Читать книгу Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema - Terri Ginsberg - Страница 11

At first glance, the division of information implicit in the historical dictionary format may seem to work against a recognition of the transnational interconnectedness detailed above by ghettoizing the material. (This possibility is, after all, inherent in the encyclopedia form, which developed historically as a mode of dividing and categorizing knowledge, often deployed to abstract and generalize about particular geographical regions under European colonial control.) We do not, however, believe that this is necessarily the case and have striven to ensure that it should not be. Indeed, the nonlinear, cross-referential nature of this work can, we believe, counter this tendency by facilitating multiple entry points into the general topic of Middle Eastern cinema, and thus encourage readers to cross possibly unfamiliar cinematic and philosophical borders. Following certain threads through the volume may also aid readers in adopting alternative approaches to the typical ways this material has been organized, and we hope in this way to enable them to measure the cinemas of the Middle East against each other, as well as in comparison to the Hollywood cinema with which they may be most familiar.

In addition, in selecting material for the historical dictionary, we have tried to balance inclusion of the best-known figures and movements internationally—those most likely to engage the book’s probable readership in the first place—with lesser-known material from an already underserved area of cinematic inquiry, where some of the more innovative and challenging work has consistently taken place. We acknowledge claims made by Shafik, as well as Kiarostami, that the cinema—and its modern conditions—are by no means “alien” to the Middle East, as has sometimes been asserted, and that to presume otherwise oversimplifies the history of the region and its cultures. This discussion evokes questions raised by long-standing scholarly debates over whether concepts of symbolism, metaphor, and allegory are especially appropriate or inherently valid means for interpreting non-Western films, as originally suggested in controversial work by Fredric Jameson and debated in critical responses by, among others, Aijaz Ahmad, Madhava Prasad, and Rey Chow (representative works by all of whom can be found in the bibliography to this volume). As noted throughout these pages, an alternative perspective on the national-cultural significance of Middle Eastern films to be considered here is the reemergence of Islam and Islamism, forces linking much of the region in ways that complicate and generally contrast frameworks that emphasize pan-national, pan-Arabist, and pan-African interconnections.

In his original essay, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capital” (1986), Jameson raises issues related to the relationship between cultural work—including cinema—and its national conditions of production. He argues that this relationship is allegorical: that is, that a subject and narrative stand in for or analogize figures and events associated historically with their country or region of origin. While Jameson’s critics commonly acknowledge the importance of his essay for encouraging Western film scholars to recognize the political and economic determining factors in much Third World culture, they have argued that his theory runs the danger of affirming prejudicial or otherwise unnuanced interpretations of works from the Third World by allowing readers/audiences to disregard such works’ formal properties and the specific traditions bound up with them. Thus, the danger is that readers/audiences are discouraged from recognizing the many individual and alternative means of responding to national and transnational conditions, such as those described above.

Critics have further suggested that, while Jameson is correct to point out that transnational exchange provides the parameters for First World/Western encounters with the non-West—including, in cinema, the kinds of coproductions discussed above—his argument implies that all Third World culture is primarily concerned with its relationship to the First World/West, either explicitly or unconsciously. This approach tends to position First World readers/spectators as a work’s main critical audience, thus inviting interpretations unfamiliar—and possibly inappropriate—to many local audiences. In fact, Jameson’s critics have argued, not all Third World or non-Western culture is primarily concerned with its relationship to the First World/West—although much evidently is; in any event, such concern is often articulated in terms, both aesthetic and conceptual, that speak more directly to non-Western peoples and that may therefore not be readily interpretable according to Western cultural and intellectual frameworks. Furthermore, while transnational capitalism and the nation-state are codependent functions of the modern world system, it does not necessarily follow that cultural responses and critiques of that system will always take a nation-centered form. For many Third World critics, ignoring these complex variables while interpreting culture for what Jameson calls a text’s “political unconscious” may result in acts of theoretical “violence” that can serve, if inadvertently, to support the (neo)colonial interests that have constrained non-Western cultures and societies for so long. As a critical countermeasure to these tendencies, we have striven to ensure that the historical dictionary’s entries on particular films and filmmakers do not make blanket presumptions about national or political concerns and have been careful to integrate descriptions and interpretations of them that will respect cultural differences while not eliding cross-cultural considerations and implications.

Scholarly analysis of Middle Eastern cinema has been practiced within many academic disciplines, using different approaches, but hails in part from area studies, a broadly interdisciplinary, Western academic field established and partly funded by the U.S. Department of State under the legislative act known as Title VI, first instituted in 1958 and renewed, often with significant emendations and changes of emphasis, every six years thereafter. Area studies’ wide scope, initially bolstered by Cold War imperatives—which, under the auspices of the U.S. Information Agency/Service, were also responsible for many film educational initiatives throughout the Middle East—has also sometimes tended to homogenize that region, thus running the risk of furthering orientalist views about it. One complex facet of this approach may be seen in contemporary debates over the status of women in the Middle East, especially in relation to a frequently misunderstood Islam, all too often treated as coterminous with the region. Framed commonly by social science paradigms of anthropology, ethnography, sociology, archaeology, and psychology, Middle Eastern women have often been positioned as needful of “modern” uplift and humanitarian rescue. Under this system, women and women’s issues are evaluated either according to universal models, such as those pertaining to social and reproductive roles or women’s rights—by which Middle Eastern societies are found deficient—or, conversely, by discourses limited to quite specific localities, which may all but foreclose debate on the subject. Both approaches fail to accommodate sufficiently the views of women in the region, something else we have also tried to redress in this historical dictionary.