![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Assuming the production of a sound is the natural meaning that results from these terms can only arise once we know the conventional rules of combination, which constitute not only a kind of grammatical code but also an ideological privileging of one value over another. For example, if we take the three terms above that involve the word mouth, without knowledge of the conventionally based meanings, it would just as reasonable to conclude that the resulting meaning was hunger. (95) This description seems to reverse the order in which the process actually unfolds in the spectator’s mind it is not so much that the additive effect of two separate terms produce a new concept so much as the a priori conventionally determined meaning gives special connotations to the terms which, taken as an aggregate, produce this meaning. In response to the idea of the ideogram, Eisenstein concluded that montage is “ an idea that DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another”. The following examples of the hieroglyphs are used by Eisenstein to illustrate a process of meaning generation which can be adopted by the cinema, in the service of ‘intellectual montage’. Interestingly, this strategy for producing meaning is one that has been explored in more recent cultural and literary studies, and which has important consequences for the notion of ideology. While it does not seem to be explicitly stated in the texts, Eisenstein seems to implicitly imply that this goal can be attained by setting up a dominant term which will limit the potential overflow of meaning. Against this tendency and in relation to the latter point, however, we also find in these essays an awareness of the possibility for ambiguous meanings and a search for ways to reduce or eliminate potential ambiguity. And on the axis of combination, the rules which allow such meaning to be generated, by the hieroglyphs, is also brought out where they are assumed by Eisenstein. A close analysis of such idea production, undertaken in this essay, reveals three possible kinds of ideas or mental representations: objects in reality, immaterial aspects of reality, and abstract concepts. Part of the reason for this is that he does not subject either the kinds of meaning or the process by which meaning is produced by these ideograms to an especially rigorous analysis, but rather makes general statements which, upon inspection, seem problematic. These essays, however, often feel more like brainstorming sessions then presentations of clearly formulated ideas. He seeks to explicate this process by applying to cinema the dynamics he found in the Japanese hieroglyph. A central concern in these works is how a series of images can, when correctly composed by the filmmaker and then interpreted by the viewer, produce an abstract concept not strictly present in each of the composite images. The great Soviet theorist and filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein explores the idea of creating an ‘intellectual cinema’ in three essays which were composed in 1929: Beyond the Shot, The Dramaturgy of Film Form, and The Fourth Dimension in Cinema. Eisenstein: ‘Intellectual Montage’, Poststructuralism, and Ideology Ideas on Montageīy Jason Lindop Volume 11, Issue 2 / February 2007 13 minutes (3231 words) ![]()
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