To all those who got disturbed abou that blog I posted: well, don’t worry about it anymore. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, as the cliché goes. And, my old friend and I are okay again. Haha!

Thanks to those who were concerned and who were worried! Haha!

In his book Forms and Substances in the Arts, first published in 1966, Etienne Gilson ended with a chapter on theater. In that chapter, he mentions as a footnote a “new material in search of its form”.[1] Film, which Gilson described as a derivative of theater, was a booming “new material” by the time he published his book. By the 1960s, the cinema or film has already grown as an established industry in many places, including France. In fact, the 1960s was the era in which the so-called French New Wave developed. Undoubtedly, Gilson was familiar with all of these movements. Yet, in his book, he did not find it plausible to think of film then as an art form at par with theater. Even so, Gilson did mention that “the cinema has an interest in seeking its paths outside those of theater, even of faked theater”.[2] He, perhaps, thought that film during his time was on its way to establishing itself as a separate art form from theater. It may, however, be unfair to think that film is faked theater, as Gilson called it. At present, film is, undoubtedly, one of the more popular art forms, and has successfully distinguished itself from theater. Having said all these, this paper will attempt to discuss film as an art form with elements distinctly belonging to it and how these elements make up what is now considered as the form of film.

To be able to discuss the form of film, it is necessary to spend some time talking about the elements of film, which are also its primary matter. Admittedly, some of these elements had been derived from theatre. One such element would be acting, and all the other components that come along with it – the actors, the dialogue. Nevertheless, acting is present in film in a different way than it is present in theater. Gilson himself already said something about this obvious difference in the same footnote quoted above. In theater, the character ceases to exist as soon as the actor has stopped playing the role at the end of the play. In film, the actor may have ceased to play the role but the character remains “alive” in the film.  The being, so to speak, of the character survives. Film, then, has a take on acting that is very different from that of theater.

Another element would be lighting, which is part of stage development in theater. In film, lighting plays a very important role, much more than it does on theater. Lighting is a powerful tool for story telling. By itself, the way a particular scene in a film is lighted (or not lighted) already sets the mood, and gives the viewer a certain feel that is necessary to understand the particular scene. This is one of the tools the director uses to deliver the film in the way he wants it, for the film to take on the form the director wishes it to have.

A third element, which uniquely belongs to film, is what has been termed as cinematography. This element deals with anything that has to do with the camera, a major instrument in the production of film, for without it, film would not exist. Cinematography covers camera movement: the shots, the pans, the focuses, etc. Many great directors have been renowned for their genius with the techniques of the camera. Just to sight an example, in Citizen Kane (which many critics claim to be the best film of all time), director and actor Orson Wells popularized a technique which has come to be known as deep focus. Using sophisticated cameras, nowadays it is not such a challenge to use this technique. In 1941, however, the year when Wells made the film, such sophistication was not available. Deep focus is carried out by using a single camera to take a scene, where the background and foreground would both appear clear and sharp. In any case, cinematography is indeed a primary matter that the director as an artist manipulates to create his art, to make a film.

These elements are all brought together by the director using the camera. The challenge that the director has to face is this: how will he tell a story using all of these elements, the primary matter for his film? Film tells the story not simply through the script or the words uttered by the characters. The totality of film tells the story. It is everything that the director puts into it – or removes from it – that tells the story.  Once the film has been made, the director has already done his masterpiece and very rarely can he change it, if at all.[3] Nevertheless, following Gilson, it is not because a film tells a story that makes it beautiful, although storytelling in itself has its own beauty. It is not telling a story that the director as an artist primarily wants to achieve in a film. It is, rather, how he will tell the story through his film. The beauty of film lies not in the story but on how the director puts together the elements as primary matter to tell the story.

A filmmaker of note is Stan Brakhage, who made films from 1952 to 2002. Brakhage is not an ordinary filmmaker. His films were all unconventional by commercial standards. From his very first film, called Interim, up to his last film, the Lovesong series, Brakhage has constantly defied the ordinary. His techniques vary from unusually jumpy editing (an element that will be discussed later on) to painting on or scratching the actual film strip.[4] Brakhage had a different vision for film. He challenged the normal idea of a narrative. Brian Frye, in his article on Stan Brakhage, wrote:

With this opening paragraph to his seminal manifesto Metaphors on Vision, Brakhage called into being an entirely new kind of cinema, where none had existed previously. Suddenly, an epistemological question loomed where none had before: What is the nature of the relationship between the moving image and the world, and how might it be represented? Brakhage intended to film not the world itself, but the act of seeing the world. The vast majority of Brakhage's films are entirely silent. When you watch his films, you are asked to look, and look closely. Where his predecessors used metaphor as a means of relating images to one another, Brakhage's films were themselves expressions of a single, great metaphor: visual perception.[5]

Brakhage, in this sense, successfully gave his films their own form. The form his films took was near what some would call a pure form, devoid entirely of meaning other than what it shows. Yet, even Brakhage made us of secondary matter, such as the themes or the inspirations for some of his works.[6] In any case, Stan Brakhage did make use of the same film elements mentioned above. It was his unconventional method of putting these elements together that was clearly his own. A question one can put forward on Stan Brakhage is this: Is it beautiful? Brakhage’s emphasis on visual experience went even to the extreme of showing gory images. One film, called The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes, showed the process of conducting an autopsy in full color. It may well be a matter of taste because Brakhage does have fans of his own who appreciate his taste for film.

To be able to tell a story, the film director makes use of the different elements mentioned above. An important step that caps the filmmaking process is called editing. Editing has been defined as “the work of selecting and joining together shots to create a finished film”.[7] At present, editing has been a key process in filmmaking. It is in editing where the shots and scenes are put together, where the entire film actually makes sense. It is because of editing that the film takes on a flow, a certain storyline. It is because of editing that the shots made throughout the shooting of the film achieve unity. Without editing, the shots remain shots, maybe even without any particular order. Just as brushstrokes make it possible for the painter to arrange the colors in the way he wants, editing makes it possible for a filmmaker to create the film he wants. Filmmaking, indeed, is a complex process.

At present, films have grown to include other art forms. At the dawn of the talkies or sound, film has been more receptive to music. Music has been part of many of the great movies of all time. Even the Oscar Awards has a category for Best Soundtrack and Best Musical Score, to distinguish between those with song and those simply with music. There have been films that were musicals, and even the guru of silent films, Charlie Chaplin, used a song in his movie Modern Times – where Chaplin’s voice was heard for the first time on film in a song. Musical scores have also been used to add to the mood and the overall effect of certain scenes in a film. In the film Sixth Sense, which starred Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment, made use of good musical scoring in the ending scene of the film, when the character of Bruce Willis discovered that he was already dead. To illustrate that he had been dead already, a technique called flashback was used several times, while cutting into the actual scene which shows his realization. All of this was accompanied by a musical score which was also telling the story in its musicality.

The director, M. Night Shyamalan, did not just use music to capture the audience. The viewer was lead into not suspecting that the character of Willis was dead already through the combination of lighting, camera angles, even editing, and through the dialogue. All these elements lead to that moment when, finally, everything was revealed. Even the object that revealed everything was a simple ring, the wedding ring of Willis’ character. The beauty of it lies precisely in how Shyamalan combined everything to deliver the story.

It would be appropriate to mention another development in filmmaking. The advent of what is called computer generated images (or CGI) and animation marked another step in film. CGI began simply as a tool for editing films, such as The Matrix. Nowadays, however, it has been it possible to produce film simply out of CGI and full animation. Films like Toy Story, Shrek, Finding Nemo, Happy Feet, Beowulf, and many others have been made completely out of computer graphics. In such cases, the only human element that remains in the film is the presence of the voice actors. Voice actors are not, strictly speaking, true actors. For one, there is the absence of actual dialogue between two persons.[8] In truth, voice acting is simply reading from a script. Even in the actual recording, each character’s voices were recorded separately. There is no actual dialogue between the voice actors. They are simply put together in the final version of the animation. In this sense, there is no element of film left in animations. Perhaps animation can be likened to drawing with respect to painting.[9] Yet, while it cannot be denied that animation can be beautiful in its own right, it cannot properly be considered a form of film. It could be that animation – understood as moving drawings – in itself is a distinct art form.

Film, surely, has grown into an art in itself. It may have begun simply as a derivative of theater, but it has grown since then into a completely distinct art form, with elements that properly belong to it alone. Film directors are artists in their own right, applying their particular knowledge of cinematography, lighting, and acting into the film, finishing it with some techniques on editing. It is, perhaps, one of the most accessible and more familiar art forms at present. True appreciation of the beauty of film is more accessible to many people. Ordinary people watch films not to know a story, not to learn a lesson, not to look at an insight in human life or in reality. While these may be present, ordinary people go to the cinemas or movie houses simply to be entertained, to enjoy. That enjoyment may come at varying levels, but ultimately, it comes simply from watching the film. Film, indeed, is an art of the beautiful.  

My best friend introduced me to this TV series and now I am hooked to it. I’m talking about the TV show Heroes. There is nothing so extraordinarily great about it… and that’s the point! While it is true that the characters do have abilities that are not common, they are not packaged in such a way that they would look weird. Rather, the characters look so ordinary that anyone can relate to them easily – more easier than relating to Wolverine or the Beast, perhaps.

The concept of “humans with powers” may indeed be old. But, what makes Heroes different is the way this concept is tackled. The abilities of the characters are not designed in order for them to be able to fight or to destroy others (this would not be so obvious in the case of Nikki Sanders). The abilities of the characters can be used for the good of for the bad, but it is entirely up to them.

Anyway, the point is, the show is very enjoyable. It is enjoyable because it shows aspects of human life that are true for all, not just for those with abilities. It is enjoyable because the story is good. One particular episode that offers a very good insight into what matters in life is Episode 23 of Season 1, How to Stop an Exploding Man. The line came from Charles Deveaux: “You have a heart that can love unconditionally…”, he tells Peter Petrelli. He continues, saying, “Like I told you, in the end, the only thing that matters is love.” I don’t want to sound preachy here, but this guy is right. It is our capacity to love that makes us heroes.

The Humanities Made Possible

Man is, indeed, a cut above the rest. It may even be appropriate to say that man is so many cuts above the rest of creation.* This primacy of man has always been apparent in history – some in ways worthy of admiration and, other times, in manners befitting horror. As Aristotle said, “Man is, in a sense, all things.” This apparently confusing statement would only make sense when understood taking into account something that is present only in man. Man has what has been called an inner life, his interiority. The inner life contains all of man’s desires, aspirations, and worries, etc. which are exclusively his, and can only be communicated by him freely. This inner life, which is natural and private to each person, is what makes man capable of doing things that other created beings, in a manner of speaking, cannot even bother to think of. To move further, this inner life is what makes the Humanities possible. This paper would try to explain how this is so. It would be necessary, however, to clarify the terms that have been used so far.

To speak of an inner life is proper only to man because no other creature but man has that capacity to know, which, according to Aristotle, is in his nature.[1] Consequently, the latter’s definition of man as “rational animal” is a clear expression of this capacity to know. Moreover, this capacity to know makes man capable of knowing that he knows. This is because man lives “by art and reasonings”[2], unlike animals who live by “appearances and memories”. All of these are possible for man because of his inner life, that interiority which is not bound by his physicality, by materiality. In his inner life, man is capable of knowing all things, and when he knows things, he assumes the nature of things. For man knows not just the physical appearance but the essence or the entire quidditas (the “whatness”) of a thing. This, perhaps, is what Aristotle meant in saying that man lives by art and reasonings, not just simply by appearances and memories. Proof of this is man’s capacity to identify what a thing is, even if it may come in various physical appearances. Man knows a table when he sees one, even if it may have different colors and it may come in different shapes or sizes. Something in man is capable of reading beyond what his physical senses could perceive and this makes him able to identify what a thing is really. Man is able to know – or at least he can have a hint at – the essences of things. This understanding of the essence of a thing (its innermost reality) happens in man’s inner life. It is here that he is able to be all things, in the sense that when he knows, his interiority assumes the nature of the thing he knows. He, indeed, becomes that thing which is the object of his knowing – not in the physical sense, for it is impossible, but in his inner life. For to know is to possess[3] the nature of the object known.

The inner life certainly is powerful in this sense. It is there where man can exercise his greatest power. It, certainly, overflows to man’s exterior actions, for man is not purely just inner life. The actions of man in his inner life can be manifested in what can be called his outer life. The experiences of man’s inner life have been manifested in his outer life in different ways. Some people write about it, others simply sing; some compose poems, others dance, and there are others who paint it. There are various ways of conveying what is in man’s inner life, and all of these falls under what has been called the Humanities. The disciplines under the Humanities, such as history, art, philosophy, and literature, are primarily concerned with man’s inner life.

Among these mentioned, history may seem to be problematic – does it really deal with man’s inner life? It would seem that history has nothing to do with the inner life of man if understood simply as memorizing dates and names of dead people who did something big in the past. This is not history. To know the past with a view to understanding why the present is as it is; to understand human behavior in the past because whatever motivated the people back then can certainly motivate people now. These can be two ways of understanding how history affects the inner life of man. The motivations of the people behind the events in history are important because they are part of the inner life of those people. It may happen that another person has the same motivations developing in his inner life. In this sense, it is indeed possible to learn from the past. From another angle, from the view that it is the historian who chooses what becomes a historical event from among the many events in the past, the inner life of man plays another role. In choosing what becomes a historical event, the historian may base it on what attracts his inner life. Historians choose events that are significant to them, to their interiority. In this sense, history is also a product of the inner life of man.

Clearly, the Humanities are made possible by man’s inner life. But what is it in man’s inner life that is shown by the Humanities? Here, perhaps, a little bit of technical things from the study of metaphysics is needed. The Humanities express man’s perception of the transcendentals, both from without and from within. The transcendentals refer to the perfections found in all things in so far as they are, in so far as they exist, in so far as they have being. These perfections are rooted in being. Being here can be understood as existence. Hence, all that participate in being possess the transcendentals. Things, in so far as they exists are one (unum), true (verum), good (bonum), and beautiful (pulchrum). These are the four transcendentals.

Now, man’s capacity to know extends to knowledge of these four in beings, including his own. Man is able to recognize the one (refers to unity present in being), the true, the good, and the beautiful. This is so because ens et bonum convertuntur, being and the good (or the one, the true, the beautiful) can be exchanged. What ever has being possesses the transcendentals. Therefore, since it had been mentioned above that man is capable of knowing the very essence of a thing, man is certainly capable of recognizing the transcendentals in the essence of a thing. Once he has realized these, man cannot but simply be attracted to them, because the object of man’s knowing is the truth, and what ever is true must also be good, one, and beautiful – for the four always go together in being. This explains why man is attracted to what is beautiful, to what is good, to what is true, and to what is one.

It does not stop there. Man realizes that this one, true, good, and beautiful can be found not just in things outside of him, but also in him. He realizes this fully in his inner life. Moreover, he recognizes the transcendentals in other beings because he has it also in his inner life. There is a certain connection with man’s inner life and with other beings. What treasures man has! And, he is able to express these through the Humanities. Man cannot contain this treasure to himself because, as St. Thomas Aquinas said in his Summa Theologica, bonum diffusivum sui, the good (or the true, the one, the beautiful) spreads itself. Thus, man expresses it in his outer life, through the means mentioned above, through the Humanities.

In this sense, it can be said that the Humanities are about the true, the good, the one, and the beautiful. These can be found in things, most especially in the inner life of man. It is these that man finds in him and in things that he talks about in the Humanities. Indeed, the Humanities showcase the transcendentals, and thus, are made possible by man’s inner life. Man is the only creature on earth capable of such a thing. This is one reason why man is truly a cut above the rest. The Humanities cannot be but about him because man is the only animal capable of recognizing what he has – his existence and the perfections that accompany this existence. Man’s inner life finds the transcendentals valuable in themselves because they are not for any practical purpose.

I got something quite new from a teacher of mine. It was a discussion on human sexuality. And, an interesting fact came up, a fact that can easily be overlooked.

Have you ever asked yourself where human sexuality lies? Is it simply a truth that one realizes based on the physical aspects of a human person – whether that person possesses a body that is clearly masculine or feminine? True, the physical aspect does say a lot. But it is not enough. An idea of human sexuality purely based on the physicality of persons is does not provide a very solid foundation. It may be that a male is a male, or a female is a female, as can obviously be seen from the kind of body that they have. That is, a male has a male body just as a female has a female body. They are, indeed, truly different.

Does this mean that, once the physical aspect is changed, the sexuality of the person is also altered? If sexuality purely depended on what is physical, then this would be the case (as in the situation of those who have undergone what is called sex change). Fortunately, however, things are not that easy to change.

Human sexuality is more stable than this. It is so stable that, in fact, it can never be altered. And here comes what I have learned from today. It makes perfect sense that human sexuality is rooted in something deeper than mere physicality. And, guess what, what else can be deeper than the body but the soul? You got that right. My teacher was able to prove to us that the soul also holds human sexuality. He proves this by showing the difference in the spiritual faculties – the intellect and the will – of the male and the female persons. These are different in such a degree that one can speak of a male intellect and will, and of a female intellect and will (DISCLAIMER: This fact does not, in any way, show supremacy of one sex over the other).

Curious, isn’t it? The basic difference in the intellect lies in how this faculty works differently for each sex. For the male, the intellect works, in the words of my teacher, a logical way. This means that, for males, to go from point A to point Z, one has to work through points C, D, E, …, X, Y, and then finally reach point Z. Men tend to work on things by understanding them in a linear manner. This is not the case with women. My teacher called the way the female intellect works as intuitive. That, for the female mind, to get from point A to point Z, involves not a linear path but a circle that moves to enclose other points, regardless of what point comes first. So, women tend to reach point Z and yet feel that it is not yet complete, because other points may not have been enclosed in the circle. Women tend to work on things in a circular manner, meaning they see the goal but they do not follow a straight, rigid path towards it.

A similar difference can be found between the male will and the female will. For men, the will decides on things more firmly than for women. The example that my teacher gave was on the simply husband and wife scenario wherein they decide on an excursion. The husband, for example, decides on going to Baguio the next day and the wife agrees, seeing that all the circumstances are favourable for such a trip. Both of them, then, go to sleep. The next day comes, and the husband wakes up to see the wife already up and tells him that they are no longer going to Baguio. The husband does not understand this change, which the wife made because for her the circumstances have changed. The husband needs to see the change one by one. Well, this is an example of how different the male and female intellect and will are. This is already too long, so here I end.

It should not be forgotten that, between the soul and the body, there exists a unity which determines what a person is. A person is not just a soul, and neither is he just a body. A person is a composite of body and soul. Thus, it is more proper to say that human sexuality lies in the entirety of the human person.

Goodbye Ortigas... and Hello Mother Ignacia!!!

Yup, I'm moving in near ABS-CBN. Fortunately, not in the Big Brother House, but in a bigger and better house. Starting April 1, I would be living in a house in Samar Avenue. I am really excited about this move, but the hassle of putting all my stuff in bags is something I would always have to bear with. I seem never to get use to it. I'm always worried about crumpling my clothes and messing up my books. So, it takes me a lot of time trying to figure out which goes into what bag and what else goes with it. This is something I have to get used too soon.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to my days in my new house. Those who know where it is, you are free to visit me any day you want, provided, of course, that I am there.

For those who would be taking summer classes, especially the incoming third year batch of IMC, i wish you all the luck. A word of advice: the word LATE is not in the vocabulary of Dr. K. Keep this in mind. No amount of crappy excuse can get through his preference for punctuality. Alright?

As for everyone else, have fun this summer!!! 

This thing can be useful...i heard this is how things are now, and that e-mail is becoming a thing of the past..

well, i'll try it out. i'll try to write as often as i can...