The Aesthetics of Bordem and Blasé Attitude in Cinema Based on Thoughts of George Simmel and Walter Benjamin: A Case Study of Gavkhooni (The River's End)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Instructor, Faculty of Cinema and Theater, University of Art, Tehran, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Cinema and Theater, University of Art, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

In the Iranian cinema, it is possible to find various films that have built their own structure on the depiction of the Boredom of their own heroes. In these works, there are passive characters rising from modernity that do not have affinity with the active characters of the classical cinema. Since these characters are a manifestation of modern human's condition, it is possible to recognize their characteristics by investigating about their encounter with the modern city. In spite of the fact that in the discourses related to modernity, flaneur is often considered as a person who warmly embrace the stimuli and shocks of the modern city, some theoreticians believe that flanerie might be read with what Simmel has regarded as a blasé characteristic of the modern subjects. From Simmel's point of view, the experience of a blasé person is a devoid of "qualities" that leads to a perception based on the "devaluating the whole objective world". Simmel's analyses and thoughts have left a great influence on the ideas of Walter Benjamin in his discussions about concepts such as distraction and boredom. Benjamin believed that when passing through the modern city, in confrontation with assault of the images, the eye would lose its ability to concentrate, and as a result a new kind of perception would emerge. A perception based on the movement of eyes between countless and diverse surfaces and images, which is associated with impossibility of contemplation and concentration: the distracted perception. The main point is that, despite the existence of films focused on the boredom, so far, less research has been done about Iranian cinema that focuses on how to display boredom and blasé, and to investigate the perception of the modern subject in confrontation with Urban modernity based on the ideas of Simmel and Benjamin. Focusing on Gavkhooni (The River's End) by Behrooz Afkhami, This paper attempts to investigate depiction of boredom and blasé in this film based on the ideas of thinkers such as Benjamin and Simmel. In most of the works that try to depict their character's boredom, this concept appears more at the narrative/fictional level, and the filmmaker is not able to convert the sense into cinematic matter. According to the discussed issues in the present article, Gavkhooni (The River's End) is declared as a specific example of Iranian post- revolution cinema, which succeeded in developing the boredom of the character/ narrator into the various cinematic levels. For example, the relation between boredom and narrator is reproduced in relation between him and the geography of the city of Isfahan. In order to visualize as much as possible, the aimlessness and bordem of the character which emerge as a result of daily routine that surrounded him, Afkhami creates a vague cinematic city which is far from real geography of Isfahan. As a result, and according to the findings of this study, it can be stated that Gavkhooni (The River's End) goes beyond mere displaying a narrative about the boredom and has succeeded to improve this sense based on the fundamental features of cinema art.

Keywords


بردول، دیوید (1393)، مطالعات سینمایی امروز و فراز و نشیب­های کلان- نظریه: پُست تئوری، ترجمه مهدی نصرالله­زاده، در کتاب سینما جلد اول، گردآوری مازیار اسلامی، تهران: نشر رخ­داد نو.
بنیامین، والتر (1377)، درباره برخی از مضامین و دستمایه­های شعر بودلر، ترجمه مراد فرهادپور، ارغنون، شماره 14،صص 27-48.
بنیامین، والتر (1390)، اثر هنری در عصر تولید مکانیکی، در اکران اندیشه: فصل­هایی در فلسفه سینما، ترجمه پیام یزدانجو، نشر مرکز، تهران.
بودلر، شارل (1384)، برگرفته­ای از نقاش زندگی مدرن، ترجمه مهتاب بلوکی، در از مدرنیسم تا پست­مدرنیسم، ویراستار انگلیسی لارنس کهون، ویراستار فارسی عبدالکریم رشیدیان، تهران: نشر نی.
تانکیس، فرن(1390)، فضا، شهر و نظریه اجتماعی، ترجمه حمیدرضا پارسی و آرزو افلاطونی، موسسه انتشارات دانشگاه تهران، تهران.
زیمل، گئورگ (1372)، کلانشهر و حیات ذهنی، ترجمه یوسف اباذری، نامه علوم اجتماعی، جلد دوم، شماره سوم(6)، صص 53-66.
کرینسون، مارک(1396)، حافظه شهری: درآمد، ترجمه رضا نجف­زاده، در حافظه شهری: تاریخ و فراموشی در شهر مدرن، انتشارات علمی و فرهنگی، تهران.
کلارک، گراهام(1395)، عکس، ترجمه حسن خوبدل و زیبا مغربی، نشر شورآفرین، تهران.
گانینگ، تام (1395)، سینمای آتراکسیون، ترجمه مهدیس محمدی، در سینما و امر تجربی، تهران: نشر رونق.
فکوهی، ناصر (1390)، انسان شناسی شهری، نشر نی، تهران.
هیوارد، سوزان (1381)، مفاهیم کلیدی در مطالعات سینمایی، ترجمه فتاح محمدی، زنجان: نشر هزاره سوم.
یزدخواستی، حامد؛ مولودی، فؤاد (1391)، خوانشی فرویدی از رمان گاوخونی،  مجله نقد ادبی، تابستان، شماره 18، صص 153-181.
Benjamin, Walter (1999), The Arcades Project, Edited by Rolf Tiedemann, the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Bonitzer, Pascal (2000), Deframings, in Cahiers du Cinema Volume Four 1973-1978: History, Ideology, Cultural Struggle, Edited by David Wilson, Routledge, pp197- 203.
Buci-Glucksmann, Christine (1994), Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics of Modernity, Sage, London.
Crary, Jonathan (1994) Unbinding vision. October 68. pp: 21-44. 
Crary, Jonathan (2000) Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture, The MIT Press.
Gleber, Anke (1999), The Art of Taking a Walk, Princeton University Press.
Goodstein, Elizabeth S. (2005), Experience without qualities: boredom and modernity, Stanford University Press.
Mack, Arien, Rock, Irvin (2000) Inattentional Blindness, The MIT Press.
Metz, Christian (1982), The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, Indiana University Press.
Moran, Joe (2003), Benjamin and Boredom, Critical Quarterly, volume 45, issue 1-2.
Petro, Patrice (1993), After Shock/ Between Boredom and History, Discourse, Vol. 16, No. 2, A Special Issue on Expanded Photography (Winter 1993-94).
Pile, Steve (2000). Sleepwalking in the Modern City: Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud in the World of Dreams, in A Companion to the City, Edited by Gary Bridge & Sophie Watson, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 75–86.
Remes, Justin (2016), The Sleeping Spectator: Nonhuman Aesthetics in Abbas Kiarostami's Five: Dedicated to Ozu, in Slow Cinema, Edited by Tiago De Luca, Nuno Barradas Jorge, Edinburgh University Press.
Ross, Christine (2006) The Aesthetics of Disengagement: Contemporary Art and Depression, University of Minnesota Press.
Salzani, Carlo (2009) The Atrophy of Experience: Walter Benjamin and Boredom, in Essays on Boredom and Modernity, Edited by Barbara Dalle Pezze, Carlo Salzani, Rodopi.
Schaefer, Claudia (2003) Bored to Distraction: Cinema of Excess in End-Of-The-Century Mexico and Spain, SUNY Press.
Sevin, Ayda (2007), Margins of the Image: Framing and Deframing in the Graphic Novel and the Film V For Vendetta, A Thesis for the Degree of Master of Arts, Bilkent University.
Shaviro, Steven (1993), The Cinematic Body, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota.
Singer, Ben (2013), Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts, Columbia University Press, New York.
Tester, Keith (1995) The Inhuman Condition, London: Routledge.
Torbett, Rachel June (2009), The Quick and the Flat: Walter Benjamin and Werner Herzog, in Essays on Boredom and Modernity, Edited by Barbara Dalle Pezze, Carlo Salzani, Rodopi.