Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Essay Example for Free

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Essay It is an unquestionable fact that the world of communication has immeasurable changed since Kenneth Burke first developed his theories and philosophies on this topic in the first half of the 20th century. Nevertheless, Burke’s views and thoughts can still be integrated with the theory of cinema as well as face-to-face communication and other forms of literature and art. Thus, as one critic once said, perhaps Burke will not be remembered so much for what he said but how others took his ideas and brought them forward into other realms of communication. In the 1920s, Burke began writing for the literary magazine The Dial, which included renderings of modernist art and his debates with individuals such as Malcolm Cowley on Dadaism and the Surrealists. His work the Symbolic marks an important time in his thinking when he advocated â€Å"art for arts sake† or the doctrine that aesthetic values are completely separate from political, religious, or economic ones. Burke’s earliest essays dealt with the formal aspects of imagery and the rhythms of language. He believed that reality was a construction of our interpretation of the symbols around us. Much of what we mean by reality has been built up for us through nothing but our symbol systems . . . Take away our books and what little do we know about history, biography, even something so â€Å"down to earth† as the relative position of the seas and continents. What is our â€Å"reality† for today†¦ but all this clutter of symbols about the past combined with whatever things we know mainly through maps, magazine, newspapers and the like about the present†¦And however important to us is the tiny sliver of reality each of us has experienced firsthand, the whole overall picture is but a construct of our symbol systems. (1966, p. 5) Thus, words are symbols, or utterances, produced by humans, alone, to signify those things that they represent. Despite the fact if they are written or verbal, words are a deliberate act for the expressed purpose of expression. A house can be described word-by-word without showing what the house actually looks like. However, because words are symbols, they can never be what they represent. The word â€Å"house† will not be a house. Words are heuristic and can be identified and understood by the person’s own mind and meaning. When a word is identifiable it becomes a representation of what it depicts. Dictionaries can help, but they alter meaning with those who read them. According to Burke, words have an unusual power. As for the relation between ‘identification’ and ‘persuasion’: we might well keep it in mind that a speaker persuades an audience by the use of stylistic identifications; his act of persuasion may be for the purpose of causing the audience to identify itself with the speaker’s interests; and the draws on identification of interests to establish a rapport between himself and his audience. (1966, p. 301-302) Burke was thus instrumental in advancing the whole understanding of rhetoric, with such aspects of his analysis as the pentad of drama, the role of identification, and the ratios or relationships among critical components. His pentad was comprised of the act (what occurs by the delivery of the rhetorical piece), the scene (the situational setup or the context of the discourse), the agent (the person being asked to complete the action), the agency (the tools used to complete the action), and the purpose (the goal of the action). If one analyzes the components of the pentad and their relationships to each other, Burke believed, one would be able to discern the motives underpinning that rhetorical act But we must acknowledge that photographs and, even more so, film are much more complex. When someone sees a visual representation, it can mean myriad of ideas, emotions at once. This visual representation mimics, in fact the viewer’s own perception of life and allows them a greater depth of understanding, or at the very least a sense of understanding, into the subject. In the 1940s, Burke expanded his interest in the visual culture and the function of art, film and television. He often used visual metaphors to explain key concepts, such as identification, representative anecdotes, the pentad, and terministic screens. In his introduction to A Grammar of Motives, Burke covered his theory of the pentad in relationship to a Museum of Modern Art in New York photographic exhibit with photos of war ships and an: aerial photograph of two launches, proceeding side by side on a tranquil sea. Their wakes crossed and recrossed each other in an almost infinite variety of lines. Yet despite the intricateness of the tracery, the picture gave an impression of great simplicity, because one could quickly perceive the generating principle of its design. Such, ideally, is the case with our pentad of terms, used as generating principle. It should provide us with a kind of simplicity that can be developed into considerable complexity, and yet can be discovered beneath its elaborations. (1945, xvi) As noted in â€Å"War and Cultural Life† (1942), he was emotionally impacted by the photos and affirmed that â€Å"one gets a very strong feeling that the war, vast as it is, is part of a still vaster configuration. † (p. 409). Burke felt that the photos â€Å"call(ed) forth a certain philosophic or ‘meditative’ attitude toward the war quite as it also gives nourishment to a strong sense of our national power† (p. 408). He was so taken, in fact, by the photos that he noted â€Å"it would be a very good service both to the strength of our patriotism and to its quality if this exhibit could be shown throughout the United States. † (p. 408) In the Therministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film (2001), David Blakesely relied on Burke’s communication theory to look at cinema and the concept of the theory of film. Given all the theories that exist about film, Blakesely notes that there need not be one theory â€Å"to be elevated to disciplinary reverence,† but rather the question is â€Å"how best to use the terministic resources theory make available† (pg. 2). The title of the book comes from Burke’s phrase â€Å"terministic screen† in Language and Symbolic Action (1966), where his main assertion is that â€Å"not only does the nature of our terms affect the nature of our observations, in the sense that the terms direct the attention to one field rather than to another. Also, many of the ‘observations’ are but implications of the particular terminology in terms of which the observations are made† (pg. 46). In other words, as extrapolated from Burke, film rhetoric, or the visual and verbal symbols that weave film experience, directs the viewers’ attention in unlimited ways, but always towards the goal of fostering identification and the complexity that involves. Similarly, film theory, says Blakesley, which is the lens through which and with which one generates perspective on film as art and rhetoric, acts as a terministic screen that filters what does and does not constitute and legitimize interpretation and, thus, meaning (pg. 3). In his essay about Burke (2001), Andrew King emphasizes that Burke’s theories and assertions were not about ideology or political systems but about the over-rhetoricized world. He insists that according to Burke, even with the invention of writing, humans entered the world of virtual reality and building symbol systems. And, ever since, mankind has been piling symbol upon symbol and setting system over and against system. Simultaneously, with this ever-advanced technology, humans are cutting themselves off further and further from nature and the consequences of their actions. â€Å"Technology delays the consequences of our assaults on our nature and symbolic systems mask our failures until it is too late. Nature is recalcitrant and it will have its revenge, but not until it is too late for us to repair the results. † (para. 17)