Montage Is Conflict

Many years ago I studied film. I studied the history and the techniques. I studied film makers and their work. I learned to speak knowingly of "mise en scene" (what is in front of the camera) and "montage" (the way images are put together). Aside from giving me a slightly larger French vocabulary, I was able to bore friends and family at parties with my discussions of Eisenstein and "dialectical montage."
This morning, I felt some quiet vindication for all my blathering on: Apparently the drones over at Fox News (We Report, You Submit To Our Will) went to the same classes I did. In Sergei Eisenstein's "Strike", a shot of striking workers being attacked cut with a shot of a bull being slaughtered creates a film metaphor suggesting that the workers are being treated like cattle. This meaning does not exist in the individual shots - it only arises when they are juxtaposed. Fast forward ninety years to this morning's report on Fox News (We Juxtapose, You Nod Dully): On one side of the screen, a talking head blathers on about the death of the vile dictator Saddam Hussein. On the other side of the screen is a series of graphics listing the past six month's activity of al Qaida. As the talking head continued his discussion of the potential for violence in Iraq following Saddam's execution he mentioned Shiites, Sunnis, and the four-day Eid al-Adha festival, the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar for Shiites. At no point was there an attempt to link the information on one side of the screen to the other.
We are supposed to do that. In "The Godfather", during Michael's nephew's baptism, the priest performs the sacrament of baptism while we see killings ordered by Michael take place elsewhere. The murders thus "baptize" Michael into a life of crime. I got that. I got the subtle inference in "North By Northwest" when Cary Grant pulls Eva Marie Saint into their bunk on a train just before we see that same train speed into a tunnel. At this point I feel compelled to rhapsodize about the "language of film." But I will spare you.
Instead, I wish for the new year that we can start to see things without the aid of green screens and news tickers. We are all in need of some good editing - but be fair and let us decide.