay of the words and sounds we defend
till in a chorus of nothing each to the other we blend..
Comment by Damo
Try making a film when actor must give their best all the time. It is so damn hard. It is hard because you are trying to stop an audience from knowing that this person is acting
Comment by JoshZ
It's interesting, because as a writer, I can see the mechanics of other writing. I can sometimes see how another author might put together his characters and see how the themes and pieces of the story are put together.
It's interesting that you mention acting as I was chatting to a couple of friends last night about movies in general. One thing we agreed upon is that Christian Bale is amazing. Funny how some actors are known not just for being actors, but somehow enter that level where they are THAT actor.
JZ
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
I think Great Acting is realative!
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
People who are concerned with clothes have an astonishing memory for them, as well as an ability to describe exactly, as well as an eye for noticing differences.
People who are concerned with cars have a memory for them, a knowledge of taxonomies of model and make, and a strange alertness to individual peculiarities.
Whereas, in my own case, if you were standing in front of me, I couldn't describe you, except in the most general terms. And, two minutes later, I couldn't tell you what you were wearing or what you drove away in. In my mind's eye, there is no image -- no colour, no shapes, nothing. At best I'll be awake to what I felt, how I reacted.
I do have an okay memory, though, for topics of conversation, and sometimes for particular words and phrasings.
Or, for another example of the expert's sensibilities, think of what the wine or food expert can say after a quick tasting.
And yet I've seen thousands of outfits and cars. And we've all consumed tonnes of food and drink. Why do I (in the case of clothes and cars) or people in general (in the case of food and wine) lack the expert's abilities?