Capítulo 3 PLAN DE MARKETING Y RESPONSABILIDAD SOCIAL
3.3 Elaboración del plan de marketing
I want to conclude this dissertation in a similar area to where it began, with theory. I began by thinking about the ways and places where ecological, posthuman, and animal studies might enter into discussions about film in ways other than representation.
And I would like to end by contributing some theoretical arguments of my own. My argument is simple: discussions about cinematic adaptation can become more lively by thinking about adaptation in more Darwinian terms. Thinking about the question of fidelity in cinematic adaptations, Sergio Rizzo points out that “in moving beyond fidelity criticism, these scholars leave little room for the concept of ‘infidelity’” (Rizzo 299). One way to think more (and perhaps better) about adaptations’ infidelity is to consider the Darwinian sense of the word adaptation. Put crudely, to judge or evaluate a film
adaptation according to how faithful it is to its literary ancestor would be like expecting a cheetah to swim simply because its ancestors were acquatic. Adaptations are the genetic
mutations of DNA sequences that produce new traits from one generation to another, eventually culminating in new species, and according to Evolutionary theory, these changes are meant to increase an organism’s fitness for a given environment or habitat.
Right in the middle of Stephen Jay Gould’s massive work, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, which serves here as my evolutionary guide, Gould includes a small section titled “A Personal Odyssey” which explains a shift in his thinking about species selection. Gould justifies this personal writing by pointing out that
[m]any historians of science, particularly feminists like Donna Harraway (sic)…have forcefully argued that scholars can strike their most effective blows against the myth of pure objectivism by being candid about the interaction of their own autobiographies with they current claims—thus exposing the inevitable (and basically welcome) cultural and psychological embeddedness of science, while operating an author’s prejudice both to his own scrutiny, and to the examination of his readers. (Gould 670)
The problem of what Gould calls “pure objectivism” is that although scientific research attempts to minimize biases in order to garner the most reliable data possible, one must address acknowledge and confront the very real structural and institutional biases that inform “unbiased” research. An example here of confronting “the myth of pure
objectivism” would ask why some kinds of research agendas get funding and others do not. Or one might argue that “unbiased” reseach does not yield “neutral” results—that scientific findings are often deeply political (research on climate change or species depopulation, for example.) Gould’s appeal to Haraway’s personal writing, which she intensifies in “Notes of a Sportswriter’s Daughter”, inserted into Haraway’s work on
companion species in both The Companion Species Manifesto and When Species Meet, strikes me as an appropriate place to bridge Pynchon and evolutionary theory. As many scholars argue, Gravity’s Rainbow is absolutely in the business of striking blows “against the myth of pure objectivism.” And it is in this spirit of confronting one’s personal biases and limitations as a scientist, theorist, or writer of any kind that want to make clear that I am not a biologist and my knowledge of evolution and Darwin does not approach
expertise. My aim here is to simply engage the spirit or sentiment of evolutionary theory in order to model what an ecocritical or ecocinematic conversation about film adaptations might look like precisely among those of us who are not ecologists or biologists by training. After all the whole point of interdisciplinary research, it seems to me, is not to go around planting the flag of expertise in more and more fields, but to expand the range and capacities of one’s field—the goal is biodiversity, not colonization.
Although Pynchon does not exactly include his autobiography into either Gravity’s Rainbow or Inherent Vice—the first of Pynchon’s texts to be adapted into a film—he does absolutely call attention to the time and place of his novels’ writing, of their compositional moment in time and space—which is about as much autobiography as the elusive and mysterious Thomas Pynchon is ever likely to engage. (One could argue that the introduction to the collection of his short stories, Slow Learner, wades into autobiographical waters, but it amounts mostly to Pynchon being charmingly critical of his own early writing.) And because of Pynchon’s notoriously minimal public life, one of the most frequent points of contention leading up to, and immediately following, the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Inherent Vice was the question of whether Thomas Pynchon would have a cameo appearance on screen. The question is
irresistible for Pynchon fans. Everyone knows that the only widely available photographs of Pynchon were taken fifty years ago, long before he became famous.
But in none of the fan-boy obsessing over the question of if or where in
Anderson’s Inherent Vice Pynchon might make a cameo does anyone seem to consider what it might mean for Pynchon to break his self-imposed prohibition on being
photographed. Despite the fact that the release of the film might represent the moment Pynchon fans have all been waiting for, no one really seems prepared to respond to Pynchon’s image. I would argue that Pynchon’s much-rumored and searched-for cameo in Inherent Vice amounts to a vestigial trait within the body of the film. Pynchon’s appearance, while serving no clear purpose, is nevertheless a kind of reminder of the film’s origins.
I want to end by returning to the discussion of the brief scene in Inherent Vice where two Vietnam vets are involved in travelling the California coast photographing and documenting environmental damages. At first glance, one might consider this scene as a part of the representation-based ecocinema I set out to work beyond. Žižek’s insight about liberation being about more than representation and the “right to narrate” (190) does, however, discard these concerns—the key phrase is perhaps “not limited to.” What I find so intriguing about Spike and Farley’s hobby is that the novel, and they, position it as a noble activity that somehow works against what they did in Vietnam. Whether they see their eco-documentaries as anti- or de-militaristic is unclear, but their penitent attitude and the sheepish way Spike refers to his being in Vietnam, makes a stark contrast
between military and ecocinematic activities. I like this moment from the novel so well because it moves eco-documentary filmmaking into more interesting territory than mere
eco-advocacy—namely, by positioning ecological filmmaking as a project that works, at least in principle, against the mentalities that fuelled and motivated the Vietnam war. The effect here is not just to make things more complicated than they need to be. Žižek’s point is that representation-based projects, regardless of the liberation they struggle for, will not take hold unless they do something more than create positive representations.
In many ways this dissertation has been about looking for ways to extend the scholarly conversation about cinema and Ecocriticism beyond the domain of
representation. I do not mean to simply dismiss concerns over representation; obviously, as I mentioned in my introduction, I am invested in a diverse cinema. But I remain somewhat unsatisfied by the simple substitution of animals or the environment into well-worn conversations about marginalization, and so I have looked for opportunities and openings for different kinds of discussion concerning how film and photography might address ecology, animals, and the (post)human. This tactic has produced chapters that vary from each other in terms of their subject matter and so in the future, I see this project developing into two or more discrete projects. I would, for instance, like to incorporate more of Thomas Pynchon’s writing into my thoughts about his fiction. Against the Day might be an important next place for my work to turn, considering the novel is set during the turn-of-the century, when cinema was still a very new invention. Likewise, I would like to develop my work with Virilio and De Landa where drones and film are concerned.
My second chapter focuses heavily on Koyaanisqatsi, a film which I treasure, but I would like to continue writing in the future on the kinds of convergence I pick up on between Koyaanisqatsi’s style and drones (and what drones represent vis-à-vis militarization.)
For now, I think I have carved out a few different paths that demonstrate the range of my interests—including several different eras of film theory, animals, Pynchon, etc.—
but also a commitment to writing about these interests in ways that avoid retreading popular critical conversations by attempting to think through several ideas or approaches at once, “lay[ing] everything out…on a single page, the same sheet” (Deleuze and Guattari 9). The process, of determining not only what to write about, but also of how to arrange my chapters has been difficult, but in many respects the approaches taken by the classes I took from my committee members has been a constant encouragement to continue attempting the project.
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VITA
VITA
Matt Varner is from Kansas City, Missouri. He received a Bachelor’s degree from Point Loma Nazarene University in 2008 and a Master’s degree from Mississippi State University in 2010. As a doctoral student at Purdue University he has taught courses in film, American literature, and composition. Upon completing the Ph.D. he will pursue a career an academe. His article “Navigating Bureaucracy: Urzad’s Dissociation of sound and image” appears in Short Film Studies 5.1.