Interrogating Booth's Concept of the Implied Author

B- paper, but it's been too long since I've posted on this blog so I'm posting this.

When viewers identify with a singular point of view or voice in a film, there is a potential for destructive misreadings and misinterpretations. I will outline how Booth addresses this problem by proposing the existence of an “implied author,” or creative center. I then argue that Wilson’s discussion of the theory of perceptual extension and his examination of Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once disproves Booth’s concept of the implied author. 

1. Booth

As Booth explains, the case for a single creating author in films is very weak, as every film results from countless voices– including that of the script writer, director, producers, editors, actors, and that of chance, at times. Despite this multiplicity of voices, Booth argues, every successful film has an “implied author.” Booth describes this implied author as “a creative voice uniting all of the choices” (Booth 2002, 125). This voice will always differ from what any one member of the crew would have created, but still provides the viewer with a unified center. 

Booth explains that even in movies that are confusing, in which it may be hard to pick out a unified voice, the effect of the confusion is evidence that the confusion was deliberate, therefore that all of the voices and contributors to the movie have agreed to a single direction– that direction being, to confuse the viewer. 

Booth uses director Sam Mendes’ American Beauty to exemplify the need for, and the presence of, the implied author. From Allan Ball’s, the movie’s author, original script, the film seems to be a commentary on “‘how the world sucks’” (Booth 2002, 128). However, after the changes made, not only by the director, but by choices made by actors, cinematography, musical score, etc, the film’s actual theme is debated, and much harder to grasp. Booth says that misinterpretations of American Beauty result from an “uncritical identification with this or that explicit voice” (Booth 2002, 129), which might be, for instance, identification with one of the film’s characters. Booth says that such interpretations lack a search for the film’s slippery center, “a center where each voice is in effect criticized or modified by the other voices” (Booth 2002, 129). He explains that the center of a film as powerful as American Beauty cannot be adequately formulated with words but instead lies “in the creative energy that hundreds of people put into its production, agreeing and disagreeing, inserting and cutting” (Booth 2002, 129). 

2. Wilson 

 In his paper “Film, Perception, and Point of View,” philosopher George Wilson describes how point of view is determined and understood in film and how this impacts what exactly film represents, as it pertains to reality. Wilson examines what he calls the “theory of perceptual extension,” which explains that film presents or reveals things, events, or aspects of them that people often overlook or perceive without fully appreciating their potential human significance. This theory also says that film grants us perceptual access to patterns of sensible phenomena that hold natural significance, and that are rarely perceived in their entirety by individual observers. Film captures the entirety of these patterns, presenting them in a clear, structured way, making them accessible for continuous, conscious understanding. In doing so, film connects us to the perceptual foundations of the natural significance we attribute to the world around us. The theory of perceptual extension proposes that film allows us to pick out only the relevant phenomena and assemble them into a meaningful and unified pattern through the fictional world in which we are immersed, and through photographic and editing techniques that allow for a visual record of the fictional course of events.  

However, as Wilson points out (in describing Bazin’s view), the theory of perceptual extension requires a specific, analytical style of filmmaking to perform the aesthetic functions it describes. The style is intentionally crafted to reflect the theory’s assumptions. Bazin argues that these assumptions, and their corresponding style, are not essential for creating a successful and meaningful film. Analytical editing has the power to assign psychological meaning to an ambiguous facial expression, as proved by the Kuleshov experiment. This then means that, to preserve our perception of the expression’s ambiguity, perhaps analytical editing should be avoided. Just as the visual techniques of film have the power to extract real meaning that we might not otherwise recognize, it has the power to distort meaning, providing an inaccurate representation, assigning meaning to genuine ambiguity. Bazin therefore concludes that film does not make sense out of reality’s ambiguity, as the theory of perceptual extension might suggest, but simply reflects this ambiguity. 

A film can embody certain aesthetic assumptions while simultaneously subjecting them to critical scrutiny. To exemplify this, Wilson discusses Fritz Lang’s 1936 movie, You Only Live Once. In this film, viewers are at once subjected — thanks to narrative choices – to the ‘fictional society’ within the film’s biases. People view Eddie as guilty, perhaps unfairly. OK, so, in employing the theory of perceptual extension, one might interpret this film as clarifying a phenomenon that happens in reality: people unfairly being viewed as guilty, a phenomenon that we may not usually recognize, but are now able to thanks to the way in which the film extracts and presents patterns. The film complicates this, though, by excluding as much vital information as it includes. This is exemplified, for instance, when the bank robbery is shown; viewers are provided with specific details, in line with the usual analytic attention to specifics, but are prevented from seeing who exactly is committing the crime. This is not just for the sake of suspense and irony, Wilson continues, as the film signals much perceptual manipulation, questioning the reality of the information that is included. 

Ultimately, what Wilson’s analysis of You Only Live Once demonstrates, is that neither society – the one presented in the film – nor the viewer is in a position to know the truth about Eddie’s innocence or guilt. Both points of view are influenced by deliberate perceptual factors. This means that the suggested interpretation of narrative that we get from film can be false. 

While Wilson’s views seem to demonstrate Booth’s warning that viewing a film from one point of view or another can lead to severe misinterpretations, I believe that Wilson’s arguments undermine Booth’s concept of the implied author. There are two potential creative centers of the film, neither of which are abandoned so as to unite with the other. Both voices are distinct and neither are resolved, meaning that this film fails to present an implied author or unified voice. Lang’s film presents multiple equally valid interpretations, uses analytical style to both establish and undermine meaning, and resists resolving into any single “correct” reading. Booth may respond to this by saying that the film’s creative center is deliberate confusion, that “a group of voices have finally surrendered to one another in a single direction” (Booth 2002, 126), that singular direction being confusion. I think, however, that You Only Live Once does not demonstrate deliberate confusion, but genuine ambiguity. Neither point of view is surrendered or resolved. Both are carried through to the end. While deliberate ambiguity, perhaps like in the film Run Lola Run, as Booth says, has a unified purpose in making viewers feel uncertain, the genuine ambiguity Wilson presents questions the very possibility of unified purpose. Deliberate confusion can ultimately be understood as serving an artistic goal, whereas genuine ambiguity remains fundamentally unresolvable. 

Wilson shows that films can create multiple contradictory interpretations, undermine their own apparent messages, and question their own reliability as narrators. Under Wilson’s view, films can reflect the inherent uncertainty of perception rather than impose a unified vision, and Booth’s implied author view does. The potential for perceptual manipulation in film itself questions the possibility of unified authorial voice. Under Wilson’s interpretations, meaning emerges from the interaction between the viewer and film rather than from an implied center. This allows for the viewer to make the film, rather than simply the film making the viewer.